I thought that I should start near the beginning of this journey.  It took a mammoth effort within a 6 week window of time to arrive at the day that the bags were packed and the movers were here to put the furniture in the hangar for storage!

Many issues had to be dealt with.  Dave had to go to St. Louis to spend 10 days learning how to do short landings and take-offs in grass fields.  He was able to get under the hood of planes in the Wings of Hope hangar with a mechanic, as the expectation is that

he will do some of the maintenance of the airplane here in Belize!  (This is not a sure bet!)

In the meantime, I quit my job, we sold two cars, we found a property manager to rent out the house, and we spent many wonderful evenings with friends, saying good-bye.  While it sometimes seems that we were only in New Mexico for a short period of time, we were actually there for 7 years and developed a wonderful network of friends whom we will miss.

So the day finally arrived to have movers pack up our things and move them to the hangar.  We have not rented out the house, so we had to make a decision that we would have to rent it out sans the hangar.  Now if a pilot wants to rent the place and needs the hangar, we will have to arrange to have the movers return, put the stuff in a truck and take it to a storage facility.  Honestly, the house remains a problem.

On April 25, 2013 (or as I should say now, 25 April 2013), we left the house with 6 large suitcases and four carry-ons plus two irritated cats in new carriers in the car our neighbors loaned us (thank you, Brad  and Janice Gabel).  First problem was immediately encountered:  the radio said that a head-on collision occurred in the canyon near Tijeras at 3;00 AM (over 3 hours earlier) and the entire westbound I-40 freeway was shut down!  Mind you, there is only a two lane alternate, Route 66, and it took over one hour to go one mile!  We had been very proud of ourselves, actually leaving on time, but "on-time" was not early enough!  The freeway finally opened, and we drove to the airport.  Fortunately, a porter was very helpful and the American Airline person was competent.  We had a lot of paperwork to do to get those cats paid for and on the plane!  We literally got through security and walked onto the airplane bound for Dallas!  Whew!  (We trusted that the cats were on board, too, as we did not take them in the cabin; their yowling would have resulted in our being immediately kicked off the plane!)

A similar fire-drill awaited in Dallas, but executed flawlessly--arriving, hopping on the train, getting off at the correct gate, grabbing a carry-on bite to eat (we hadn't even had a cup of coffee and it was noon!), and climbing onto the next plane bound for Belize!

Which takes us to the arrival at the Belize International airport!