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Dec 2
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Thursday, December 2
We got up a little earlier than usual (about 5:30), ate breakfast, and finished packing, leaving for the airport about 7. It was an uneventful drive to the off site parking - straight into the rising sun... Their shuttle delivered us to the appropriate terminal. I stopped just inside the door to pack away a couple of layers of clothing - didn’t want to fuss with it on the plane... Then to the Frontier desk to check-in. Their automated kiosk asked if we wanted to upgrade our seats, so we attempted to follow those prompts. Well, it’s a sold-out flight and there were no seats available to upgrade to. Some programmer left out a check to see if there were any available before offering the upgrade. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Other than that, check-in went smoothly, as did security. Despite recent news reports on how horrendous security was these days, it actually went more smoothly than normal. The lines were almost nonexistent! While I was waiting for Carl to catch up to me, I did see one woman being patted down and one man going through the new body scanners, but no fuss. We had a two hour wait for the plane - I had planned for possible delays in the whole parking, checking in, security process and we encountered none. I’m glad we were traveling light this trip as the overhead compartment at our seat was already full by the time we boarded. I had left the full camera backpack at home for this trip. This trip would be for fun! As a result, all we had for carry ons were a briefcase and a small camera bag. We didn’t even have a laptop computer with us this trip! (The screen on ours had decided to fade to unreadable, so we planned on just relying on the computer in the hotel lobby to check email.) It was an uneventful, nonstop flight across the country. I read and watched a couple of episodes of House and the Weather Channel and the time passed quickly. We arrived in Orlando a little ahead of schedule, which was fine. Our bags must have been the first ones off the plane, as they were about the last ones to reach the carousel... On to the rental car, which also went smoothly. After the paperwork, we drug the bags to the garage area. I was initially dismayed as there were two very large families milling around that area waiting for their cars. However, one of the attendants came over immediately and steered us to our car. Hmmmmmm. They’ve rented us a Subaru Impreza! About the same size as my Subaru (but newer) with a console and dashboard that looked just like Carl’s Subaru. Felt like home! Once we exited the parking garage, I turned on our GPS (nicknamed Gabby) and must have hit a weird combination of buttons - she slipped into Afrikaans instead of English... Fortunately, I could follow the screen and translate the directions to get us onto the Turnpike, then got her switched back to English... We stopped at a grocery store near the hotel to pick up some bottled water and breakfast supplies. I had intended to also pick up some wrapping paper to wrap Kelly’s Christmas presents, but realized as we pulled into the parking lot that I had forgotten to pack them!!! I’ll send them to her once we get back. Oh, well. The best laid plans.... So, we checked into the motel (a Best Western) and got settled in. We still had some time before we were to meet Kelly for dinner, so we stopped in the lobby for margaritas. Very watery margaritas and a very talkative bartender... While there, I called Kelly to let her know we had arrived. She was surprised. She thought we were flying into Tampa, in which case, we wouldn’t have arrived at the hotel yet. I had thought about that route, but Orlando wound up being less expensive. So we drove over to her house then to Bonefish Grill for a nice, long dinner, primarily to celebrate all the weight we’ve all lost in the last few months. Then back to her house for a small visit. We were bushed, so we left early, heading back to the motel, where we crashed for the night. |