The adventure didn't end when we parted company at Charles de Gaulle airport. As some of you may remember,( I believe Greg and Margaret were on the same flight) when we landed in Montreal we were promptly dropped in the middle of the Great Air Traffic Controller Strike of '81! I found myself bumped off my connecting flight, in a french speaking city with the vast majority of North America left between me and my parents waiting not so calmly in Edmonton! I would like to take this opportunity to thank Greg for sticking with me in my hour of near total panic! With his help I was able to get the last seat on a flight to Edmonton (Greg got one of the last seats on a flight to Vancouver). The only hitch? We were at Mirabelle and both flights departed from Dorval, 45 mins away, and I only had 1 hour to get there! To make a long story shorter, after an interminable wait on the ramp (bad weather in Edmonton) I finally landed in Edmonton at about 11pm local time.Loooong day!

After that I spent a few years showing horses and doing a little musical theatre and travelling. In '88 I decided to get a real job and I went to Cornwall, Ontario to the Transport Canada Training Institute to train as a Flight Service Specialist or Air Radio Operator. They are the people who file flight plans for the pilots, do weather briefings, initiate search and rescue for overdue aircraft,and at smaller airports do practically the same job as controllers with the exception that they can't instruct pilots to do things they must phrase it as a request. In addition to these services they also provide an enroute advisory service to all aircraft.

That career took me to a tiny Inuit village in the Canadian Arctic called Coppermine or as it is now called, Kugluktuk. I spent a year there before returning to B.C. to the small northern town of Fort Nelson. After 21/2 years there I was able to transfer back home to Fort St. John where I remain to this day. In May of '94 I met my husband Kevin Kult and we were married in Sept of '95. Kevin is a constable with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and has been posted here for 91/2 years now.As of May however he has been transferred from general duty (thieves,drunks, and domestic disputes yuuch!) to the Customs and Excise Section (gas and tobacco fraud, smuggling and firearms violations) in Prince George,B.C.. Of course we have to sell our house first which is starting to get on my nerves! but that is another story!

Kevin and I have two beautiful(what else is a mother going to say?!?) children. Our firstborn Kieran Daniel is 5 (for those of you doing the math...yes, he attended our wedding!) and has recently been diagnosed as High-Functioning Autistic/Asbergers Syndrome. This means that due to a brain abnomality he has significant barriers when it comes to learning, for the most part, social skills. I won't get into the details but suffice to say that although he can be a real challenge, he is also a real joy! I am no longer with flight services having quit when our son was born. Our second born is Rebeccah Bethany (Beccah) who is 2 3/4 and even though the dreaded terrible twos are definitely here she is a ray of sunshine in our lives.

That pretty well brings us to the present. As for my favorite memory from the trip, it is really difficult to isolate just one. Sonjia you have reminded me of so many just reading your e-mails! Of course the wedding procession comes to mind, as does the pub and reciting Shakespear in the floodlights of Royal Holloway College on the way home but I guess for me Paris really stood out. Just the whole atmosphere of the place was wonderful. In particular I remember one night going out, just Jennifer and myself, and seeing the main sights again by night. We rode the subway all over the city and at one point stopped for a drink at one of the many bars. We were sitting outside having a drink when this poor old man came up to us. He was very polite and he had this big bandage on his head where he said he had been mugged the night before. Of course we bought his story and bought him a drink and in exchange he joined us and regaled us with stories of his life. He even showed us a wrinkled old postcard from WW1 or2 that showed a group of french soldiers marching along a dirt road and it was easy to recognize his smiling face! When he finished his drink he stood and thanked us for the drink and our time. It was such a beautiful night and the experience really touched me. I have never forgotten it. On a lighter note the cute Italian guys were cool too!

Sorry this is so long and rambling. I havnt mastered e-speak yet!

Take care
ttfn Ruth