A marketing blog.

Thompson took Ella and me to the airport to meet up with Bob and Kay.  We arrived at 2:15 for a 4:45 PM JetBlue flight which seemed way too early for a Nashville flight.  However, with only one gate agent working, and us having 15 bags and trunks of supplies, it took us almost an hour just to get our boarding passes. We qualified for TSA Precheck due to Bob’s frequent flyer status, I guess.  It reminded me of having a Fast Pass at Space Mountain and walking past all of those poor souls in the long, non-moving line.  We didn’t have to strip, remove our shoes, or unpack our severely insufficient 2.4 ounces of toothpaste, shampoo and deodorant.  Best of all, we avoided the modesty- induced rotating, hands in the air x-ray machine, for the much preferred traditional metal detector door frame.

Overall, the JetBlue flight was pleasant and uneventful

  After flying American and Delta most recently where they charge you for every little item including the number of fillings in your teeth, JetBlue’s free snacks including  Popcorners, cookies and Doritos, free Wifi, and free TV with 24 channels was pretty impressive and made the flight go by quickly.

In Fort Lauderdale, while waiting on the Quality Inn hotel shuttle (yes, that is a real thing!), we met a group of women from Bavaria who lived on Lake Constance in Germany.  They had flown in with plans to drive to Key West but their International drivers license voucher was declined for some reason.  Bob, who doesn’t know a stranger, engaged them in conversation and found them a couple of rooms at our hotel.  It was a pretty tight fit in the shuttle with our mountain of bags combined with theirs, but it all worked out.

We head to the airport at 6:15 for our flight to Port au Prince at 9:00 AM.  Bob and Kay keep warning us of the chaos at PaPrince airport with “sky caps” aggressively grabbing your bags to carry them 50 feet to your shuttle then demanding $20 tips.  With our mountain of oversized bags, we have 7 bags that weigh over 45 pounds, 3 of which weighed in at the exact maximum of 50 pounds, I am not sure that $20 wouldn’t be a bargain but we will see.

Ella doesn’t seem nervous at all.  She seems to be relaxed and looking forward to tomorrow.