Help wanted....

Fat Albert, I thought of you. It would be a great summertime gig....

You tending bar, me drinking Guinness....
Yeah, whatever....

Little Punk....

The crew.... Well, part of it.

The trip to Florida was a potential comedy of errors that turned out just fine. Got up at 2:30 in order to leave for the airport at 3:30 for a 5:50 flight. We arrived at the Cedar Rapids airport at about a quarter till 5 and got checked in, no problem. Perhaps a bit too smooth? The Delta "dispatcher" said we'd probably leave 10 minutes early. Hey! That's a first! We proceeded to the designated gate area to wait.

At about 5:20 he came up to the holding pen, er, I mean Gate C1 to tell us that we'd be a little late getting off the ground because we were waiting for an FAA certified mechanic to come put in "$7.00" worth of hydraulic oil and sign off on it. Comforting. He made sure to let us know that the flight would be quick today because of a nice tailwind aloft. I like tailwinds. No worries yet but, but, but we only had 50 minutes to make our connection in Atlanta and I just knew we'd have to change terminals. Bound to happen. We stated boarding at 6:30 and rolled from the gate at 6:40. Nice.

The flight to Atlanta was ungodly fast and uneventful. We landed with a half hour to make our connection to Orlando. It could be done! We had hope!

When we rolled in to get to our gate the pilot came on the intercom and apologized and then told us that we were going to disembark at gate C42. He also told us that "the company" had let us down because there was another plane at that gate and we had to wait for it to leave. I almost gave up hope then but the other plane was moved away in just a few minutes and we rolled right in. 16 minutes to get to A17. Crap. Not going to happen.

Well, we made it to the train to go between terminals and thought to look to see if we were still at A17. Nope. A24. Further. Crap. We got to the gate with 2 minutes to spare, just as they were calling our names for the last time before giving our seats away. We made it. I wondered out loud "how are they going to get our luggage to us?"

The pilot took off in a crosswind and the plane behaved like the plane I flew for flying lessons did the first time I took off in a crosswind. Not too pretty. The rest of the flight was good. Up until the landing. Again, a crosswind. Again it felt like the first landings I made in a Piper Tomahawk, a long time ago..... (I actually got better at it as the lessons progressed. Good enough for the FAA to issue me an aviator's license)

We got off the plane in Orlando and headed to the baggage claim area planning to fill out the information sheet so that our bags could be delivered to Lakeland later this evening. Or tomorrow. When we got to the baggage carousel the first thing I saw was my old kit bag on the track. No way. It couldn't be. Oh yeah, it was. Dave's bag made it too. Awesome!

We headed outside with our bags in tow and got on the waiting Hertz bus to take us to our rental car. How perfect is that?

Anyway, it's been a very long day and I need some sleep.

Ride safe.

Peace out, yo!