this isn't what did ON the vacation, it's what happened at the end.
whenever i fly anyplace i always see someone who flies from somewhere warm to somewhere cold. he's still wearing sandals, shorts and some hawaiin shirt without a jacket.
so, i'm thinking 'hey, i walk around in the middle of the night, with the heat all the way down, on the cold tile floors. how hard is it to go from the warm airport lobby in sandals, out to a cab three steps away, right?' wrong, of course.
we get our luggage off the carousel and call our reliable cab company, in our town, to come and get us. they say no way. they're not going out at all.
okay, cool. out on the sidewalk there's a booth for an airport fleet cab driver operator. we go outside and the wind is picking up. it's around 12:a.m. there's a line of people waiting for a cab and we're last in line and the snow is getting harder. the cabs are coming in for pickups at a very slow rate because of the icing conditions. the dispatch operator sends us all inside the lobby door to
wait. we're waiting, waiting, waiting. everyone has taken their turn and there's no cab for us. we are deciding to sleep in the airport and deal with this in the a.m. i take a last peek outside and lo! and behold! a cab!
he agrees to take us home for the airport fleet rate and off we go. the snow is piling up. we drive at the speed of snails, with the guy stopping every mile to scrape ice off the wipers using a screwdriver. halfway home, he asks if he can make a stop at the next rest room. so, creep, scrape, creep, scrape, and so on.
finally we get home to our house. the plow has been down the street and the snow is piled up to my waist. i can't climb over it, because it keeps giving way, so i'm tumbling into it, giggling like an overtired fool. i push my way through and start high-stepping over the lawn toward the front door. my feet are frozen and halfway to the door i realize that between the cab and the house i lost my sandal. now, there's no holding me back. i am hysterical laughing. the sandal is white. i know i won't see it again until spring comes. my feet are so cold i expect to have my toes amputated.
by the time we paid off the cab, with a healthy tip for taking his life in his hands, it was after 3 a.m. it should have been a 1/2 hour drive. i'm still tired.
that's how we ended our vacation. we should have stayed there.