Still Tuesday

14 Jan 2025 - still Tuesday

Somehow the 8 hours to Nairobi wasn’t bad once we took off.  KLM changed out the plane close to departure, so there was some scrambling of passengers and bags but I landed in my Business Class seat and never looked back.  We were 40 minutes leaving, which was eating into my already short night in Nairobi before I headed out first thing the next day.  I would have to make that up somewhere to get some semblance of sleep.

I played more trivia on the seatback tv than anyone should be allowed, but I did set the plane’s high score of 185k, after finally breaking the 60k plateau I hit.  Hey, I take the wins where I can find them.  I watched Crazy Stupid Love (love Steve Carrell), About Schmidt, My Penguin Friend (good lord I sobbed through that!) and then a couple of wildlife shows before we finally made it to Nairobi.  Not the greatest selection of movies and shows but it got me through. I think I may have dozed through Schmidt but I wasn’t that enamoured with it to start with.

The meals on KLM were ok at best.  I’d preordered special meals to make sure I get vegetarian.  The first meal was some sort of stew with what could have been jackfruit (allowable) or some kind of mystery meat (not) so I put all that to the side and ate the veggies I could identify and the rice.  Lunch before landing was a salad with what could have been chicken nuggets (not allowable) or some kind of something else which I wasn’t going to try, and a tasty little chocolate mousse cake which I asked for a second one of so I could have something not lettuce in my stomach when I took my anti-malarial.

We landed at 10:40 and I was trying to ascertain what door we’d deplane from so I could make a break for it.  Luckily, it was the door closest to me, so I headed for it, cutting off the Premium Economy folks (sorry gang, this is why I paid thousands for this fare) and got stuck behind a lame older man on the jetway.  Once I could get around him, I took stairs where he took escalator and I handily made it to the passport control counter as the first passenger, which was a huge score for me as I will remain permanently scarred from past experiences standing in that line FOR-EVER.

Exchanged some money, had my luggage scanned again (“do you have a drone?” he asked) and then hit the sidewalk.  I’d worried a bit about not having a meet and greet service and leaving it up to Four Points Sheraton to fetch me, but there she was with my name, along with 6 others, on her sign.  “Do we have to wait for all those people?” I asked, fearful that my race to be first out of the hell that is arrivals would be all for naught. No, we didn’t and off I went to the hotel.  I was checked in and tucked in by 11:40.  I’d get almost 7 hours of sleep!  If only I could fall asleep!  Now I was so wound up that the very same sleep that I fought off all afternoon I was now grasping for and it was not coming!  I reached for my phone and put on a Peloton sleep meditation and that was the last thing I remember.