29. That’s what the temperature gauge on my car read at 2:30 Tuesday morning as Chris and I began our trek to the Buffalo airport to catch an early morning flight to Fort Lauderdale where our friends would meet us and bring us to their house on Marco Island. It was a nice journey to the city. With our unseasonably warm winter, it was a relief to not have to worry about lake effect snow on the way and we marveled how nice it was to not have to pack coats. That ease-of-travel continued the rest of the day.

We had to scramble to get our backpacks out of the back of the car because the airport shuttle bus saw us and was sitting there waiting for us to load. We breezed through security in spite of the fact that out tickets did NOT have have the TSA-pre-check option printed on them (my second trip in a row where they “randomly” selected for me to not have that option. Arg.) Then we headed to the Delta gate where we discovered they were passing out granola bars and cookies to passengers. In case we didn’t have time to grab breakfast. How sweet is that? And pretty much unheard of in this day and age of airline cutbacks.

The dream trip continued as we sat on the east side of the plane and got to watch the sun rise. Magnificent. Yay, God! You did it again! Thanks for that eye-treat! Being a person who can sleep anywhere, I napped for the rest of that trip, waking up only to have some peanuts and tomato juice and a bit of a yak with the nice man beside me. In Atlanta we only had to transfer one terminal and easily got to our next plane about five minutes before loading. Got another nice nap on that flight, too. Along with another pack of peanuts and some orange juice.

We landed in Fort Lauderdale (where the temp was in the 80s) and decided to go find our friends from Alaska who were landing in the terminal next to ours. Chris and I momentarily forgot that I tend to be directionally impaired on a regular basis, and we let me lead. It was a bit toasty out there, and after a five-minute walk we realized we should have gone right instead of left when we left the terminal. Oops. The good news is that it ended out being somewhat of a sauna experience along with our exercise. Quite the spa.

After a bit of doing, we met up with Jen and Mike then texted MaryBeth and David who were picking us up. As Jen commented, they could find us easily since we all were the once obviously overdressed. I thought I was off with jeans, t-shirt and sweatshirt wrapped around my waist, but Jen had me beat in her turtle neck and wool socks.

Next we went off to lunch. I’ll stop here ‘cuz this is getting a it long.