December 10, 2013

Well – the end of Day 1, and Murphy’s law definitely prevailed. It started out all right – we even saw a “beginning of vacation rainbow” from the cab window on the way to the airport, and it hadn’t been raining. But then it began – one thing after another.

First we ran from one line at Air Canada to another – not realizing that though we’d booked with Air Canada, we were actually starting out on United Airlines. When we finally found the right line, Jeff said in horror – “Oh my god – I think we’re a day late!”. Turns out his cell phone was showing the date as December 11^th – and we were booked for the 10^th. There was lots of time for our hearts to calm down once we confirmed that this actually was December 10^th, as we found ourselves waiting at the front of the United line for 30 long minutes, while the frazzled staffers listened to frustrated travellers complaining. “What’s wrong?” we asked, when we finally wrangled our way to a kiosk. “Don’t you read the papers?” the staffer replied. The US is buried in snow, and by the way, they’ve rerouted your plane. You’ll have to change planes twice enroute to Florida.

Yikes, we thought – not a good thing, especially with snowstorms likely delaying things everywhere. So I asked if we could switch to an Air Canada flight directly to Ft. Lauderdale instead of West Palm Beach (they’re not very far apart). “Sure” said the accommodating attendant – I’ll book you on a flight at 3:00 p.m.” So, having arrived in the airport at 9:15 a.m., we patiently waited until 3:00 and boarded our direct flight to Ft. Lauderdale, where we landed a few hours ago. All was well until we arrived at our hotel and discovered that we had left Jeff’s camera case full of expensive equipment back at the airport – now an hour’s drive away!

We drowned our sorrows in a shared chocolate fudge sundae, stared at the half moon over a palm tree, and decided that things could be worse.

So we now are waiting until the lost and found opens tomorrow to see if some honest soul found the case and turned it in. We really think we deserve a happy ending to this day … hopefully it covered off all the things that can go wrong for the rest of the trip (famous last words). Time to get some shut-eye – tomorrow we check out the boat for the first time since it arrived on Monday. More anon …