A White Christmas, After All

Although a week ago there was so much snow that the whole state of Colorado got shut down, including the Denver airport for two days, most of the snow in Pueblo was gone by the time we got here. Yesterday, the “4th day of Christmas”, the snow hit again. Jeff was scheduled to fly out of Denver about 6:30 p.m., but with the new storm coming, no one was sure whether the planes would be flying. He hung around as long as he could without getting a definite answer, so he drove up there in the afternoon without knowing. The newspaper today says 180 flights were cancelled yesterday, but we think he was able to get out of town. At least he got out of Pueblo and up to Denver before the roads got bad.


Abbie and Rachel went shopping just as the snow started falling. Any chance the two are related?





There’s not as much snow this time, but it’s going to spread out over a long period of time (until Sunday, perhaps) and it will be colder this time around. The problem is not the amount of snow, but the icy conditions, as the temperatures will get down to close to 0ºF (-15ºC) in the next few days. I took a few pictures to remember the snow by.

On the 3rd Day of Christmas

As I wrote the other day, this was the Year Without Christmas, that is, there was very little remotely reminiscent of Christmas on the day itself. I guess if we had a “Christmas Tree” this year, it would be this tree outside our hotel decorated in autumn colors, 100% natural, no artificial additives. It stood out in contrast to the evergreens across the street, and in contrast to Madeira, where there the trees don’t ever really go through the change of colors.

We did make the flight to NY, and fortunately there was space available so we could fly on to Denver. It was 11:00 p.m. when we landed, so we didn’t get a good view of the snow as we drove to Pueblo, where we arrived at Rick and Margaret’s house shortly after 2 a.m.

We were up by 7 a.m., and by 8:30 everyone was gathered around the “real” Christmas tree, which had all the presents under it. Although it was the 27th already, everything else was “just like Christmas.” Having the celebrations spread out this way gives meaning to the idea of the “12 days of Christmas,” which, by the way, is exactly the number of days I’ll be away from home on this trip.
Below: Our seven grandkids under the tree

One step at a time

Sorry! This version got posted on the Portuguese blog, and vice-versa. Blame it on the pressure of knowing there were but a few minutes left before boarding the plane.



We are now sitting in the Lisbon airport waiting to board our flight to Newark in about 30 minutes. So far, so good. The next instalment in this saga will be at Newark when we find out when we can actually move on to Denver. Since we missed our connection for the Continental flight to Denver yesterday, we're on the waiting list now, and I suspect we're not the only ones on that list.

De passo em passo

Neste momento estamos sentados na sala de embarque do aeroporto de Lisboa, à espera do voo para Newark daqui a 30 minutos. Até aqui, tudo bem. O próximo episódio desta novela terá lugar em Newark quando tentamos seguir viagem para Denver. Como perdemos o voo de ontem na Continental, hoje estamos na lista de espera, e estou quase certo de que não somos as únicas pessoas naquela lista.

The Christmas That Wasn't...

...like Christmas at all. Sitting in a hotel with others caught in a similar plight (some were going to Brazil, some to Spain, others to France), but all of us sent to a hotel with orders to come back to the Lisbon airport tomorrow to catch our respective flights. The cause of all this? A work slow-down by the pilots of the Portuguese airline, who are protesting because the government is changing the rules and wants to make them work until 65 before retiring, instead of the age-60 limit in place up to now. Not all flights are affected; some are delayed; others are simply cancelled for lack of crew. Our 6:00 a.m. flight was one of the "chosen" ones.

The meals in the hotel,lunch and dinner, were plentiful(buffet, eat-all-you-want), but the menu of codfish, seafood, roast pork, and stewed kid just doesn't fit the image of Christmas dinner we've grown up with and the tradition we've maintained. We're not hungry, but maybe we're not "satisfied" either.

But we are thankful to have a place to stay, food to eat, and a bed to rest in. And we may have a similar occasion to be thankful again tomorrow night. The last word we got from the service representative of the airline was that she couldn't confirm our flights tomorrow from here to NY or on to Denver.

I Told Me So

What was it I wrote in the last post? Behold, it has come true...but with a twist. The snafu turned out to be at the "wrong end".


We got up at 3:30 this morning so we could be at the airport by 4:30 to catch the 6:00 flight to Lisbon. First words to greet us on the screen at the airport: "Flight cancelled". Now as the sun comes up over the Desertas Islands to the southeast of Madeira, shining over my shoulder through the terminal's panoramic seaview windows, and Abbie tries to catch a bit of rest (she, unlike I, did not sleep at all last night), we await the 10:00 flight. Ah--but we will miss the connection to NY and Denver, so we will be spending most of Christmas Day in a hotel in Lisbon and catch the same flight at 11:50 to NY on the 26th. Meal, taxi, and hotel vouchers from the airlines, of course.

