Rita and Lucia's departure

The day before Rita and Lucia were to leave, Rita had a temperature and headache that had kept her up the night before. You can't fly with a fever, the airports have temperature scanners and Hong Kong where she changed planes we know for sure uses them. Went to a nearby doctor who said she had 38.9 which is 102 Fahrenheit. He wasn't worried about Dengue. He gave her some medicine and two documents to use for getting a cost free change of date for her flight. Our visa agent came by on his motor scooter and was ready to make copies of the letters and her and Lucia's passports to get a visa extension.


That night bedtime her temperature was down to 101 and the next day she woke up with no fever - back to close enough to 98.6 (37 Celsius). Komang arrived to drive us to the airport. One group of folks here who are dependably on time or early are drivers. He arrived thirty minutes earlier than expected, hung out while last minute stuff was done, and we took off for the airport. Thirty minutes later Katrinka and I walked with Rita and Lucia up to the security checkpoint we couldn't go past. Her porter pushing the cart with her stuff could though. We hugged and said goodbye.

It's good Rita had a smart phone and that the Bali airport has free wifi that's easy to hook up to because it wasn't long before Katrinka got a What's App call from Rita that Lucia's passport was still in our safe. A few other lucky things: Katrinka answered the call. I complain to her that she frequently doesn't answer when I call her - she doesn't hear it buried in her purse or it's dead. Even then she almost didn't answer because she assumed it was another of a bunch of calls she was getting about stuff she's involved in here that could wait. It's good we live so close to the airport and that it wasn't rush hour and that drivers here don't worry about getting traffic tickets because suddenly Komang became a race car driver. Forty-five minutes after getting the call from Rita and fifteen minutes before the counter would have closed, Katrinka handed Lucia's passport to a security officer who walked it over to waiting Rita and we waved farewell to each other one last time.