This Storm Should Have Been Named Fey ... Part II

August 22, 2008 - Weathering the Storm, Whiling the Time, and Wishing for a Non-Stop Flight on Southwest Airlines.

We knew enough to know that our flight from Atlanta to Ft. Lauderdale was going to be a bumpy one, but it never occurred to either of us that our arrival would be delayed or that our flight would be diverted. Jay and I have been fortunate over the years to never suffer with a travel delay; well, except for that one time we traveled to Vegas with the Grimace but we never speak of that ...

I thank Southwest Airlines and lots of non-stop flights for our good travels over the years ... that, and plain dumb luck.

Welcome to the afternoon when our luck ran out.

The flight took off on time and while we waited for the plane to reach cruising altitude, I passed the time by paging through SkyMall Magazine. I love SkyMall ... they always have something utterly ridiculous that never fails to crank up my laugh-o-meter. And this time was no exception.

I came across a product called The Pet Peek, marketed as a clear, acrylic fence porthole for Fido so that he can always see if the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence. The product picture gave me a raging case of the giggles that escalated into a fit of the squeaks culminating in helpless tears. I'm sure most of the people on that plane thought I was insane and pitied Jay for being saddled with a travel-addled wife, but I ask ... what would you have done when confronted with this?

Dog Porthole!


Shortly after I managed to calm myself, our pilot announced that due to severe turbulence the crew would not be coming around the cabin to provide drink service. This didn't bother us too much since the flight was only supposed to last for about 90 minutes. Unfortunately, about an hour later our pilot then announced that because of severe storms in the Ft. Lauderdale area we were going to be in a holding pattern for about 30 minutes while waiting to see if the weather would clear enough for us to land. Twenty minutes later he announced that the weather still sucked (we could see that just by looking out the windows) and oh, by the way, we're running low on fuel so we're going to land in Fort Myers and gas up at the local Mobil Station.

I don't know about you, but when I'm in an airplane zipping along 30,000 feet above Mother Earth the last thing I want to hear is "we're low on fuel." It does not inspire confidence. I looked over at Jay and quoted my favorite line from this past season of The Next Food Network Star, "Down, down, down ... we're all going down."

Welcome to bustling Fort Myers where all of one plane is sitting on the tarmac and there's no gate agent and the airport auxiliary generator isn't working which means there will be no air conditioning while we wait to get the hell out of here. Initially we were told that no one would be allowed to de-plane because the pilot might be given clearance to take off and resume our flight at a moment's notice and it would take too long to get everyone back on the plane. But after thirty minutes of very stuffy waiting we were suddenly informed that we could get off the plane and stretch our legs but we were also advised not to stray too far from the gate since our window of opportunity to take off might be a small one and we would need to be able to depart quickly. The reason we were suddenly being allowed to de-plane is that the Fort Lauderdale airport had been shut down because of extremely bad weather and no one knew when it was going to open back up to traffic.

If I have a criticism of the Delta crew during our ... adventure ... it is this: three hundred people stuck on a plane with no air conditioning in South Florida and none of them have had anything to drink for at least two hours - it might have been a thoughtful and considerate gesture to provide the beverage service that was canceled during the flight. But by the time that light bulb went on for the crew and they started handing out little paper cups of water, half the passengers had shuffled off the plane and were lined up at a bar that just happened to be located directly across from our gate.

Jay and I by-passed the bar for a bathroom break and a couple of laps around the gate. The line at the bar stretched halfway back across the concourse walkway and I'm pretty sure every single one of those people were headed to the celebration in Boca Raton. We heard later from some of Jay's co-workers that the guy tending bar was a class-A dickhead who complained about having to wait on all of these people and subsequently served almost none of them because he was too busy grousing about having to do his job. Bad move on his part because all of these folks had vacation money to burn courtesy of the company and had Bartender Badittude just smiled and dispensed some alcohol to the best of his ability under less than ideal circumstances he probably would have been the recipient of some good tips.

Well, here's my tip for you, outraged reader: the next time you're in Concourse C at the Fort Myers International Airport give that surly guy tending bar at the Dewar's Clubhouse the one-finger salute. Besides, Dewar's doesn't produce single malt scotch ... their stuff is blended and everyone knows that blended whisky is crap, so you're not missing anything if you don't stop there anyway!

Look, it's our plane stuck at the gate in Ft. Myer ...


Jay poses in the concourse ... see the line at Dewar's?


A fortunate handful of people were able to cajole a glass of wine or a cup of beer from Surly McBeverage and had just settled down in the air conditioned comfort of the spacious seating area to enjoy their drinks when an announcement was made for everyone to re-board the plane. So we lined up and proceeded to ever so slowly make our way back on to the still stuffy and warm airplane. And then we continued to wait at the gate ... turns out the Ft. Myers airport only had one ground crew working and they were busy pushing another plane away from its gate. Jay and I started snickering at this point and I don't know who said it first, but one of us mentioned that it would sure be funny if just as we were getting ready to finally leave we found out that Ft. Lauderdale was being hit by more storms and their airport was closed again.

