It's now been a week since we flew out of Salt Lake City. After we landed
we went to find our luggage. Portland is
a nice airport. Portland must have been
a connecting stop for most passengers as there weren’t many people standing at
the carousel to claim luggage, nor were there many pieces coming out.
Every time I wait for luggage, I
think of one time when I had gone to the San Francisco airport and stood behind
a crowd of people surrounding the luggage carousel but in no way could get near
enough to collect my luggage.
As I saw one piece make its way
around I loudly asked, “Could someone toss me that light blue bag?”
I soon realized that I had made a
wrong word choice as my blue piece of luggage seemed to be hurled towards
me. I was grateful that no one was
hurt.
I had to show my luggage tags to
someone before I could leave the airport.
That was such a foreign concept to me.
At Salt Lake International, the individual who takes the luggage is
responsible for checking his or her own.
We didn’t have to show our luggage tags to anyone in Portland either.
My grandma had always marked her
luggage with yarn pom-poms. I had added ribbons
to each of our luggage to make it easier to find. All four pieces arrived safely. We took our luggage downstairs to the rental
car area and got a really nice 2015 Toyota Camry. Both Roland and I really liked it.
From Portland we headed to Salem and
started looking at houses and calling on apartments. We looked at places between Salem and Albany
and between Albany and McMinnville. I
called Beth after we got into McMinnville.
Kayla had called me to ask about
some mail and to ask how things were in Oregon.
At that point we were stopped at a local diner and Roland was writing
down addresses from the church. I told
Kayla what we were doing. As soon as the
words left my mouth, I realized I hadn’t told her that we had considered moving
to Oregon. I had dropped a bomb on my
sister, and I felt very bad about the way I had just blurted it out instead of
allowing her to get used to the idea. At that point I think we had only told
two people – Corey, for financial reasons, and a sister in our ward that recently
moved to Salt Lake from Newport, Oregon.
It was actually a while before I
made the opportunity to call her back and apologize because if it had been the
other way around, I would have been bawling my eyes out. And Kayla had cried for a bit. Corey had returned her call just after I had
dropped the bomb and she was crying when she talked to him. But by the time I returned her phone call, she
was genuinely happy for me and had convinced herself (or maybe just me) that it
was/is a good thing that I am doing.
When we arrived in McMinnville, I called Beth and we went to her house to visit for just a few minutes. Beth had offered us room, but Roland did
not want to impose. Besides Beth has a
cat – and our reasons for coming to Oregon was to see if I could breathe better
– and would I be able to tell with a cat around. Also the inn we checked into had an indoor
pool – the highlight of children’s expectations of what all traveling must
include. So there would be swimming
involved which made for a great birthday.
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