Going home – Goodbye Florida

December 2, 2013

I would say that overall, it was a successful trip to Florida and I can’t wait until next year’s Space Coast Half Marathon.

Since we had a later flight, we once again didn’t set the alarm.  I had gotten quite a bit of my stuff ready the night before.  It wasn’t necessarily packed but it was “arranged” on the extra bed & ready to go.  We decided on a quick breakfast trip to McDonalds and then back to the hotel to shower and pack.

While I was blow drying my hair, the hotel fire alarms start going off.  Hmmm…they’ve been doing some construction so we wondered if maybe the alarms got tripped accidentally.  We waited a short bit to see if they would just stop and/or if they’d make an announcement to disregard but no such luck.  Better safe than sorry, we headed down the stairs to the parking lot.  I had grabbed my purse but forgot my phone up in the room.  PLEASE NOTE – I DID TAKE MY MEDAL!  #priorities.

Three fire trucks, an ambulance and a police car showed up.  I think we stood out there for at least  15 minutes or so before we got the all clear and they let us go back in.  The hotel gave everyone a complimentary breakfast for the inconvenience.  Wouldn’t you know – since we’d already eaten. 

Well, you can sort of see the fire truck coming in this picture my husband took.

We finished packing. loaded up the car and before heading to the airport, I asked my husband to drive the half marathon route – since it was mostly on the way out of town.  It was nice to see it on a day with some sunshine. Things sure can look different when YOU are on the road with thousands of other people.

Dropping off the car at the airport was an adventure.  No one was getting any clear instructions on where to park the car, what to do next, etc..  Once again there were hot headed people blowing their tops off and yelling at the worker bees.  Those employees didn’t really seem to care.  This sort of cluster must be all in a days work there.

We had plenty of time to wait at the airport but once we got on the plane, we were told that there was bad weather in Atlanta and that we’d have to wait 30 minutes before taking off.  Then we had to pull back closer to the gate so that some cargo could be removed.  But I was able to see that they were removing an animal crate so I was okay with this delay.  We began to worry that with all of these delays we would miss our connecting flight in Atlanta to Indianapolis.  We just had to hope that all the other flights would be delayed as well.  Finally in the air and I was able to get these shots of the sun setting.

We landed in Atlanta and busted our butts to get to our next flight.  Luckily it wasn’t on the other side of the airport but we did have to catch the tram.  As I’m trying to board with my carry on the lady tells me its too large and I need to check it.  UGH!  Then what do I see in front of me (because she cut in between me and my husband) is a girl that had FIVE bags…..F I V E!  She had luggage, a backpack, her purse, a shopping bag and some other bag.  I was glad that the flight attendant saw this and made her check the luggage.  Although she should have been required to check TWO of them.

We landed in Indy around 11:15PM and got home about midnight.  Always fun to travel; always better to be back home.