windier than friendlier

Me: "I don't want to live in a cage."

Doug Sanford: "That's why you have to live in a cage."

The principal was kind enough to pick us up from the airport.

"Wow, well, we heard that Port Elizabeth was the 'friendly city.'"

"It's also the 'windy city.'"

"...Windier than friendlier, I'm afraid." Nishan said to us with a wink.

They took us to our AirBnB in Summerstrand, only one kilometer from the beach. As Pieter led us around the property, I snuck a peek at the living room and spotted Ted Cruz's face on TV.

"No escape," I whispered to myself.

We drove to Hobie Beach/Humewood, and while casually discussing the deteriorating state of the South African education system, dolphins leapt and splashed in glee.

My luggage has disappeared (& thankfully has apparently just been tracked down!) but I am infinitely grateful for all my friends who lightened my mood with oodles of hilarious lost luggage stories in the meantime. First place goes to Mike Icon:

"Well, there was one time I was at the airport and I was trying to get some info at the luggage check in counter. No one was around except for one guy behind the counter doing some random work. His counter had a piece of luggage sitting in front of it. As I approached to ask him a question, he asked if the luggage was mine. I told him no. He looked around and was like, "I wonder who's this is." I said, "Heh, maybe it's a bomb." He didn't like that too much and told me that I was lucky he was nice because he could have had me arrested and fined $10,000 for that."

On the plus side, I woke up this morning to this: