Those 70ish Girls

Kip and I had a good idea. Actually, it was Kip’s idea and it wasn’t that good. To tell you the truth, it was an idea that only sounds good if you say it real fast. If you say it slow and think about it, it doesn’t sound so good.

We were invited to a birthday celebration for a very dear friend of ours from our Wyoming days. She lives in Cathedral City, California. Her three kids planned a lovely party to be held at a club house not far from Ontario, California where my 2nd Dad, Gus lives.

JoAnne with her daughter Cheryl and Cheryl and  JoAnne’s daughter LeAnne cutting the wonderful cake. Kip loved it!

The plan was to catch an early flight to Ontario, have Gus pick us up at the airport and drive us to Cathedral City, about 70 miles down the road, where the three of us would attend the birthday party; then Gus could drive us back to Ontario to catch a return flight. We would get back to Dallas around 2:00 a.m. The 60 mile drive from Dallas to Mabank would be a snap. After all, there wouldn’t be any traffic that early on Monday morning.

Our plan could have worked, but it didn’t. We got up early Sunday morning, allowing for plenty of time to have a nice breakfast at McDonald’s on our way to catch our flight. We got to the airport and headed for security. With no bags, and our boarding passes already printed, we were sure to have plenty of time for a 2nd cup of coffee before boarding. This is where our plan started to crumble a little.

It took 1 1/2 hours to get through security. We ran to the gate, but with four minutes to spare, I stopped at the lady’s room. I felt terrible when I got to the gate and Kip was standing there by himself, and the gate was closed. They closed it four minutes early according to our watches, but we had no voice in the situation. (It was already closed when Kip got there so I wouldn’t have had to feel terrible.)

Kip on the escalator

We were told that we could try to go standby on the next flight leaving 3 hours later, but it was a full flight, so the likelihood of our getting on was slim. We calculated our time and decided we could still get to the party on time, and after all, we had invested so much time already, it just wouldn’t make sense not to try. We got on the flight.

I called Gus and he whipped in to pick us up. What a guy he is. He had an ice chest with cold bottles of water, bran muffins from the bakery, yogurt and bananas. We got to the party about 3:15 and had a wonderful time for about 2 hours. Then we headed back to the airport.

This is the only picture I got of Gus.

Gus dropped us off and we got all checked in and had time to grab some food because we hadn’t had enough time to partake of much of the wonderful food served at the birthday party. When we finished, I glanced at the board which showed our flight would be delayed 2 hours. I got very upset because I knew we only had an hour layover in Phoenix and we wouldn’t be able to catch our connecting flight. A young man overheard me, and calmed me down by reminding me the plane landed in Phoenix, but we didn’t deplane. Oh..okay..We got on the plane and settled in, then we heard a voice say, “This plane will land in Phoenix, but it will then go on to Baltimore. If you are continuing on to Dallas, you will catch a connecting flight that as of right now, is leaving from gate A 8. No one could tell us what time that flight would be leaving from gate A 8.

We got off the plane in Phoenix and in complete good faith headed for gate A 8. It was Kip and I, and about 30 other people who were all ahead of us. We waited to hear what our new fate would be. They gave us a voucher for the Double Tree Hotel, which Mom used to call the Twin Bushes, and another voucher for $24.00 that we could use for food at the airport. I didn’t need that because I was still carrying around 3 leftover slices of pizza and 1/2 of a Cinnabon roll). They gave us a number to call for the hotel shuttle.

 

This was very good pizza, but I can’t remember where I left it.

We finally got to the hotel, where they gave us our two warm chocolate chip cookies, which eased the pain some. We scheduled a shuttle to get us back to the airport for a 6:45 flight, and fell on the bed to watch a little news before going to sleep. Wait.. Sleep?? Kip said, “Let’s see..how long do we get to sleep before the wake-up call?” Kip always counts time.. 10 to 11, 11 to 12, and so on. He said, “1 to 2, 2 to 3…That’s it? We get to sleep for 2 hours?” That struck me funny and I couldn’t stop laughing.

We got on the shuttle at 4:00 a.m. The driver handed each of us a cold bottle of water, which I put in my extra large purse, (no luggage remember). We got to the pre-check area and did not have to take our shoes off because we were smart enough to do the early check-in and had our boarding passes on our cell phones. I put my purse on the conveyor belt and walked through the check point without setting off any alarms and we were good to go.. Well, not quite.

This is the only picture of me..on the escalator at the airport after the security situation.

“Ma’am!! Ma’am!!” I heard. “Do you have 2 bottles of water in your purse?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Just throw them out. I forgot.”

All of a sudden I was picked out of the crowd to go back through the check point, take my shoes off, stand with my arms above my head until someone told me I could come out the other side, where a very nice officer was putting on her plastic gloves while she told me she was going to “check out” a couple of areas that looked funny on the X Ray machine. Kip was standing there holding my purse and looking at his watch hoping we would still have time to spend the $24 voucher we still had on breakfast. Even after waiting for my shoes to be inspected by two different people, we had time to eat.

We are home now. Kip has been napping for 4 hours. I however, remain wide awake. Some of you might remember that when stressed, Murdo Girl gets a nervous tick in her right eye. It’s ticking like a time bomb right now.

I just listened to a voice mail from my brother who apparently talked to Gus. He wanted me to know he was laughing, and there was no need to call him back.

I can tell you one other thing. American Airlines won’t be seeing me for a very long time. I went out and kissed my RV when I got home.

I almost forgot. I did make one good decision. I didn’t wear my white capris. I wore black ones, for which I am very thankful.