Travel Rain Delay

The Tower Put Us On A Ground Hold...


I awoke this morning expecting to finish up some maintenance details around the property, take a few pictures of my finished but unpainted and uninstalled cupola, then hit the road back toward our little island by 9 AM eastern.

Wrong...

Upon reviewing the satellite picture and radars at Ft. Rucker, AL and Jacksonville, FL it was clear that unless we wanted to travel in a driving rain all day that alternate plans were in order.

Things only look slightly better in 24 hours, but I made an executive decision to wait until tomorrow to make the trip.

I was tempted to act like the airlines by loading our luggage in the car, then driving out to the end of the driveway and sitting for 45 minutes to an hour before returning to the terminal building departure gate my mom's house to wait out the weather--but I thought better of the idea in the end.

I make weird jokes about the prospect, but I admit that this Christmas holiday certainly has been a difficult one for people that had to fly to get to their destinations.

I have a rule about Christmas and Thanksgiving travel--it goes like this.

STAY HOME UNLESS YOU CAN LEAVE THE WEEK BEFORE AND COME BACK THE WEEK AFTER.

Pretty simple, huh?

Another trick that is guaranteed to piss off your wife and mother is to travel ON CHRISTMAS OR THANKSGIVING DAY. You can OWN the airport and rental car counter on Christmas day.

Early on the the Sunday morning (6:00 AM) after Thanksgiving is also a good time to go to the airport. I've flown to an ASME conference in Orlando on the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving three or four times back in the 1990's and the airport was a Tomb. The car companies were giving away rental cars and you could walk into Disney and Universal without standing in line because all of the kids were back in school.

Another holiday travel trick I used to use involved going to the Florida Keys on Labor Day Monday. There would be a traffic jam of cars moving north from Key Largo to Homestead, and my Suburban would be the lone vehicle heading south on the overseas highway. OK...one of three vehicles southbound...but you get my drift.

The hotels were half price and the restaurants were glad to have your business and the weather was exactly the same as the week before Labor Day without the bulging crowds of college students and Hemingway wannabe's.

I guess that is one of the better advantages of being unemployed self-employed is that you don't have to live on everyone else's holiday and vacation schedules.

So now I have to go install a couple of ballasts in the kitchen lights and then cook some breakfast. Y'all be safe if you're traveling today--make an executive decision like I did if you have to.