Day 1 – Saturday Oct 22nd
So the day is finally here. To be honest, I had mixed feelings about this trip. I was excited to be going down to Orlando for the AFP (Association of Financial Professionals) conference (and Disney of course), but was also kind of sad that the rest of the family weren’t coming with me. However, work wanted me to go, so what was a Controller to do?
I left work a bit earlier on the 21st to finish packing, etc, so I was pretty much ready to go when I woke on Saturday morning. My flight was booked for 1:00 in the afternoon, so I had a bit of time in the morning. Liam (my son) has karate on Saturday mornings, so he was up around 8ish to get ready. My thought was I would drive him to the dojo before heading to the airport (I was flying out of Buffalo on Southwest again). However, Liam is a bit funny when it comes to things like this. He had made up his mind he wanted to say goodbye at home and didn’t really want me to drive him to karate. No real reason, just how he is. Regardless, I told him it didn’t make sense for him to walk, and he eventually came around to the idea.
Around 8:45 we all jumped into the car (Tammy (my wife), Steph (our daughter), Liam and I) and I drove them to the dojo. I dropped them off, said my goodbyes, and I was on my way to Buffalo. The drive to Buffalo was uneventful. The officer at the boarder gave me a hard time about going to a conference of financial professionals (“wow, that sounds like fun” he said. “You’re just jealous” I replied. We both had a laugh and then he sent me on my way). I pulled into the airport around 10:30. I found a parking spot in the long term parking lot and then took a shuttle to the main terminal, and before I knew it I was waiting at the gate.
My plane
The first order of business was lunch. There was a neat sandwich shop by the gate called WhichWich so I thought I’d give it a try. The way it works is there are a bunch of sandwich bags labelled with the type of sandwich you’ll be ordering. On the bag are all the toppings you can put on your sandwich, and you just check off what you want and then hand the bag in and wait. I got an Italian BMT, and it was really good.
I didn’t have long to wait after lunch before boarding.
Boarding is one of the places where travelling alone is great. I was in the B group of boarding passengers so I was expecting to be near the middle to back of the plane. I had hoped to get one of the seats by the emergency exit to be able to have some leg room, but being in the B group I wasn’t hopeful. Well….I got something even better. I step on the plane and the first row has two empty seats in it. I ask the woman sitting in the one seat if the other seats were taken, which they weren’t. SCORE. For the first time in 8 years of flying to Orlando, I could do this:
The flight down was good. I brought headphones with me so I ran through my Spotify list for a while (before falling asleep). I woke up and watched the last half of Iron Man on my tablet, and soon we were descending into the Orlando International Airport.
The Florida coastline:
I was one of the first off the plane and headed into the main terminal. I was surprised at how quiet the airport was. “How quiet” you ask? This quiet
Did Orlando suffer a zombie appocalypse or something?
Next up was a first for me…I had to get my bags (no Magical Express for me this time). It’s always a great feeling when you see your bag coming around the carousel.
See that green case with the wheels. That's mine.
Good times. Next up was another first…I rented a car. I went for something small from Alamo. Nothing fancy, but it did the trick.
I picked the car up, looked up the route to the hotel on Google maps (it was pretty much a straight line from the airport to the hotel) and headed out. About 30 minutes later I pull into the hotel parking lot and pull up to the gate. The person at the gate asks my name so they can look up my reservation (I hadn’t checked in yet), so they could charge the parking to my room. I gave them my name and waited. “Are you sure you have a reservation here?”…Ummmmm….Yes? Turns out the answer was No, I didn’t. Funny thing. There are actually two Rosen hotels by the convention centre, and I was at the wrong one. The other one was about 5 minutes down the street from where I was so no big deal. Despite having a minor heart attack, everything else was good. 5 minutes later I was at the correct hotel.
to be continued
