Airport Adventures

I am in Palm Coast, FL, sitting in the lobby next to a large aquarium. The fish look happy, which I’m interpreting as a positive omen for my vacation. And what’s not to be happy about being in FL? The palm trees...the ocean...the perpetual balminess. Ahhh....vacation. But we had a few interesting adventures in getting here.

I flew out, yesterday, from frigid 20 degree Chicago to Charlotte with my friend, Lisa. The flight was without incident, except that my tray table got jammed, and wouldn’t store upright for the landing. So I gave up trying because I didn’t want to break a nail. Those Flight Attendants are persistent in following FAA regulations, by golly, and that tray table needed to be stored upright for the landing! So it took two of them and the gentleman sitting behind me to fix it. I was relieved! With all the current FAA regulations, I was concerned that, because of my errant tray table, the plane might not allowed to land. I had visions of circling in the airspace above Charlotte for the rest of my life.

After a layover, we boarded a small Barbie plane to fly to Daytona Beach. I don’t care to fly in small Barbie planes, ever since I developed my fear of flying. You can feel every bit of turbulence in the tiny planes, and my hands gripped the arm rests with every bump. But we landed safely, collected our baggage, and headed over to Hertz.

At Hertz, I was handed keys and told I would be renting a Prius. I argued, saying I didn’t want a Prius, that I had reserved a not-a-Prius and didn’t appreciate the bait-and-switch. The woman said that I had no choice unless I wanted to upgrade to a Mercedes for an additional charge. So Lisa and I went out to the Prius with really bad instructions and a useless diagram, and spent 20 minutes in the dark trying to figure out how to turn on the engine. The engine may have turned on, we weren’t sure, but I couldn’t make it reverse, and it felt unsafe to me to try to drive a car that I was so unfamiliar with. I was too exhausted to try any harder. I was getting my Ticked-Off on, so I marched back to the Hertz lady and told her I just wanted to get to my hotel in a car I was able to drive; not some vehicle from The Jetsons cartoon. I returned the keys of the Jetson car, broke my contract, and rented a normal car from another agency. Thumbs down to Hertz!

We pulled out of the airport to a freeway of bumper-to-bumper traffic. Apparently a pre-Daytona 500 race had just ended, so we joined the crawling throng of cars filled with drunken race fans. Serena, my GPS, was frustrated as we had to keep re-routing due to the road-blocks from the race. “Re-calculating! Re-calculating!” she kept saying huffily in her upper-crust British accent. But she was faithful, and got us safely to my beautiful hotel. Whew!

A package greeted me as I checked in. My husband; wonderful Super Hubs whom I will adore forever, sent me a package! I headed to my room, and opened the box filled with little wine bottles and Recess peanut butter cups. My dinner. I indulged. Ahhh...the man knows me well. A lovely beginning to my Florida vacay!