Well that was early; I got a wake-up call from Orbitz at 3AM. My alarm was set for 3:20, but I was out of bed before that. I had slept maybe three hours last night. Boy am I going to be tired today!
Rosa came right on time at 4AM and took us to SFO. We had packed light – carrying only one bag each, so we were able to avoid the very long line at the counter for ticketing and stowed bags. We walked straight to security instead. It was funny to see Courtney so bubbly about the body scan. She was absolutely giddy.
We paid $60 extra dollars to get priority boarding and “better” seats. Well, priority seating might give you 30 extra seconds on AirTran, so it’s not worth the money. When we got to our seats, they had no cushions. We were told to move to the bulkhead seats just behind first class… except that we couldn’t get there with people coming in. The stewardesses eventually had to halt the line so we could move forward. Fortunately, there was still overhead space. I would have been pissed if it were not so – having paid extra money to get a good seat and overhead space. The seats we got weren’t great because you couldn’t lift up the arms – our trays were in them. This meant that I had a cramped flight. And as per usual when I am cramped, I get this terrible odor from having my fat legs too close together for too long (this is a relatively new odor for me, but it has started to appear over the last few international flights. I guess when you get to a certain weight, you might get this issue. So far, I have not managed a way to solve this issue.).
The flight went without incident and we landed in Atlanta. We had pre-planned having lunch at Popeyes, except that Popeyes was now closed. We had very expensive deli sandwiches instead. When we got on our next plane, someone else was in our seats. They had been given our seats and ours had been reassigned, except that no one knew where our seats were so we hung out in the back of the plane for a while. We got good seats, but once again, we had to move against the current of humanity. We got the last of the overhead bins once we got to our seats.
This flight was so short that I don’t think the crew finished serving drinks before it was time to land. The landing was rough because it was pouring and windy; we had just flown into Hurricane Debbie.
We had our pick of National’s fullsize cars, thanks to a deal I had found. The Nissan Altima seemed like the nicest one, so that’s the one we drove off the lot. It’s pretty quick.
We met just about everybody at the condos – there were 18 of us for this family reunion/50th wedding anniversary for my parents. The condo was pretty incredible – nicely furnished and everyone got a King-sized bed. Our room had a Jacuzzi.
We all went out to Mediterranean food for dinner. Most of us got a deal off of Groupon, but only one of us could use theirs. That sucked. Three of us will need to get refunds.
We pretty much went to bed after that, wiped-out from our trip.