The Long Road Home

On our last day in Florida, H and I spent a pleasant few hours early in the morning sitting on a bench in Crystal Beach.

The cool ocean breeze and the birds singing overhead made for a very relaxing respite from the heat.

Everything was going along just fine. We'd had fun with the kids, didn't eat too much and blow the diet, got some exercise despite the gawdawful Florida heat and now it was time to quickly jet back the next day to our beloved Maine for some cooling off.

Right.

The clouds were lovely looking down from the aircraft 36,ooo feet above the earth.........

until we began seeing the ominous thunderheads accumulating. If you click on the above picture to enlarge it, you can almost imagine a diabolic head on the right side of this cloud cluster.

The day started off well enough with our 6:20 a.m. flight getting off the ground on time and we were just about to make our final descent into JFK on time to make our connecting flight to Portland.

Oops! All those pretty clouds I'd been photographing from the airplane were a good indication of what was transpiring on the ground - severe thunderstorms in New York. We were being diverted to Richmond,Virginia for refueling and waiting out the T-storms. Darn (this was not the word I was using at the time).

After two + hours on the ground, we were finally headed to JFK once again. H, being the anal retentive personality that he is, had Jet Blue's number in his cell phone and called ahead to get us on the next available flight to Portland at 1:55 p.m.

When we landed, we checked the board and found the flight had been delayed until 5 p.m. Darn (another bad word here). Upon further looking at the board, we realized that our original connecting flight had not yet left and were waiting on a crew. We rushed to the Help Desk and gratefully, got reseated on our original flight! Yay! Only one problem. Our bag would not make the flight and we would need to pick it up the next day - a six hour, round trip drive. But, what the hey, we were exhausted and wanted nothing more than to get home as soon as possible.

H spoke nicely with the Jet Blue lady about our predicament and she told us that, unfortunately, since we were "technically" on a stand by basis, we would have to pick up the bag ourselves. H, being the kind, polite person he is, thanked her and commiserated with her about what a difficult day she must have been having with all the weather delays.

And so, we headed home. Later that day, the nice Jet Blue lady called to say our bag had arrived and that she would talk to her supervisor to see if they could have it shipped via FedEx with whom they had a contract. Two minutes later, she called back to let us know our bag would be arriving the next day!

It pays to be nice to people!

And so, ended the Great Florida Adventure. Giddy is back home, her garden has burst forth with color, and tomorrow's blog post will feature photos of blooms, blooms and more blooms!

Life is Good.

Hugs, Giddy