American in Spain

We had a lovely visit this weekend from my second cousin, once removed, and her husband. My parents and I visited their house, in Cupertino, California, once twenty years ago, and the last time I saw them was about twelve years ago at a family reunion at my grandparents’ house in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But for all intents and purposes, they were strangers to me. So much so that when we visited San Francisco 2.5 years ago, they never occurred to me when thinking of people I knew in the Bay Area to visit. Although we share some genes (and a Jean, as her namesake and Aunt Jean was my maternal grandmother), what they really were to me were internet friends. I got to know Jeanie after she friended me on Facebook shortly after we dissed her on our San Francisco trip, and we’ve grown to quite like each other over the past couple of years. Their visit was going to be another data point my “meeting people you only know over the internet” experiment…
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The following is a document written by my father, Paul Rasmussen, about his trip to visit us in Spain in March 2013.

Tuesday and Wednesday

We dropped the dogs off at the kennel at 8:30 am, and an hour later we were at the Charlotte airport long-term parking lot. We flew to snowy Toronto, waited there for four hours, and boarded the flight to Dusseldorf around 5 pm. We landed in Germany at 6:20 am on Wednesday, enjoyed a croissant and coffee, and then waited three more hours for our flight to Bilbao. Our son Erik met us there, and an hour later we arrived at his home in Colindres.
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The following is a document written by my father, Paul Rasmussen, about his trip to visit us in Spain in June 2012.

Tuesday and Wednesday, May 29 and 30, 2012

Our plan was to take the dogs to the kennel at 1:00 and to leave for the airport at 1:15. That plan failed when we discovered the Pet Parlor was locked up tight with nobody answering the door or the phone. I put down two extra bowls of water for the three dogs and gave them a stern lecture about the need for rationing, but one of them is a westie, and I wasn’t optimistic. On the way to the airport I called my friend Tom, but he wasn’t home. An hour later he called back and said he would take care of things, so we flew to Spain as scheduled to spend time with our our son, his wife, and our granddaughter.
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The following is a document written by my father, Paul Rasmussen, about my parents’ March 2011 visit to my home in Colindres, Spain.

Betsy and I are old hands at traveling to Bilbao, Spain. When possible, as it was on March 19, we fly overnight from Charlotte to Germany (in this case, Munich), and then on to Bilbao after an hour or two lay-over. Betsy is always able to catch a few winks, and now that I have totally given up trying to sleep on these flights, I get by nicely watching movies and reading books. To my surprise, the Lufthansa flight from Charlotte to Munich allowed me to access the movie screen on the back of the seat in front of me from the moment we boarded the plane. I watched almost half of True Grit before we ever left the ground, but the pilot cut a few corners and caught back up to his schedule before we landed. There were no movies on the two hour flight from Munich to Bilbao, but I kept busy reading the book, A Course Called Ireland, I needed to finish so I could leave it with Erik.
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