As the year is coming to a closing, I’m going to take a moment to reflect upon 2016. Overall, this year has been good to me: while it’s had it’s up and downs, it’s been mostly positive, and I’m very thankful for that.

I can’t narrow down the single best moment of 2016, but my trip to Greece and Turkey is up there, and of the trip itself, one of the most memorable moments is waking up before sunrise to the storm that will hit later that evening.

It was my idea to get up this early, and while all my friends were willing participants to accompany me, I have to give a special shout out to Brian and his superfluous energy: waking up at the ass crack of dawn is no easy task  and I needed to feed off your enthusiasm.  If pharmacy doesn’t work out and you want to be a cheerleader of LIFE, I’m totally hiring you.

In hindsight, these clouds were a hint of the storm to hit that evening on our way out to Athens, but in that moment, we didn’t see it, because in Paradise, there is no such thing as bad weather, amirite? Wrong.

Rain and heavy winds hit us as we were trying to leave for the airport: we were constantly checking flight statuses prior to leaving and were actually surprised that the flights were still operating in the storm. Four hours and some change later, after being holed up in the shoebox airport, we get official notice that all departing fights were cancelled.

To be precise, I don’t think any of us heard the official announcement that our flight was cancelled. All we heard was a staticky announcement in Greek and the pandemonium that erupted shortly after. In all though, it ended up okay. We fought through the crowds to make arrangements to catch the next flight out the next morning and caught a few hours of  sleep in a seedy motel close by.  My greatest concern at the time was not the questionable stain in the bathroom, but not being able to catch the our connecting flight out to Istanbul.

Luckily, we did make our flight in time. So our trip want entirely hitch-free. But hey, that makes for a good story, right? And speaking of a good story, I have another shareable story for the evening we landed in Istanbul after the Santorini departure fiasco, but that is for a future post!