Our youngest daughter, Rose, is marrying a wonderful guy- Temidayo Itabiyi - on April 10th, which has changed from a long time to wait to three days away in the blink of an eye.  Since she and Temi live in Houston, and my wife and I live in Maine, we flew down to Texas early to spend as much time on wedding prep as possible.  Our flight was out of Portland, Maine on Friday evening (Good Friday, 2026) after a half day of school.  We went from celebrating the most solemn day on the Christian calendar (a special service for another blog) to waiting in the Portland Jetport for our first flight.  While the trip was planned out well, and we expected it to go smoothly since the recent TSA work-without-pay fiasco has been resolved, it went even better than expected.  It was serendipitous; something rarely said about air travel.

The first pleasant surprise was when we checked our one suitcase.  A very friendly attendant named Eric (more on him later) weighed our bag, that I knew HAD TO BE over the maximum weight of fifty pounds - thus requiring additional payment - checked in at a hefty but acceptable 48.5 pounds.  

Eric was, as Sue says, our first airport angel.  When he saw our last name was Hagerstrom, he asked if it was a Swedish name, which it is.  He then introduced himself as Eric Hendstrom.  Almost cousins!  We asked him if we would need check our larger carry-on.  While this was something we really didn't want to do, since it contained all of our wedding clothes., he said it was likely we would be asked to check it at the gate.  But, if we 'need assistance boarding early' we would probably get to keep it with us.  Clearly our newfound Scandinavian cousin was telegraphing  a way to get our way.  After this pleasant and positive interaction, we headed to our gate.