Vacation...all I ever wanted

I'm back!

Three weeks away from home is a lot, but much more do-able when two of those weeks are spent galavanting around the Alps in France and Switzerland.

Baggage.

Stop 1 was Barcelona for work.  Packing was a bit of a challenge considering I needed to take work clothes as well as gear for 2 weeks of mountain fun.  The end result was my taking my work clothes plus a paraglider and boots with me to Barcelona.  My partner in crime was stuck carrying the other paraglider, all of our clothes, and equipment.  It worked out ok.  I lugged the tandem glider (all 49.5 pounds of it) through the airport with not too much difficulty.

Not enough mustard.

My stopover was in Frankfort.  I'm not a huge fan of FRA for a few reasons.  One is the fact you typically end up in "remote parking."  It's annoying to haul off a 747 with 300+ of your closest friends and cram into busses for a ride around the airport.  And, depending on timing, lines for security can be pretty rough.  Luckily, I breezed through--off the first bus, through passport control and security quickly (hooray for business class lines) and was soon getting a pretzel with mustard.

But then, the most insane thing happened.  I noted my departure gate for Barcelona.  I meandered over after a few minutes checking email in the Lufthansa lounge.  I saw that the flight number wasn't a match--but thought nothing of it.  They wouldn't have two flights to BCN leaving at the EXACT same time on the EXACT same airline, right?  Wrong.  Much to my shock, while boarding, the gate agent told a handful of us that we were at the wrong gate, and that our flight was boarding at a gate a good 15 minute run away.  Of course it was.  Uh, Lufthansa, get your shit together.  Regardless, I made the flight and was the only person in Lufthansa's shitty business class.

The 5 days in BCN flew by.  We were staying at a hotel right on the beach south of town--hard to get into the city, but nice to enjoy some sun and sand before and after work.  The team I worked with was pretty great, so it was a nice way to wrap up work before 2 weeks off.

A little beach time.

A new dress/shirt combo for some r&r before work.

Dressed and ready...with a large paraglider in the background.