Back Home Once Again

It was a long day today and I am sure glad to be back home. I left the Rocky Mount Holiday Inn at precisely 8:30 this morning and drove to Raleigh for my flight south. I got to the airport in plenty of time and hung out for a couple of hours before my flight to Fort Lauderdale. Surprisingly, there were many more people there than I expected on a Sunday morning. I got a good seat toward the front for the flight south, which was uneventful. I have driven past the Fort Lauderdale airport on many occasions in the past when driving to Miami, but it was kinda neat to see it from the inside. Geez! Was that airport ever crowded!

Fortunately, my connecting flight to Tampa left from the same gate I arrived thru when I got there. After waiting another couple of hours, it was off to Tampa for a short 45 minute flight. That was kinda neat because, rather than flying west and coming up the Gulf coast, the flight went pretty much directly northwest toward the Tampa area. In taking that route, I was able to look below and see the route we generally take between Bradenton and Miami--U.S. 27, flying over South Bay, on the south side of Lake Okeechobee, Clewiston, where I had a great Cuban lunch last month, and Moore Haven, where we usually stop for lunch about halfway to Miami. One thing I can say as that those towns look a hell of a lot closer from the air than they are on the ground.

Got to Tampa on time and had just an hour's drive from the airport back home. Great homemade soup with multi-grain Ciabatta roll for dinner. So glad to be back home after an exhilarating weekend. Now that I am back, I am relaxing and feeling a bit tired. So happy that the Rays evened up their playoff series with the Rangers, but not so happy that the Packers lost to the Redskins. I was feeling pretty confident when I watched them jump out to a 10-0 lead while waiting for my plane in Lauderdale. Story of my life--last year the first of only three games the Buccaneers won was against the Pack. Oh well, onward and upward.