We waited about 15 minutes before the ground crew pushed the plane away from the gate ... as an interesting aside I learned that planes don't go in reverse. I never really thought about it before this never-ending travel day of discovery; I just knew that a plane had to get from the gate to the runway and if it can go forward and it can go up and it can go down, it seemed reasonable to assume that it could go backwards, too. Turns out I'm not only wrong but really funny, too.

So, we taxied out to the runway and were next in line to take off and then we sat ... and sat ... and sat some more. Our friendly neighborhood pilot suddenly announced that another batch of storms had rolled into Ft. Lauderdale and the airport was closed again. At this point Jay and I both started laughing because there wasn't much point in getting mad or upset and the entire situation was getting more and more ridiculous. Besides, if we started thinking about how it was approaching six o'clock and the cocktail party was just beginning and we were all obviously going to be late for dinner we probably would have started to cry, or at least I would have started to cry because my pain medication had worn off and I couldn't take another one without food or I'd end up hurling all over the cabin. We probably spent another 15-20 minutes waiting to take off and killed the time by making fun of the situation and snapping a self-portrait.

You two are having entirely too much fun for being stuck on an aircraft for nearly five hours.


Finally the plane started to move again and we took off, headed, so we thought, for our elusive final destination. Do you want to hazard a guess as to what happened next?

That's right.

It was time for another cockpit communique from our fearless, talkative pilot. Turns out there were a lot of planes trying to land at the Ft. Lauderdale airport at the same time and even though we were more than three hours behind our scheduled arrival time those other planes were going to be allowed to land before us. We were being diverted south, over the tip of America's wang, and out into the vast angry skies with nothing but the foamy, boiling ocean below to break our fall once we ran out of fuel. And considering the kind of afternoon it had been I fully expected the plane to crash or spontaneously combust or be commandeered by the Babies in Arms.

Actually, on our return flight north from the ocean back to Ft. Lauderdale we got a pretty good aerial tour of the Everglades and both Jay and I commented that we hoped the plane wouldn't nose-dive and crash down there 'cause it was one nasty looking, desolate place.

Believe it or not, we finally landed in pouring rain about 7PM that evening, almost three-and-a-half hours late. Oh, but no no no no no no!!!! We weren't late; we weren't even delayed! The airlines are allowed to classify any flight as "on-time" as long as the reason for its late-not-lateness is weather related. Wow - that's a sweet deal! I'm going to try that on my boss the next time I'm late for work because it's raining or snowing or a bridge over the Missouri River has collapsed.

"You're late."

"Oh, no; I'm not late. I'm the unfortunate victim of Mother Nature's capriciousness. In fact, you should be glad that I managed to get here at all and I think I deserve a 10% raise for making the effort. And by the way, I'm also implementing a fuel surcharge for my daily drive - you'll be getting a bill at the end of the week."

I'll be sure to let you all know how that works out for me.

We made our way down to baggage claim where the poor people from "Hello FL Tours" had no doubt been waiting for hours - they were hired by the company to handle transportation to and from the airport as well as transportation for the weekend excursions that were being offered. They tried to make things as easy as possible but let's face it, no one was really in a good mood at this point.

Jay grabbed our suitcase and tossed it on to one of the big ol' luggage carts that the transportation folks had gathered and then we were herded outside into the steamy FL evening to wait for the buses to show up. Why they weren't already waiting there for us is a question that falls into the answer / answerless category. Sometimes it's best just not to ask.

Eventually two massive touring buses pulled up to the curb and as soon as I saw our suitcase tossed carelessly into the yawning storage cavern of one of them Jay and I were boarding a bus faster than you can say "I feel like I'm at WDW." And thanks to years of Disney training we headed for the very back of the bus rather than crowding in with everyone else up front. As a result we were able to stretch out with lots of space and breathing room.

All Aboard!

Tired, but still smiling and cute!


We had a hair-raising ride in rain-slowed rush hour traffic that lasted about twenty minutes and then we arrived at the Boca Raton Beach & Yacht Club. Full kudos to the staff there who must have been alerted that 150 tired, greasy, sweaty, hungry, and thirsty Stinktowners were on the way to check-in. They must have had at least ten people behind the desk making the process as smooth and efficient as they could and within ten minutes were had a room key and were waiting in another line to nab the company welcome packet that included our itinerary for the weekend as well as an extra $75 in spending money from the company. Woo hoo! Somebody find us a bar!

