Flying, Security, Knives, Water Bottles, and the Internet

Hey guys,

As many of you know I am now in Romania. Our church made it over here safely last night without too many delays. It was my first time flying, and the flight out of Roanoke was pretty interesting, but uneventful. And for those of you that are wondering, Zchuck has NOT shown up yet. :-)

My first little adventure started in the Roanoke airport. I had forgotten to take the pocket knife out of my carry on bag, but I did not realize it at the time. I sat there watching them run my bag through the x-ray machine. They did it once, twice, three times. Then the x-ray guy calls the inspection guy over and points to something on his screen. They pulled my bag off the line and started going through it. I was trying to figure out what they possibly would have a problem with. I said “There's a large camera in there, along with a laptop.” He said “No, that's not what it is”. Then he started digging in the side pocket so I said “There's a bottle of Benedryl in there and some other medicine”. He said “Nope” one more time and them pulled out my knife. I said “Uh-oh”.

The flight overseas from Charlotte to Munich went well. Except for one thing. I had taken my water bottle onto the plane, and put it into the over-head compartment. A few minutes later Ricky Wampler felt something dripping on his head. The flight attendant thought it was the air condition vent and started running around like crazy trying to clean it up. Then he says (with his accent) “The over-head bin is wet” Then he pulls out my water bottle and says “What is this?” He asked me “Is this yours?” I said “Yes”. He said “Your water spilled in the over-head” Then he says to Ricky “We will have to think of some punishment for him. He can clean the bathrooms” Ha-ha.

No one is going to let me live those things down. They keep asking me “Weapon free, Ezra?” “Water bottle empty, Ezra?” On the plane, Ryan said “We can't take him anywhere” Ha-ha.

The rest of the trip went relatively well. We had a beautiful landing in Munich, Germany. The pilot did such a good job, that we barely even felt the landing. The whole plane broke out into applause. We had the exact opposite landing in Cluj. :-/ Everyone made it through customs without a problem. The only little hang up we had was that Pastor Stan, Tyler, Tom, and Bryanna lost their luggage. They are supposed to get it delivered to the hotel today.

We had a little bit of trouble getting the internet to work here at the hotel, resulting in us being off line since we left the Charlotte airport. We managed to get that fixed last night.

Well, after being up 34 odd hours straight, I was ready to get in bed last night. I slept great.

Goodbye for now.

MrZchuck