Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Oh No - Not This Again! (Travel Day)

We were all packed up and ready to go at 7:15 a.m. We rode with Laurie to take Dylan to school and said good-bye to him. Loaded up the car, said good-bye to Chip, and headed to Fort Lauderdale.

Dick wanted to stop off at Butterfly World to take pictures of his Butterfly travelbug with the signs. Did that. Then he wanted to put the bug in a cache at a park 4 miles away. Tried, but failed to find the cache. So Laurie is now in charge of the Butterfly Travel Bug.

Arrived at the airport in a timely fashion, and headed for the gate. Love the new ticketless travel. We never have to check in anywhere. Our pilot's name was Mohammed Al-Habib, a name to instill confidence. The plane was quite full, but we did get to sit together, which is always a plus.

Then we had a 4 hour wait at O'Hare, which is always a minus. We met an interesting man from Boston who is still talking about what happened to him on 9/11. He kept his rental car and drove it home because nothing was flying that day - when he got home, Hertz didn't charge him for driving it over the limit and dropping it off.

O'Hare is a real yawner, except the people watching is good. We saw all shapes and sizes of human beings - quite an assortment. We saw a Saudi in full robes and some Asian "nuns" in full robes, some huge men, some huge women, and some adorable babies. Mostly we read books.

Flight to Grand Rapids was nice and uneventful. We thought we had lost a bag upon arrival, but it turned up after all, and the Comfort Inn shuttle came to pick us up.

We were very glad to arrive at a room with a bed. Didn't bother with dinner. Snore.