After passing out last night, I was shocked to find the alarm going off at 7am and Dave rushing out to the living room and then waking me up shortly thereafter. He had set the alarm so that I could see my first sunrise – over the ocean! Really, it’s little actions like that that really take my breath away. We sat in the living room and then moved out to the balcony to watch the sunrise…it was beautiful, we took amazing pictures and enjoyed the sparkling ocean and crisp morning air. After the sun was up and it was official that I had seen a sunrise, we went back to bed until around 11am. Sleep was good, but it saddens me that we have to leave so soon. Anyways, we got up and got ready and set out to find a place for lunch. Of course, we didn’t really know any good restaurants that weren’t chains so we decided on Friendly’s. It was pretty good, we split buffalo chicken quesadillas and I had a honey mustard chicken wrap and somehow we got a sundae dessert too (caramel on the side and no whipped cream so we could split it). After that, we drove to Kidz Inc. which is Dave’s cousin’s business. It’s basically an indoor playground where you take your kids – they also have free wifi and coffee and such so I think it’s quite a good idea and if I had kids I would probably go there all of the time. Bobby and Dave chatted for a bit about random things as they hadn’t seen eachother for years and we both were given free t-shirts and told we could play around for a bit. We jumped around and had fun on the moonwalk which was shockingly exhausting! I dont’ remember ever being this tired as a kid! Maybe it’s all that extra height and weight that takes so much effort to bounce around. Next stop: mini-Golf! We had seen this place yesterday and it looked pretty cool, I think mini-golf is the thing to do down here or something as there are places all over. This particular ‘course’ was Captain Hook themed and we were given a choice of which course we wanted to play – Hooks Challenge or the Lost Boys. This lady – I don’t know who she thought we were – but she talked up this Captain Hook course like it was a freaking mountain climbing excursion. She was all ‘it’s up and down and up and down stairs and then you climb up a mountain and you can see the ocean, and you can’t bring a stroller’. Um, last time I checked I dont’ really tote a stroller around, so all that checked out fine and we were off on the ‘difficult’ course. I hadn’t played mini-gold since high school I think so I pretty much sucked at first. Dave was good though, making par at nearly every hole and encouraging me not to hit the ball into the ocean and such. I dont’ know, I was hitting it really hard and the ball would go past the hole and bounce around and end up pretty much at the tee again. We took lots of pics and it was true – you really could see the water from up there on the ‘mountain.’ After that, we went to Starbucks and sat for a few minutes with our coffees before heading back to the condo.
Back at the condo, our keys did not work because we were supposed to have checked out by then or something. You know, to make room for the hundreds of guests. A maintenance man was in the hall, however, and I flagged him down to open the door. We hung around for a bit and did random computer things like naming pictures and Dave was on the phone a bunch. Upon checking out, somehow the bill ended up being $17 because they really didn’t clean the room for one of the days, so I paid that which totally didn’t make up for Dave paying for the rental car but I’ll find a way to make it up to him. The ride to the airport was quick and basically the airport is in the middle of a neighborhood. We forgot to fill up the rental car with gas but it wasn’t a huge deal. Oh, before we left, we found out that Dave’s flight was delayed a bit so that’s why we left a bit late (6:30ish?). At the airport, we quickly printed boarding passes and passed through security with the TSA agent humoring the video telling you the rules and such. He must have seen this video 17k times already today so he was all ‘look at the face the black woman makes! Here it comes!’ Ah, the South, friendly I guess, but slow as hell. At the gate, there was another short delay so Dave got pizza hut and I got a soda. We talked for a bit and I learned that I possibly have the worst ‘important conversation’ timing ever, as I started a convo just as his flight was boarding which was of course a terrible idea and left me a bit sad for the remainder of the night. I’m trying to be positive about everything, really, but I can’t help but prepare myself for the worst. We’ll leave it at that here.
My flight boarded a bit late and I actually almost got on the wrong flight because they changed the gate at the last minute and I was wearing headphones. Whoops. On the flight, I had a whole row to myself again so I watched some Curb and napped for most of the flight. I woke up when we were beginning our decent, and it was nearly midnight…ugh. I got off the plane as quickly as I could and headed out to wait for the shuttle bus to take me to the economy parking lot. I waited nearly the maximum amount of time and was the only one on the shuttle as we went to all of the terminals before arriving at the lot. Parking was expensive as I had anticipated obviously, $56, but I was relieved to finally get in my car and drive off. Course the Ted Williams tunnel is closed at night – you can’t go through that shit at night, are you kidding? How much sense would THAT make? Tunnel at night, what would I be thinking! So after following some detours for the pike, all of a sudden the signs stopped and I was in gov’t center. Awesome. I drove to China town because that’s the only Pike entrance I knew for sure existed. It was a miserable time but I eventually made it home and went to bed! For me, it was such a roller coaster day.
