Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Florida and the Airport of Doom

NaBloPoMo Day 6. It's 6:45, and my bed is already calling to me. Florida was beautiful, and I would love to go back sometime when we could just relax and enjoy a little more. 

I mentioned the other day that there was an airport mixup, and we were waiting for a ride to our rented cottage for a very long time. 
The Hillbilly and our stuff. Just waiting.
No compensation was received for the Coca Cola product placement.


Remember this?
Go to Yahoo Maps and look for airports in the Fort Walton Beach area. There are several.

As you may recall, although my tickets said Fort Walton, the airport at point 9, where it says Fort Walton Beach, is not the airport we flew into. We flew into Northwest Florida Regional Airport at point 3. Nothing on my tickets said anything about Northwest Florida Regional Airport, so we waited for our ride. A long, long time. But eventually we ended up at our lovely cottage and had a marvelous weekend.

It's always five o'clock at the beach!

The weather was perfect; the little town was quaint; the wedding was beautiful. And then it was time to go back to the airport. The Northwest Florida Regional Airport of Doom.

This time things were looking up. This was not a bonding experience with the ex-spouse. We were being taken to the airport by our daughter, our new son-in-law, and our beautiful granddaughter. We had plenty of time to get there since we weren't leaving until 3:00. Actually, I got an email telling us that our flight was delayed until 3:30. No need to hurry at all.

We had a leisurely brunch and a walk along the pier. We visited and enjoyed each other's company until it was time to leave for the airport. The Northwest Florida Regional Airport of Doom. Of course, we knew where we were going this time, so we couldn't get lost. We entered the name Northwest Florida Regional Airport into the gps and went on our way.

And at 2:30 we arrived. . . at point 1 on the map. Point 1? Nooooo

We checked the Internet. We got the correct address and entered it into the gps. We were 30 minutes away! 30 minutes away from the Northwest Florida Regional Airport of Doom! How could this be? It was like being in the Twilight Zone!

So we rushed to the...oh, you know. We got there in time, checked our bags, and got in line for security. For such a tiny airport, security sure took a long time. When we finally got to the front of the line, I put all my worldly goods including my shoes on the conveyor belt and stepped into the upright CAT scan machine so that some hidden observer could judge me for the amount of padding in my bra. When I stepped out of the gas chamber x-ray machine, the lovely TSA lady asked me to step aside for a moment.

After consulting her monitor, she identified the problem as my hair clip. She had to pat down my hair clip.

 Hair. Clip.

Because, you know, I could have been wearing a super secret, double-oh-seven, license to kill, supersonic death ray hair clip.

But I wasn't, so I was allowed to go on.

Shortly thereafter, we boarded our airplane and departed the Northwest Florida Regional Airport of Doom, hopefully never to return.

Ever.


So. What have you got to top that?