10 May: In the Air Again
Good lord, I never knew a plan could be so overheated. It's positively tropical in our DC-10 headed back to Seattle, and the heat seems to be emanating from the floor where I swear they're testing out a nuclear generator.

I'm a big fan of The Amazing Race on CBS--where teams of two travel around the world in search of clues to their next destination--and we had our taste of it this morning. Our flight was delayed by 40 minutes leaving Paris to Amsterdam Schipol (pronounced skipple). We had a few fellow travelers also going to Seattle (including our partner in the morning shuttle from the hotel to Charles DeGaul airport), and we were all flying past all the shops full of cheese and chocolate in a desperate attempt to get to the plane on time. Luckily, we just made it--though our direct run to the plane ramp was briefly halted by one of the most thorough security interviews (which included European inflexibility--"stand here"--and a bit of humour--"why do you have two laptops...? just kidding").

But... then we got to sit on the tarmac for almost two hours, waiting for an errant light flashing in the cockpit to be OK'd by the engineering team back in Minneapolis. As we rolled back, the pilot reassured us this small mechanical problem would not affect our flight in the slightest, but Mrs. F suspects it has something to do with the air conditioning. If you read a news article about a man tackled by a group of flight attendants after running through a DC-10 cabin waving his jeans above his head, that'll probably be me.