The flight was uneventful. The best one can hope for. Actually it was pretty good. It was southwest and they have free-for-all seating. Well not completely they board in three waves, A, B, and C. You get assigned these as you get your boarding pass. Well, I guess most of these people know that you can get them the night before on-line… well, we didn’t… so we were in lot C. We get on the plane and there are nothing but middle seats left. I have a dim hope that there are two seats for us at the back of the place… wrong. They lesson is this. If on Southwest get your boarding pass early. If not then take the first empty seat that you get to. I ended up towards the back of the plane sitting next to a larger woman and a full-size man. Towards the front of the plane there were seats with smaller people in the window and the isle… live and learn. On the second leg of our journey we stay on our plane and get the pick of seats. Marlo wants to sit next to me so she sits in the middle on purpose. I think she actually looked at me like I was a pillow once:> the gin and tonic only helped a little.
So we get arrive in Tampa. Hello Tampa. It is warm and sunny, yea! As we are waiting to get out of the plane we talk to the guy next to us who happens to live in Tampa. We (read Marlo) are hungry and we arrive at rush hour. He recommends a Hawaiian fusion restaurant near the airport called Roy’s. Marlo wanted conch fritters… well we wander our way to through the airport to ground transportation. We find the courtesy phone and dial 63. We get the fax machine… hello. I try it three more times with the same results. What is the definition of an idiot again… anyway for no good reason I try a different phone and Marlo uses the one that was using. I get the fax machine and she get the recording telling us to go find the shuttle… brilliant.. Well I think that Marlo half listened to the message and treks out in search of the shuttle. I have this wonderful trait (among many) of being able to ask directions. I will even do it repeatedly. So I ask the crossing guard where the payless shuttle would be and he told us. We corrected out course slightly and journeyed on. I asked the next crossing guard the same question and he gave me the same answer. This in itself is noteworthy. More importantly when he pointed the way to go the shuttle was coming around the corner and I was able to flag it down. Timeing!
We take the shuttle to the office to get our car. We ask if our (Marlo’s) AAA membership gets us anything. Not on the price, but we have a reduced rate on an upgrade… hmmm, ok, I go for it. We get a nicer car. It is a Nissan Altama. It is nice and it has a push button start!
Now on the plane Marlo is asking about directions. Now we had a Garmin for a bit and she loved it. We used my laptop on UTAH and she loved it, not. We ended up using vz-navigator out there. She really wanted a Garmin. Well I told her, actually hinted that she would be so happy when we got the car that she would be giddy. She doubted me. First of all, one should not doubt me… so we get into the car and I whip out a top-of-the-line Garmin and plant it on the windshield. She is giddy! Let’s just say we are test driving it. It is WAY cool though. I selected the female Australian voice, it has traffic, lane assist, and a few other way cool features. It is nice! We are happy.
So we ask everyone at the car place where a place called Roy’s is. It is the Hawaiian fusion place. They have no clue, so we ask the Ausi Nav Bitch (ANB). She not only knows, but it is less then ½ a mile up the street. It boggles the mind how people don’t know where stuff is. I remember when I worked at Seaport Mobile. I actually drove around looking at places because I knew that people would ask… damn yuts!
Roy’s was GREAT. Well except for the btch that cut us off and got the last two bar seats… I felt her pushing by but too late realized her goal… I should have sicked Marlo on her! Anyway, we rearranged a couple of people at the near end of the bar so that we could sit. We ordered a canoe something or other sampler. It was perfect. It had sushi, ribs, lobster something, meatball something… can you tell that I am a foodie?!?? It was so good and looked so good that as soon as the couple next to us saw it the immediately ordered it.
We continued our journey aided by ANB. We were headed for the sunshine bridge and just before we got there we pulled off to a scenic spot and broke out the camera. Oh yea we drove on the beach a bit too… some strange guy was making comments to Marlo about bring me… kinda odd, but harmless. We took some lovely pictures of sunsets and us and … well you know how that goes. We actually deleted some picture so not all of them will make the web site.
Ok, it’s late… more later…