It’s time to begin our much-needed eighth anniversary vacation to Grand Cayman. Work, of course, pushed me right up until departure time with some production issues. But those were handed off to other people and we made a beeline for the airport to catch our flight to Orlando; then on to Ft. Lauderdale, where we are now and plan to stay for the night in the airport Ramada.

On our trip to Orlando we met a delightful 17 year old girl who was flying home from Birmingham. Of course, as is standard when traveling with Mel, we knew many, many details about her life and history before the 2 hour flight was over.

The flight from Orlando to Ft. Lauderdale was less interesting until the end, when I began to notice a lightning storm off in the distances. Watching the lighting strike towards the sky from the clouds kept me awake and interested over the lull of the engine 20 feet from my head. Then, the pilot turned and flew directly into the storm I had been watching. Of course, that made for some fun turbulence and some startled looks from passengers but all in all the flight was nice and we found Ft. Lauderdale airport nice.

A shuttle bus from the Ramada picked us (and a family of 20 or so) up at the airport and delivered us safely to our destination. They did… however… break our borrowed luggage. I guess we can mark up unexpected trip expense number one to the over eager bus driver with a penchant for throwing bags into an empty storage unit. If there’s ever a luggage throwing event in the Olympics, this guy is a gimme for a gold medal.