The main drawing card for the trip to the beach was the cheap, non-stop flight.
We’d been on vacation together – my mother, sister and brother. And we had cheap tickets on Allegiant Air to zip home, non stop. The airport was only an hour away, but we left almost three hours early, just in case.
We had no baggage, and were sailing along the interstate trying to figure out how we were going to kill two hours in the airport.
We’d been zooming along the interstate for an hour, all of us used to my brother’s video-game-type driving, when suddenly traffic came to a complete halt. My brother took the blame initially but although he drives at the speed of sound (he’s a New Yorker) as a rule, weaving in and out of traffic and cutting off 18-wheelers, he was not the problem.
I think we actually left skid marks as we fishtailed to a sudden stop. As in, a turn-off-the-ignition, get-out-and-stretch, chat-sheepishly-with-the-drivers-of-the-18-wheelers-we’d-cut-off-earlier, stop.
I tried to use my new (supposedly handy) phone to find out what the heck was going on. They need an app called ‘What the Heck’ that can get to the bottom of any situation because ‘Waze,’ ‘Beat the Traffic’ and ‘Signalert’ were no help. But they did keep me out of my brother’s hair for a good hour.
Absorbed by my new phone, I taught myself to match pictures with the people calling, and customize each ring tone. I went down my list of choices, playing the more obnoxious tones several times. I laughed out loud at the picture I snapped of my mother (a rare unflattering photograph of her scowling in the front seat) and assigned it to her phone number. I laughed even louder at the irritating boing-boing-boing ring tone I selected.
No one else in the car was amused.
After another two hours, I wasn’t amused either.
We had less than an hour until our flight, and we were still gridlocked. A few cars turned around in the median and drove the opposite direction down the interstate to the closest entrance ramp, which served as an exit ramp.
We all needed to go to the bathroom and we were precariously low on gas. But mainly, we all needed to go to the bathroom.
We argued for a few minutes, then risked death and traffic tickets and drove north on I-90 South, and finally found a gas station. Afterwards we crawled down a two-lane highway with 75 percent of Florida, and most of the northern states. We didn’t have the car in park, but that was about the only difference between stationary and moving.
We finally peeled into the airport and ran inside, hoping against hope they would let us on the plane, which was sitting on the runway. They didn’t.
We rented a car, and drove the 10 hours to Chattanooga in storm alert conditions, literally racing tornadoes. So 10 hours plus four hours…14 hours later we arrived home from our vacation, bedraggled, anxious, exhausted and beyond frazzled. Not how you hope to feel after a vacation.
But would I do it again?
I would have to factor in the individuals I spent the week with, then decide if the contagious laughter, constant hilarity and endless mirth were worth the ride home from hell.
So yes, I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat, tornadoes and all.
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