Roads to nowhere

Lots of cool hangars

Dubai International Terminal

May 15 a few hours in Dubai then home sweet home! When you look up “Long Day” in the dictionary this is it. Bob and Chris leave our great hotel in Cairo at 06:30 to get the airplane ready for our 09:00 departure to Dubai. As with every leg so far, our crew (whichever team is up front with help from our handlers at Universal Weather and Aviation) manage things perfectly. This is complicated stuff and I am amazed at the logistics required to pass through so many countries and clear customs in a new world every few days. At this point my mind is incapable of converting time zones and my body, God bless it, is beginning to get a little confused also. We arrive in Dubai with an 11 hour layover before our Delta flight home for our break. We get day rooms at the Marriot which help a lot. Showers and good food. Jim and I blow off the rest period and head for the malls. First we get miss directed to a kind of general purpose suburban mall. Our taxi a (brand new stretched Lexus) and our driver let us out. The driver says a taxi home may be a problem so thank God we get his number. Lots of hustle and bustle, lots of prosperous and well dress expats and locals are everywhere. After 10 minutes in this mall we realize we are in the wrong place. No Chanel store. Jim and I look for the taxi stand. We find it. It is in front of a two hour line of people. We quickly call our driver and hire him for the rest of the day. The next mall is all Dubai. Every high end store and the people are gorgeous. Some of the women are in traditional black, burka but with gold trim and $1,000 shoes. Some of these women, (you can only see their eyes) have on amazing eye makeup that will shiver your timbers! The building boom is alive and well here. I am looking forward to getting the building tour when we come back in June. For my wonderful clients that have let me take this time off please note we will have to talk about our construction budgets when I get back. I have come up with a few ideas to kick our projects up a notch. We will have to push out the ROI calculation a few decades, however. 11:45pm we load up the 777 with hundreds others. Delta and the crew do a great job but I miss our CJ3. Sixteen hours later I am home but my buddies have one last leg to Orlando. This first part of our “Around The World” adventure is over and it has been great. I am greatful to have been a part of it. Thanks Jim! Thank you all for following along. The pictures on these blogs are limited. I look forward to sharing more with you all later. Cheers until next leg. Mercer