I'll Fly Away

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We could have gone to The Parade. We both had Thursday off and Keith asked me if I wanted to go into Philadelphia for the Eagles Parade. Sure, I wanted to go, but practically, I didn’t. I had way too much to do to get ready for our trip and I knew if we went I would be up half the night finishing up everything, plus Keith had a lot of things he had to catch up on, so we passed. I did watch some of it online when I could and had it on the radio. I had friends who went who thoroughly enjoyed it, so I am glad for them. I wonder if Jason Kelce's line of " We're from Philly, (expletive part censored since this is a rated G blog), No one likes us, we don't care," will now be tacked on to the beginning of the Eagles song.We didn’t need to leave until 1:00 Friday. I just had some last minute packing of toiletries to do and some things like the cat’s food, water and litter to do. I was hoping to just take one suitcase, but when I weighed it it was 50.6 pounds. I couldn’t really take anything out as I hadn’t even packed 8 days worth of clothing. So, I pulled our clothes for Saturday out and put them in a carry on, along with a few other things to get the suitcase to 45 pounds. Once again, we booked our flight out of Baltimore because it was a lot cheaper and made it worth our while to drive to 2 hours and 15 minutes to Baltimore. We had left overs for lunch and left a little after 1.There wasn’t much traffic that time of day. I missed the exit for the airport, so we had to backtrack a bit. Baltimore’s long term lot is split into 2 parts, A and B, so you don’t have to sit on the bus as long to pick people up. It was chilly and we had to wait about 10 minutes for a shuttle. We dropped off our bag and security didn’t take long. Our flight was delayed 30 minutes, so we went to the airport lounge and waited. They had light snacks and I got some clam chowder from the Phillips Seafood place next door.We went to the gate and they were asking for people to check their carryons, so we checked it (for free) and got to board before our zone was called. The plane was cramped. The seats only reclined a little and it was a sardine can, but it wasn’t a long flight, so it was bearable.We stopped at the restroom on our way to baggage claim and then at an Asian food place and got a couple of vegetable spring rolls. It was there they I realized I had left my cell phone in the bathroom. I went back, but couldn’t find it. I asked the attendant if anyone had turned it in, but she said no. She got her cell and told me to use it to call mine to see if it was in the bathroom. A woman answered and said she had found it and would bring it back. So, I got my cell phone back. That is what I get for not putting it in my purse.By the time we got to baggage claim (a really long walk), our bags were there and we walked over to the rental car shuttle. And waited. And waited. And waited. It must have been 20 minutes before a shuttle came. The Houston rental car place is confusing. You can find the desks okay, but the garage part is a mess. There were no obvious signs where the rental cars were other than downstairs. We ended up at Hertz, with no signage to point us in the right direction. We went back up to the main area and walked half the place before we found someone to ask. It was the next lot over from Hertz, but without a sign pointing in the right direction, we had no way of knowing that.Once we got our car, we headed over to the Homewood Suites for the night.

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