Travel Disaster

 

 It's been a stormy time lately, literally and figuratively. Below, result of a straight-line wind in Birmingham, Alabama.

Attributed to:  Grace Williams

Venice, FL, the setting of most of my mysteries

For some reason the size of the yacht motoring south just off shore in Venice provoked a lot of negative remarks on the Venice e-loop. Yes, it's bigger than the yachts that visit our harbor each winter season, but really, let's face it, some people just have so much money they can actually acquire an ocean-going yacht. 

 

Below, practical advice with a touch of humor . . .

 

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 Grace Note:  Facebook Friends have already seen bulletins about this story, as it was happening. 

 

TRAVEL DISASTER

 My son and and his wife had a long-planned cruise scheduled for mid-March, including a four-day stay here in the Orlando at the end, which would include his birthday. The delays, oddities, and utter disasters that piled up have made me wonder if it was merely Fate, or was there some kind of Grand Scheme to keep my son in the U.S. Here is what happened . . .

My son is a bargain-hunter, pleased to find a small airline with the right schedule and the right price. They were informed the terminal opened at 6:00 am for a 7:00 am flight. They arrived on the dot of 6:00. Oops. Miscalculation. Umpteen people, more aware of the current TSA problem, were already lined up at the door. They checked their luggage, got all the say to final check-in, only to be turned away a few feet short of their goal. Plane full, doors closed. That was it. Rescheduled for a flight to Orlando, arriving at noon. Son frantically called his sister in Florida—could she drive them to Fort Lauderdale? She informed him it was a 3-hour drive. There was no way he was going to make a 3:00 sailing. 

Which might have been all right for an earlier-than-planned visit to the Orlando area, EXCEPT . . . their luggage had gone to Fort Lauderdale.  So they had to take Brightline (high-speed rail) to Lauderdale, Shuttle to the airline—only to find it locked up tight. So . . . rental car, Rte. 1 motel (which was surprisingly well-appointed, the only plus for the day). Almost two hours on hold as they tried to straighten out both luggage problem and cruise problem. They made the decision, despite the additional expense, to join the cruise in Cozumel.  

Breakfast at a 1950s-style diner, off to the airport. Still locked up. I have no idea how many phone calls it took to get someone there to retrieve their luggage, but it was 3:30 pm before they had it in hand and could safely book a flight to Cozumel, which would arrive at 8:00 pm, followed by a 3-hour trip to Cancun, where their cruise ship was scheduled to arrive at 8:00 am the next morning.

They were still going for flying to Mexico, when . . .

A fire in New Haven put paid to it all. (My son manages c. 100 apartments in New Haven, and the owner really, really needed his manager to manage (in addition to the barrage of phone calls from his workmen faced with the clean-up). So, Brightline back to Orlando—a ride for which they had only praise for their last-minute seating, food, luggage handling, etc. My daughter picked them up, dropped them at my house for an hour's visit, where I learned my son had insisted on a one-day vacation (this past Tuesday). The much-traveled couple then drove up to Sanford in my car, where, with all three of my grandchildren in college, there was a ample sleeping room for guests. 

And finally, on Tuesday, something besides Brightline went right. We toured nearly every inch of Leu Gardens, which was still impressive despite considerable damage from the hard freeze a month ago. And Tuesday night, even though we were thoroughly exhausted, we had a big extended family dinner at Bahama Breeze, where we celebrated David's birthday, which is actually next week (when he planned to be here).

Oh yes, when they tried to make arrangements to fly back to NYC, Hartford, or New Haven, they were quoted a price of $1200 EACH. Fortunately, Sanford, where my daughter lives, is slightly closer to Daytona Beach than Orlando. They were able to get a flight out of Daytona late Wednesday afternoon to White Plains, NY, where a friend was waiting to pick them up. I was picturing them safely home, when my son called me at midnight, admitting that after he picked up his own car, instead of returning to the peace of his apartment and love of his two kitties, he had gone to inspect the fire damage!

I do, at least, have the satisfaction of knowing they made it safely home, even though poor David was immediately plunged into a different kind of nightmare. By the way, he agrees with me that there may have been some special twist of Fate that kept him in Florida when he should have been on the high seas on the way to Mexico when he was informed he needed to return home.

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 Featured Book of the Week

 Headlines dictate that I should feature my book that actually has a scene in Iran (not easy to research, believe me!) Limbo Man is as close to a Thriller as anything I've ever written. I am happy to say, that I have first-hand knowledge of the remainder of the many international settings in the book (yes, even Siberia!) If I show compassion for the Russian characters, it's because that is how I found the Russian people, face to face, one on one. I will never forget the excitement on our Intourist guide's face when she emerged from a Siberian woods with a basket full of blueberries to take home to her family in Moscow! I hope you'll take the time to enjoy this change of pace from Blair Bancroft Regency Gothics and SciFi Fantasy.

 

 A lost Russian nuke plunges FBI Special Agent Vee Frost into a world-wide chase, from the East Coast to the Mid-West, from Florida to Siberia, on to Iran, and back again. Her only companion, an amnesiac Russian who may have the key to the location of the lost bomb locked in his head.

Author's Note: During the chaos of the break-up of the Soviet Union (c. 1990), ten nuclear bombs went missing. Limbo Man is a tale of "what might have been."

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For a link to Blair's website & editing info*, click here. 

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