Birded Delay

Everything went just expected on my Boise to Minneapolis flight, Minneapolis to Amsterdam flight. All looked well for the Amsterdam to Entebee flight too. As we were boarding I was thinking how smooth my travel was going. It even crossed my mind that I shouldn't yet be that smug. We took off from Amsterdam. I felt wiped and just relieved to be on the final leg of this very long journey. I had my ear plugs and eye mask on and was ready to settle in to sleep. After all it is 2am MountainTime. The take off seemed a bit odd...it seemed like we didn't go up as high as fast as normal. The caption came on the radio about 20 minutes in to inform us that we need to head back to the airport. On take off we encountered some birds and it was believed the engine consumed one or some. The heat levels on the engine were too high for safety. We landed without any trouble. Sure enough there was a bird in our engine and the plane is out of commission for at least our flight. They've found a new plane for us and we are scheduled to leave 3 hours later. We'll see. They were kind enough to provide us with a meal voucher.

The journey has begun!