12/21/2018
No boat travel
Depart: Faro Blanco marina Marathon FL 10: 20 a.m.
Arrive: Rumson NJ home 1:30 a.m.
From the time we left the marina until we reached home, we had spent over 13 hours using a variety of travel means to get there. Here is how our day went ...
Around 9:30 I got a phone call on my cell phone from a number I did not recognize that originated from Miami Florida. Thinking it was a robo call, I almost didn't answer the phone. Luckily I did as it was our shuttle bus driver calling to say he would be 40 minutes early. He muttered something about some reef and how he had to allow extra time for the trip to the airports. He said he'd arrive at 10:20 having just left Key West. Amazingly, we were climbing into the shuttle bus at 10:21!
We met interesting people on the bus trip to the airport. The first, of course, was the driver who told us he started driving the shuttle after he lost "everything" due to Hurricane Irma and had to earn extra money to rebuild his home. After rebuilding his home, he decided he liked the shuttle job so much he would continue part time.
We pulled into the Marathon City Marina to collect our next passenger who the driver referred to as "an old salt". Talking to "Mr. Salt" as we rode along, we discovered that he too had lost his home and all his property due to Irma, with his home being a sailboat moored in Boot Key. Almost 200 boats were wrecked in that storm. His was one of around 30 to 40 that were never found -- sunk or ashore!
To make matters worse for him, he was in a car wreck (not his fault) a week later that resulted in a broken wrist. Now he had no home, no car, and a serious injury to deal with. He had no insurance on his boat. The only shining star in his story was that the insurance settlement from the at- fault driver paid for a replacement car and a replacement boat better than his original.
The next person to join our expedition to the airport made finding him somewhat difficult. He lives in a motor home in a trailer park. All we had was the lot number. Instead of standing out in the open where we could see him we finally found him standing by his front door completely out of sight -- clever man!
This guy was a talker, and he knew it. A long-time Marathon resident he regaled us with stories for most of the trip. I got a crick in my neck turning around in my seat to converse with him. Throughout all of these interesting stories, and the whole trip for that matter, Clark was uncharacteristically quiet as he in said not a word. Instead, I did all the conversing!
The trailer park passenger was heading home to Pennsylvania for his 91- year- old father-in-law's funeral, to collect his wife, and ride his Harley back to Marathon. He explained all the features of his bike to me. It sounded like the Cadillac of all motorcycles. On top of all the bike features, he and his wife have electric body suits that are each controlled with a thermostat to stay warm. They also have headphones, so they can talk as they ride. I learned a lot about motorcycles and gear from that discussion.
Our next pick up, this time in Islamorada, proved even harder to find, and worse yet, she wasn't answering her phone. The driver left several messages. He said, "The next one will be, See ya later! " Fortunate for her, she finally answered the phone. She said, in a highly-defensive tone of voice, as an explanation of her ignoring the phone, "My phone was in my purse upstairs! " She then whined at the driver that he was early, so it wasn't her fault.
She sat next to me, so that was pretty much the end of me talking to the biker behind me. After she got settled in, we spoke a bit and it came out in conversation that she was heading home to Middletown, NJ, specifically, a senior community not 10 miles from our home in Rumson. Small world! She, however, was flying home out of Miami. We selected Fort Lauderdale airport, so we would definitely not be on the same flight.
When the driver called me to say he would arrive at 10:20 for our pickup, he said something about Ocean Reef, which meant absolutely nothing to me. He mentioned Ocean Reef to each passenger he picked up, so I figured it was a big deal. As we turned off route 1, and I saw unfamiliar scenery on either side of me, I pulled out Google Maps to see where we were going.
Ocean Reef, as it turned out, is an exclusive, gated community in North Key Largo requiring about a 10 mile detour from the normal route to the airports. Fortunately, this passenger stood waiting at the gate since the shuttle is not allowed on the property. After collecting our last passenger, our driver made for the airports. He said he hoped his driving didn't scare anyone. Although he drove at the posted speed limits, the high-velocity winds shook our high-profile shuttle bus making it feel faster and, actually, a bit unnerving.
The driver knew his stuff. He promised we would be at Miami airport at 1:15, and we were darn close to it. We made Fort Lauderdale airport less than 30 minutes later. With our flight scheduled to depart at 4:45, we would have plenty of time before our flight. I had checked as we approached the drop off spot, and the flight was shown as on time! No sooner did we get to our gate than that turned out to no longer be true.
As we sat in the airport, the departure time for our flight kept shifting further and further into the future. First 5:00, then 5:30, then 6:00 and 6:30, and 7:30. Newark was limiting the number of planes in their airspace due to nasty weather -- fog and rain with windy conditions. They finally boarded our plane at 7:20 only to make us sit on the tarmac for another hour before we got cleared to take off. We were originally scheduled to land at 7:47. At that time, we hadn't even left Florida yet.
When our flight arrived at Newark airport just after 11:00, they let us land. However, here again, we sat on the plane on the tarmac because another plane still occupied our gate. Finally the other plane pulled away, and we were cleared to come in. Passengers with connecting flights were allowed to exit before anyone else could disembark.
We planned to take the train home. The trains stopped running for the night around 1:00 a.m. The next train out was scheduled at 11:42. When the plane landed, we thought we had plenty of time to make the train. By the time we got off the plane, we were wondering if we would make it in time. Asking directions as we went, we grabbed the air rail connection to the train and hoped for the best! Arriving at the station, we purchased our tickets and found our way to the correct platform with 10 minutes to spare.
The movie "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" came to mind for today's travel as we considered using Uber or Lyft for the final leg of our epic journey. The train pulled into the train station nearest our home at 12:45 a.m. With temperatures in the 50s, we abandoned the call to Uber and decided to walk home.
We've walked it before. Last time we did it, it was snowing. Neither of us remembered how far it was to walk home, but we thought it was less than two miles. I checked Google Maps after we got home and discovered it was actually 2.1 miles door- to- door.
As we rounded the corner onto the street we live on, we saw lightening and heard thunder. When we got in the house, Clark looked at the radar for weather and said, "I'm glad I didn't look at the radar before we started walking! " The walk took us 45 minutes. Ten minutes after we got in the house, it started to rain. That was close!
With the thermostat in the house set at 50 degrees, we found it colder inside than it was outside. Clark went around adjusting heat and turning on the water. We cranked up the electric blanket to high hoping to take the chill out of the sheets. When I finally climbed into bed at 2:00 a.m., it still felt like I was snuggling up in a deep freeze. It was 3:00 before I finally managed to fall asleep.
Here's the view I woke up to the next morning -- Canada geese swimming down our creek! We don't usually have this view. Normally there is a big boat in the way.
