Its 12:30 PM and it has already been a really long day for me. This is how it has unfolded to this point, but I’m a little scared to see what happens next.
3:15 am - Woke up in a cold sweat after a dream that I was in Europe with the show jumpers and Ashlee Bond had lost her cat. I have no idea if Ashlee even has a cat. But we were in a major panic in the dream.
4:20 - Alarm goes off after a fitful sleep searching around a back road in Belgium for the lost cat.
4:30 - Drag self out of bed, shower, talk dog (real life Jack Russell) off the proverbial ledge as I had been home for exactly 36 hours from my last trip to Florida.
5:04 - All ready to go, zip up carryon bag – just hand luggage on this trip – when the zipper does that thing that only zippers can do: unzip in both directions while zipping in the other…. You know what I mean. Curse words are now flying, but I manage to get it closed. I am trying to leave the house, carrying three bags, coffee, car keys – you get the idea. Jack Russell sits in window and stares. I hate to think on what she took her discontent out once I left.
5:09 - Realize that there is a fuse out in my car that controls two of my favorite features: the heated seats and the heated mirrors. Both handy on a cold, dark rainy morning. The Subaru is in its 7th year - the old car can't start failing me now.
5:25 - Arrive at Lexington Airport, nice lady at Delta desk informs me that she cannot get me out of a middle seat on the ATL to PBI but to try again when I get to Atlanta.
5:33 - Go to security, totally organized with the hand luggage, when the security man tells me that my bag has a knife in it. Flashback to the movie Hotel Bangkok. The only knives I have are in my kitchen. This guy unpacks my entire bag while I wonder what life in prison for trafficking weapons is, he then pulls out a red clutch with a metal buckle and declares that this purse must have looked like a knife. Seriously?
5:40 - After unpacking the entire thing, putting it back through the scanner and determining that I am, in fact, not going to have to go live at Guantanamo Bay, I get to the plane. This dude at the gate can’t change my seat either. So off we go.
6:20-7:35 - Endure the bumpiest plane ride of my life. I imagine it was similar to a four-in-hand carriage, missing a horse, and a wheel, going over a washboard. It was awful, and I am not a squeamish traveler. Parts of the ceiling fell off onto the poor woman in front of me, the flight attendant was instructed not to get up and we all arrived white knuckled but safe.
7:45 - dash through the airport, from Terminal D to Terminal B, there are people sleeping on the floor everywhere – the weather is bad across the east, and ATL is the land of discontent. 8:20 - I get my seat changed from middle seat to the window in the second to last row – but beggars really can’t be picky at this point.
8:45 - I fall fast asleep.
10:25- 11:15 - Land in PBI, realize I have come to Florida without my sunglasses like an idiot. Drag all of my stuff off of the plane and arrive at Hertz where they have assigned me a lovely minivan. I don’t usually kick up dust about things like this, but why is it so difficult to get a normal car? I persuade the lady at the desk and I head out in my grey Mazda sedan as a pitch black sky creeps in.
11:30 – Realize I am starving, nothing but coffee since last night. So I stop by the mall and buy a cheap (by Wellington standards) pair of sunglasses with full knowledge that by doing so I have guaranteed rain for south Florida for the rest of the weekend. Go to Panera as the weather stops over Wellington, pouring rain, black sky and 30 mph winds whip through.
12:15 – Arrive at the Jim Brandon Equestrian Center - things are blown over, puddles everywhere and there isn’t a horse in sight. People are gathered under their respective tents and Mason Phelps informs me that a ‘mini tornado’ just went through. Things are delayed but the place looks great regardless and morale is good. We are still on for a 2 pm start for the Masters, the Juniors are underway – finishing up before the big guns start. There are lots of helmets around here, which is always a good thing.
More later…