The bar actually had to wait ... we wanted to find our room and change clothes and then get back downstairs to the picked over buffet. Since there really wasn't time to clean up neither one of us changed into the nice clothes that we had brought with us to wear for the first night's dinner. I admit to feeling very conspicuous showing up in a t-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. And hey, Miss Blond Bombshell Who Was Perfectly Put Together And Giving My Ensemble The Giant Eyeball, you try traveling for 12 straight hours and looking as not unpresentable as I do!

We did not take any pictures of the food spread this first night - it was already past 8PM and the buffet was spread out over several tables in a very large ballroom. The last thing I wanted to do was disrupt anyone's attempt to get food, especially since some of those poor folks hadn't eaten during the Atlanta layover. The theme for the evening seemed to be a South Florida cook-out kinda thing ... they had glazed chicken boobs, braised beef, Cajun shrimp, strip steak, whole lobsters, tamales, weird vegetables, all kinds of salads mixed with all sorts of stuff, and a dessert table with a vast array of completely unappealing offerings that included key lime pie, black forest cake, some kind of triple chocolate dried out cake, and an unidentifiable purple something or other. Jay nabbed a bit of everything including a lobster that the staff shelled for him ... I tried some of it and it wasn't bad (I'm not a huge lobster eater), but I was actually at a point that I call "past the point of hunger." This happens to me sometimes when we travel ... if I don't eat when I first start to get the rumbly tummies I eventually get to a point where I'm no longer hungry, unbelievable though that may sound to those of you who have seen me eat. In this case I think my lack of appetite can be attributed to fatigue ... I was tired and my back hurt and none of the food was appealing and I really was tired of sitting. Wah Wah Wah!

We shared a table with some people that Jay knew and traded travel woe stories with them ... we found out that as annoying and frustrating as our day had been, there were still some employees from Mobile who hadn't arrived at the resort thanks to Fay. And the next day we discovered that three employees from Jacksonville who were all celebrating 35-year anniversaries with the company were unable to make the weekend at all thanks to that same fickle weather bitch that gave the rest of us so much trouble. That really put things in perspective - at least we made it and were able to take full advantage of the programming on Saturday. Luckily, company management promised that those three employees would be attending the anniversary celebration next summer and that they would all be compensated in other ways, as well. Generous, generous people ... not such a common thing in the corporate world these days.

Before heading back to our room for the night Jay and I strolled around the resort a bit - first we took this picture for our cruise friends on the DIS who all walked to the southernmost point of the US while they were in Key West last October. Jay's company brought the marker to Boca Raton and we were finally able to get a picture of it! OK, I know this isn't the real marker from Key West, but humor us ... we'd been up for something like 18 hours when we took this picture.

There's no mango margarita, but at least we didn't have to walk a mile in 95-degree heat to find this!

And we stopped in the lobby to take a picture of the massive stone fireplace. The silence and absolute absence of hotel personnel was stunning ... they probably all needed a break after dealing with that noisy herd of Stinktown business travelers.

Can we roast marshmallows tonight?


As we continued wandering around the hotel, which is very much reminiscent of a Spanish palace (not that I've ever seen one other than in my fertile imagination) we admired the architecture and the relaxed elegance of the furnishings. And then we happened across a little place right inside the marina called Bar Luna. It caught my eye because of the number of single malt scotches on display. I stopped to look at the menu and the bartender was very friendly and ended up having a scotch session with us for a few minutes as we debated what we would like to try. Once we decided on a personal favorite - the Macallan 12-year single malt - our friend Bill poured us each three shots of scotch and charged us for one. I mean he filled those glasses to the brim ... oh, Bill, you rogue! Of course we'll come back tomorrow night to try that other scotch, especially if you're going to be manning the bar.

The rain had finally stopped and although it was a very humid evening we thought it was lovely and sat ourselves on a bench overlooking the marina enjoying the fresh air and the silence, apart from the gentle clinking of ice cubes swimming in scotch. And then some noisy smokers turned up and we took that as our cue to head back to the room and wash the accumulated travel grime from Stinktown, Atlanta, Ft. Myers, and Ft. Lauderdale from our tired bodies. I have a bad habit of always reading the room sevice menu and when I saw that they had a kobe beef burger available I suggested to my lovey hubby that if he ordered one while I was taking a bath I'd give him half!

Their room service staff must not have had much to do that evening because the order showed up really quickly and before long Jay and I were perched at the foot of the bed watching the Olympics and munching on a Kobe Beef Burger with Farm House Cheddar Fondue and Fries.

A Table just for two ...

Mmmmmm, nothing like a late night burger with your scotch and your darvocet!


This was a really tasty burger and the cheese spread was good, although it had the consistency of mashed potatoes in my opinion. The fries were hot and crispy and while I confess myself disappointed to see that our condiment selection included ketchup, mayonnaise, and dijon mustard but not cheap yellow mustard, that cheese spread was quite good with the fries!

All in all a yummy end to a very long day. We called it a night soon afterwards, knowing that the day ahead of us was going to start early and be chock full of new experiences.