Two 50 pound bags and an early taxi. And we are off.
Long lines in security, thank goodness for pre-check and status. And club access as the first flight is going to be late. So hopefully we can run through Dallas and pick up Wayne for the next flight.
Very tasty bloody this guy makes.
Getting to the islands is always an adventure.
First, the taxi that I had called never showed up after 45 minutes, normally they come within about 10 mins, always before we are ready. Not so much on Friday, Christine called and they couldn’t tell us when one might arrive, so we drove. Checked in with less than an hour before the flight, just barely enough time for a vacation starting cold beverage.
Wayne picked us up in Dallas as the only way to get to St Lucia is an overnight somewhere, Miami, San Juan, NYC or Dallas. A bite to eat and some cold beverages, an early night as 4am is going to come rather early. We called and scheduled a taxi for 4 AM.
About 10 alarm clocks go off to make sure we get up, so at that was successful. Course that taxi driver gets lost and is trying to pick us up at Jerry Jones’ house, then gets stopped by the closed security gate, which was explained all during the reservation. Finally arrives and takes us the 10 minutes to the airport. That taxi ride costs as much as driving all the way out to the Austin airport. We make our flight, and breeze through security. The TSA agent was Awesome, really. Christine asked, “How are you today” to which she replied, “I’m Awesome”.
That first flight had some mechanical issues so we didn’t get to leave on time, so that cut into our 45 minute connection in Miami. By the time we landed in Miami, we were within 29 mins of our St Lucia segment’s departure. Those folks running in the airport, yup those were us. Getting to the gate and they were still boarding so a quick BIO break and we are off.
Only one more taxi to go, and I had pre-arranged to have some cold Piton Beers in the taxi so we can start the acclimation quickly, and I’m sure we will stop to enjoy another on the way.
Looking forward to seeing the shack, lots has happened since I left her in February.
Clearing customs is always fun. Grab yer bags and recheck everything. We are all traveling in first/business class and have platinum status this year. That means we get on first and the bags show up on the carousel first. On top of that we all are part of the trusted traveler program and can go through special fast pass lines. It’s worked great for me and all my trips to China last year. Christine and I breeze through. We turn around and Wayne is no where to be found and we get told to keep moving and not look for him. We grab all the bags and continue our search as carousel 9 was all the way at the other end. Eventually we spot him coming down the stairs. So much for fast pass. Now our layover was down to 30 minutes so we found a quick beer before getting on the completely full flight. The same spoiled crying child is still in the seats ahead of us. A jellybean if you sit still and of course we are delayed so no chance we will catch that last flight to Austin this eve.
Time to ring the call button.
Too top it off we are so past sailors midnight in the wrong time zone must be time to go to sleep. Completed with full on turbulence the motion sickness has no chance to subside. Don’t expect the movement to stop till Wednesday at the earliest.
I did change into jeans in the Miami airport as Dallas is going to be quite the shock with flip flops.
One cool thing, with all this Internet/social media stuff. One of the blogs zerotocruising that I follow found our twitter page and returned the follow. Every blog is different theirs is very cool about starting out with no sailing experience and taking off and the lessened learned among the way. We crossed paths last year inadmiralty bay bequia. I dingyed over in the morning and they were in the midst of their morning work out so I didn’t bother em and we were on our way south that morning. Next time I’ll have to stop on by.