The day after Christmas, Robert and I started off on our trip to Northern California. When I woke up that morning in East Greenbush, I cringed when I heard what I knew had to be the little tat, tat, tat of icy rain. I’d  read that the forecasters had reported this type of weather, but I naively thought I could beat it out.Luckily, we got to the airport in one piece, but, I could see that security at Albany Airport had been stepped up.

My governmental ID that I wanted to use because I could quickly pull it out was no longer any good. I was told by both the ticket agent and TSA that I now had to produce my driver’s license. When I went through security, I was randomly selected to go through a new test in which they swabbed my hands to check for explosives.

We made it to Washington D.C. and, with minutes to spare, we boarded our United Airlines flight to San Francisco. I always try to get the bulkhead seats, the seats at the beginning row of a section, because they usually have much more leg room and there’s no reclining seat in front of you.

I noticed on this flight that security had been beefed up because we weren’t permitted to see our flight route on our video monitor. We were also told that we couldn’t congregate in one area for too long, and we were not permitted to go near the galley.The flight arrived an hour early, and it was great to enjoy the relatively nice weather.

It’s always initially a bit surreal for me to see outdoor flowers this time of year, but they were a welcome change.

You can tell from these pictures that Cyclamen is used a lot in this area’s winter landscape.