Florida vacation – Day 1, Orange MA to Ocala FL

My older son, Anthony, has been begging me for years to bring his daughter, Liliani, to Florida to visit him (she lives in MA with her mother). But timing, finances and the pandemic have made that difficult. As an added problem, Liliani, who is 15 now, had never flown before and was not comfortable with the idea of traveling alone. As long as I was in Florida, accompanying her to Florida would have meant flying to Massachusetts, getting her on a flight back to Florida, then reversing the trip – two round trips for me and one for her.

But I am in Massachusetts this summer. And the thought of sharing a first plane ride with her was pretty appealing. Plus she wanted to have a day at Universal Studios Orlando, which is my favorite theme park. So, with careful planning, I realized that it would be possible to fit a 5-day trip to Florida (3 days there plus 2 travel days) into the end of my stay in Massachusetts, before I headed out on the TS7.

So on Thursday this week I drove my battle-scarred truck (now sporting two new tires on the right rear and driving very smoothly) an hour to Worcester to pick her up, then drove back to Orange, packed up Rusty’s stuff, drove him to Uncle Rays cabin in New Salem, dropped him off, returned to the RV, finished packing then drove to a Motel 6 near Bradley International Airport near Hartford CT for an overnight before our 7:45am United Airlines flight. I was not originally planning on a night in a hotel, but the blowout disaster on Wednesday rattled my faith in the truck. I figured a few bucks spent on a hotel room would buy a lot of peace of mind.

We got up at 5:45am and were out the door by 6:30am. The long-term lot where I had planned to leave the truck was full, so I had to drive to the alternate lot – more expensive but only slightly so ($8 per day instead of $6) and WAY cheaper than the long-term lot at Logan Airport in Boston ($15 per day or more). We had the bag checked and were in the security line by 6:45am.

Where we encountered the world’s slowest TSA employee. We were only about 10th in line, but it took a full 20 minutes to clear security – a flow rate of 1/2 person per minute. We got to the gate just as boarding commenced, with no time to get coffee. But I got a cup of United Airlines coffee on the first flight – Hartford CT to Washington DC (Dulles). Not great coffee but it kept me from ripping someone’s throat out.

We had an hour layover at Dulles and we used the time to grab some pretzels and drinks. Yeah, pretzels for lunch. The second flight was a bit bumpy but got us to Ft Myers safely by 1pm. We then took a taxi to my home base, where the roads were being sealcoated. I had already arranged to have a staff person move my Toyota to a location where I could get it (just my luck – the 5-day sealcoating schedule had my site inaccessible on the one day when I needed to access it). We were in the car and on the road to Ocala by 2:30pm and arrived in Ocala at 5:45pm – exactly 12 hours after our alarm went off in the morning.

A LONG day of travel. Lili slept in the car. I didn’t.

Tony and Lili were very happy to see each other. Their smiles made it all worthwhile.