16th August 2004
Hi all from Clearwater, Florida!
Have you ever seen "Withnail & I"? If you have you'll be familiar with the line "We've come on holiday by mistake", a feeling which Lorraine and I had late on Saturday and in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The day had started normally enough. Get up, make sure the last few things are in our cases, check the internet for news of what Hurricane Charley had done, and then wait for Lorraine's Dad to pick us up and take us to the airport. The trip to the airport and check-in was all pretty routine, the weather in Glasgow was clear, dry and bright. It was going to be a good day.
Everything seemed well in the airport. We got drinks, had lunch, briefly enjoyed some of the new reclining chairs and killed some time before going through to the departure lounge. When we went through to the departure lounge we took a look through Duty Free, got more drinks and waited for our flight to be called.
We boarded the flight and found that we did have two seats together, next to window, with no third seat to the right or left of us. Perfect. The legroom wasn't ideal, but we had expected that. It made putting my flight socks (insisted upon by Lorraine) harder than I had anticipated, but at least it was making Lorraine laugh.
In due time we took off, and at the same time we were told that our airport in Orlando was currently closed as it had no power in the aftermath of Hurricane Charley. No problem, they had nine hours between the announcement and us landing, and it was anticpated that everything would be fine. I made myself as comfortable as I possibly could and sat back and enjoyed "Shrek 2".
It was after "Shrek 2" had finished that things took a turn for the worst. The second film was "The Day After Tomorrow". Yes, we had a plane full of tourists looking to enjoy a holiday in the sun and we had a film showing the traumatic effects of global warming, including high winds, blizzards and floods. Fantastic. Just what I wanted to see. Very appropriate choice.
Seeing as your luck with films can make or break a trans-Atlantic flight in regard to time passing quickly this wasn't a good turn of events (compare this to when I flew from Gatwick to St. Louis in 1997 and saw Rocky for the first time, an inspired choice by the people at TWA). I took my headphones off, picked up my copy of .net magazine and tried to ignore the film. However time was starting to drag. When "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" began I was tempted only to criticise. "I don't even have my headphones on and I can see this is a bad film," I said to Lorraine without any regard for logic whatsoever.
When the films finished there was a short film about driving in Florida (more informative and entertaining than the previous two films combined) and then an announcement. We would be landing in half-an-hour's time... in Fort Lauderdale. Yep, we were landing just a stone's throw north of Miami. What would happen when we landed? We had a hotel booked for one night in Orlando - would that be transferred to the Fort Lauderdale area? I was thinking positively. If I was in Fort Lauderdale I would have a wider choice of different Dolphins jerseys to buy than I would in the Tampa area. However I didn't appreciate being told so late in the day about the change of landing destination.
Another thing we noticed as we started our descent was how much darker it was. Not the darkness of night, but the darkness of big, threatening clouds. It was still pretty windy too. We had a pretty bumpy descent until at one point we turned hard to the right, felt the plane go up a bit and heard the engines churning for all they were worth. The plane righted itself again and while everyone else went pasty white I was looking at Lorraine when I noticed some floodlights out of our left-hand side window. "Hey," I said, "That's Pro Player Stadium. I guess the Dolphins must be playing tonight." Yep, somehow I had recalled that the Marlins were out of town, and that the lights must have been on the Dolphins. Incidentally I was pasty white too, as we seemed to be barely above those floodlights, albeit a couple of miles away.
Once we finally landed (which I was really pleased to finally do) we were whisked through immigration (very quickly, I don't think they get many foreign flights into Fort Lauderdale), then to get our bags, and then we were asked to queue... for a coach to Orlando. Not a good turn of events, and I immediately started thinking how long it would take for us to get there. Even being optimistic three hours was the best we could expect. For the moment we were outside, queuing in the hot humid air, not even daring to try and find somewhere to get a drink for fear of being stuck in Fort Lauderdale.
When we finally got on a coach I was reminded of the days when I used to get the coach into Glasgow. Really cheap, uncomfortable (and even broken) seats, no air conditioning. At least we had flickering TV screens. Unfortunately the driver seemed to have a liking for bad 1980s cop films, featuring swearing and shootings! I bet the people there with young children must have loved it. Welcome to Florida! Where's Don Johnson when you need him?
After a couple of hours freezing in the bus we arrived at a service station in Port St. Lucie. Here I overheard another passenger ask how much further it was to Orlando. Two hours. After getting a bite to eat I knew I would need some sleep, as we had been up for about twenty hours at this point. I dug out my drill top and slept most of the rest of the way to Orlando.
Small problem. Some other people had clearly said about how cold the bus was, so when I woke up approaching Orlando I found the bus was like an oven. However this was nothing compared to the problem of arriving at Orlando International Airport and not being able to find anyone to tell us what to do or where to go. After a while we were finally directed to the car hire desks downstairs, where there was a massive queue. It was now about 1am Florida time and Lorraine and I had been up just about twenty-four hours.
The car hire queue is the longest queue I have seen since I queued for my 1996 play-off final tickets. I remembered how long that took - four hours. I remained in the queue while Lorraine took our cases and slept on the floor of the car hire level of the terminal, as many other families had done. Normally I wouldn't like to leave Lorraine alone like that, but everyone was in the same boat and acting accordingly. It was a really bizarre sight.
After a very long five-hour wait I finally reached the end of the car hire queue. I don't know if I've ever been so bored, tired and frustrated for such a length of time before. I think being around a cheerful group in the queue helped, although I felt for the people still behind me. Eventually though Lorraine and I were able to wheel our cases to the boot of our hire car, a lovely Dodge Neon.
We arrived at our hotel at 6am local time (a total of twenty-nine hours spent largely awake), and fortunately were offered a late checkout. We got a few hours sleep, had to have breakfast at McDonalds, picked up some Mountain Dew, put our cases in the car again and left the heaving crowds and queues of Orlando to go west on the I-4 to Clearwater. It might have been a difficult start to our holiday but we had no intention of it being the overriding memory.
Have a good week!
Tony
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