On the bright side: we might actually get a full night's sleep before the big hop over the water. But everything I wrote about this being the first Christmas in the US since 1975 has gone down the drain, and not a snowflake in sight.

What Was I Thinking About?!

I should've known better. The Consul-general in Lisbon warned me. I went ahead and did it anyway: made reservations and bought tickets to fly to the US on Christmas Day.

Destination: Denver
CNN news Wednesday (and Thursday, and today): Colorado buried under blizzard...Denver airport closed...over 1000 flights cancelled...thousands of travellers stranded.

Back a couple of months ago when I told the consul-general about this first-Christmas-in-the-States-since-1975 trip I was planning, he said he tried to get back to his family in Michigan at Christmas a few years ago. They got as far as Chicago, and because of bad weather and strikes, they spent three days at O'Hare International. His wife told him he should NEVER EVER mention "going home for Christmas" again!

But we're going. Don't know how far we'll get or how long it will take to get there. Hopefully, conditions will improve by the time we're supposed to arrive late Monday night. I'd pack a snow shovel for this trip, but I'm trying to figure out how to get one through airport security. It's a moot question, in any case, since I couldn't find a snow shovel here in Madeira anyway. I knew I liked living in Madeira, and I've just remembered one of the reasons.

Milestones

40-40-90-30-60
Those numbers aren't the combination to my safe (I don't have one), nor are they a set of anatomical measurements (height, weight, or girth). They represent significant commemorations in 2006:

40 years as an ordained minister (April 1966)
40 years of marriage (August 1966)
90 years of life for my mother (August 1916)
30 years in Madeira (we arrived here Dec. 3, 1976)
60 years on earth (I arrived here Dec. 8, 1946)



I thought of the milestones that used to be so common here. By the middle of the 20th century a coastal road had been built all around the island, oftentimes literally carved into the side of steep seacliffs. Madeira is 35 miles long by 13 miles wide (approx. 55 km by 20 km), but the "coastal road" had to wind around mountains and up into the steep valleys so much that with all the curves, Highway 1 (and practically the only one for many years) was 200 km (134 miles)long. Starting at Funchal, going counter-clockwise around the island, "milestones" (more properly kilometerstones) let travelers know how far they had come, and therefore, how much road was left to complete the circle of 200 km back to Funchal. Besides telling you what road you were on (E.N. 1=National Highway 1), the markers let you know what villages were coming up next, and the distance to them in tenths of a kilometer, i.e., to the nearest 100 meters.






Kilometer 15, east of Funchal;
1.6 kilometers to Santa Cruz.

On our side of the island, these original markers are hard to find nowadays: the original, narrow, cobblestone highway has been widened and paved with asphalt; rock walls guarding the edge of road have been replaced. Much of the old highway disappeared with the building of a 4-lane highway, and remaining sections are abandoned or rarely used. Perhaps, in these stretches, a few of the markers are still left, but some, like the one shown above, are practically overgrown.





The intermediate tenths of a kilometer were marked with small stones, as shown here. Kilometer 11.7


40-40-90-30-60: 2006 was full of milestones for us. But milestones on the highway only tell us how far we've come; they don't say anything about how we got there, whether we were speeding, or had a flat tire, or got lost and had to turn around to get back on the right road, or if we walked or rode a bicycle. Life is about how we get from one milestone to the next. Our accounting to God on the final day is not about how many milestones we reached, but whether we got there in the way that pleased Him.

And there's an important difference to note: a highway marker can tell us how much farther it is to our destination, but my calendar only tells me that 2006 will end in less than 2 weeks. It doesn't tell me how far into 2007 or beyond I have left to travel before reaching the final destination. Each day is an intermediate destination; as we reach the end of each day may we have travelled in a way that has pleased God.

Memorizing Pi

Doing a bit of tidying up of loose ends, notes jotted down here and there, and I came across this link that caught my attention when I read it months ago. (March, actually!) Just never got around to commenting on it. Maybe you heard about it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11858760/

Quite a feat...I'm impressed. But I ask, "What practical purpose is there in it?"

Two thoughts came to mind:

1: How many people put any effort at all into memorizing verses of the Bible? Our minds are capable of learning far more than we imagine.

2: What good is it to memorize the words of the Bible like so many decimal places of pi? I can think of people who can quote vast amounts of Scripture, but their lives give no indication of being affected by the Word. They might as well have learned the decimals places for pi and tried for a place in the Guinness Book of Records. God's rewards are for truths lived, not texts memorized.