7 - THE LAST DAY

SATURDAY

Pope Black and Nina, Pope Phil Monty and Penny, Rocknar and Hal all had to leave on Saturday. We/I went out late for a last run up Singel, street of magic shops, for a quick look at the flower market, returning via Kaalverstraat -- a street of high-Euro Pink shops, including one that Wei especially liked called "We." When we got back to Carl's a final last-night dinner was prepared and served by Master Kingsbury with our British roommates, Joseph and Claudia, Angela, Carl & Susanne and their French friend Marie, who turned out to be quite a punster in English. After that everything gets a bit hazy. From the photos it appears we were up late packing. Espira went out for more barhopping with Kingsbury -- AND HE SCORED!! We had to leave for the airport at 7:30 a.m., and Carl kindly made a phone call arranging for a cab.

SUNDAY

We/I awoke at 7:32 a.m. in a panic, because our wake-up alarm hadn't gone off. We were in our clothes and down the four twisting flights of stairs six minutes later with all our bags, but no taxi. We called the cab company and they said, "Oh! You meant 7:30 in the MORNING! We'll be there in 5 minutes." And so they were, and we made it to Schiphol airport with time to spare.

Then we waited and waited, only to be told that KLM/NW had overbooked and we were BUMPED FROM OUR FLIGHT!

We kept our cool, having been through this routine before, and the nice airline ladies got us new flights that would put us home in Cleveland only 1.5 hours late. This minor inconvenience turned out to be a Dobbs-given gift of $lack, because they felt so bad about inconveniencing us that they compensated us 300 Euros each, plus another 100 Euros in free meals, phone calls and future travel discounts.

That's over $1,000!

We ended up making pretty good money on this trip!

We arrived home just as Hour of Slack was ending to find the trees naked, the yards clothed in leaves, and 1,000 emails. A power outage had erased all my phone messages from the past two weeks. (What a break for me! -- but if I didn't call you back, that's why.) I am sorting through about 1000 photos and many hours of audio and video.

Once back at my desk, I found in my back pocket a folded-up piece of paper -- and inside was enough "shake" to top off a little pipe.

I had ACCIDENTALLY smuggled Dutch pot back into the U.S.!

I destroyed it by burning it, immediately.

FULL-SIZE PHOTOS PAGES******************* TO PORTRAITS! -- of funny-looking SubGenii