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Day Eight – Saturday, January 15, 2005 – “Where’s
my luggage?”
We were up early again. We packed up the final things, showered,
dressed and headed to Spoodles for breakfast. Steph decided to have
breakfast in the room so she could keep up on her oats intake. I
swear her diet consists exclusively of tuna and oats.
Spoodles was good although the prices were a bit higher than your
typical Denny’s.
Back to the room and we now had our receipt under the door. We
wheeled all the luggage by the door. I said I would head down to
retrieve the car from Valet Parking and everyone could follow in
5-minutes. Just as I was leaving, Barb shouted from the other room
that the toilet had overflowed. This was the same one that caused
a problem on our first night. I ran in, took off the tank cover
and lifted the arm to stop the water flow. With my other hand I
reached down and turned off the input valve – which took about
25 turns. The water was stopped but I was standing in about ½
inch of water on the bathroom floor. I told Barb to throw all the
towels on the floor and call Maintenance to come and take care of
it. Then I went down to retrieve the car.
We loaded everything up and had an uneventful ride back to the
airport. It was noticeably cooler today (high in the 60s –
we really timed this trip right). It was also a bit breezy.
We turned in the rental car and the invoice exactly matched the
estimate. We went inside and walked all the way to the left end
of the terminal for the USAirways counter. They have nothing but
automated kiosks with several clerks to assist you. The process
was quick and painless and the agent tagged our bags. We then had
to wheel them ourselves to a central area where a couple of workers
were loading them onto conveyors for a trip through the x-ray machines.
First time I’ve seen that but we’ve been using Skycaps
on our last several trips.
The flight left 30 minutes late but landed 30 minutes early. Must
have been a pretty good tail wind.
We landed in Albany and made our way to Baggage Claim. Stephen’s
girlfriend was there to greet us (well, him actually). A different
Northeast Shuttle driver was at Baggage Claim with a sign that said
‘Russo’. I was very impressed. I sent him to his vehicle
and said we’d be out after we retrieved our bags.
Now for the fun part. We shuffled from carousel to carousel as
flights changed. Nothing. We landed at 2:30. At 3:05 they made an
announcement that people waiting for bags from Flight 612 will need
to be patient. They were short-handed and hadn’t yet got them
off the plane.
At 3:30, the bags from our flight began coming around – one
hour after landing. We grabbed them, took them outside and apologized
to the shuttle driver for keeping him waiting so long. We made good
time getting home.
Once in the house, Michelle presented us with a couple of gifts
from the kids (a Mickey picture frame and bottle opener) for taking
them on the trip. That was a very nice and much appreciated gesture.
Another trip in the books.
Final Thoughts – We had a great time. We
couldn’t have asked for anything better weather-wise.
We’re lucky in that our children live close to home and we
get to see them at least weekly. It was nice to have them around
again full-time, if only for a week. I was wondering about Stephanie’s
level of excitement but I needn’t have worried. She got right
back into that Disney frame of mind. She was back at our house the
following day to do laundry – her normal Sunday thing. I came
back from an errand and found her watching ‘Beauty and the
Beast’. She’s had the kool-aid.
Michelle, Stephen and Will had all been looking forward to the
trip and I think they all enjoyed it immensely. We didn’t
do everything we had wanted or planned but that just gives an excuse
for going back.
I think our next 1 or 2 trips will be just Barb and I but I’m
certain we’ll pull off another of these ‘full family’
trips in the near future. At least we’ll try.
One last thing… If I don’t hear ‘Blood on the
Saddle’ again for a while, that will be OK.
Thanks for reading.
Questions or comments? Shoot me an email at srusso@nycap.rr.com
and put ‘Trip Report’ in the Subject Line or risk being
swept away with the spam.
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