Heading Home

We had an early flight home from Orlando.  It must have been the first one of the day.  Take off was at something like 7:00 AM (Might have been earlier, I don’t quite remember).  So we had to get up early to drive back to Orlando from my folks’ house.  It was a pretty good drive back, no incidents of traffic jams.  And getting the rental car back was smooth too.  It was once we got to the airport that things got messy. 

The check in desk at Frontier only had two people working it, and the line was probably 50-60 people deep.  The girls had gotten there early so they were already thru and waiting for TSA screening by the time we got in line.  And it took FOREVER!!!  It was at least a half an hour waiting to get checked in (whatever happened to curbside check in?).  Once we were thru the check in process at the counter, we had to go thru TSA screening, which was about 4 or 5 times as bad as checking in.  WOW!  Funny, they always tell you to get to the airport an hour early for domestic flights, and we were there more than 90 minutes ahead of time and by the time we got thru TSA and to our gate, we only had about 5-10 minutes to wait before we were able to board.

While in the TSA line we saw several of the teams that Ali competed against, and a couple had trophies.  Kris talked to a couple of parents from some of the other teams while we were in line to find out how the finals went and who won, what place they took, etc.

Then when we got on board the plane we ended up sitting near some kids from a team from Madison who obviously had just woken up and drove to the airport, because they looked (and smelled) like they hadn’t showered in a day or two.  YUCK!  And I was lucky enough to get the middle seat and sit next to one of them.

There was also a kid on the flight home across the aisle from Kris who looked to be probably between 2 and 3 years old.  He was a drippy, snotty, mess and had a toy car he kept dropping.  GERM FACTORY!!!  His mom ended up having to take him to the bathroom in flight because he obviously had filled his diaper (or pull-up… or whatever he was wearing) and needed a change. Again… YUCK!!!! 

Overall, it was a pretty good trip and we are very proud of Ali and how the team performed.  Kudos go out to Sharon and Liz (their coaches) for having them prepped and coached so well.  The only thing that sucked was the flight home, and maybe the hassle we had with the water at the resort.  I can’t wait to do it again next year (fingers crossed).