Day 1 – Thursday
Bruce’s mom, Harriett has enjoyed spending the month of February in Florida for the past 15 years or so. After Covid, she wasn’t able to get the same place, so she decided to go to Monterey, California instead. Her brother lives in Monterey so she rented an AirB&B about 5 minutes from him. Bruce and both of his sisters were each going to come out for a weekend. But unfortunately, Harriett got Covid for the first time at the beginning of January. It messed with her for a long time and she was not up to going to California for February. But she kept the Condo and told us all to still go. Bruce and I took her up on it.
Since we like to live on the edge, we left our house at 8:05 for our 9:00 boarding flight. Luckily we had no problems. We arrived at the long term parking lot for the airport around 8:30 & jumped on the shuttle conveniently waiting for us in the parking lot. Since we were not checking any suitcases, we headed straight for the inspection place. No one was in line so we went straight through without a hitch. The beauty of a small airport on a Thursday morning. Our plane left about 30 minutes late for unknown reasons. Some how (Bruce swears he did not pick these) we were in the very last seats of a teeny little plane. Our seats were row 24, which tells you how small it was. I guess it was a little windy ‘cuz this was the worst take off I can remember. I couldn’t even look out the window because you could see the wing wobbling as we bounced along. I seriously thought we were gonna roll over going down the runway. It wasn’t much better in the air. You definitely feel every bump (wait – what could we be bumping on going through those soft fluffy clouds?) when you’re in the back row. I was praying like crazy. Bruce was calm and cool. I know that my life is ALWAYS in God’s hands, but I definitely FEEL it when I’m flying.
We changed planes in Denver where luckily our 2nd even tinier plane was also late to take off. We arrived in sunny Monterey, California with no problems. Aunt Mary & Uncle Stan picked us up and took us to their house. Devin, Bruce’s cousin Haddie’s hubby, loaned us their truck to drive and a couple bikes to ride around. Perfect! We grabbed a few groceries and headed for our Condo.
We met back up with Mary, Haddie & Devin and their son, OJ, and Lottie & Paul for dinner at the Dust Bowl. This was definitely within biking distance, but I didn’t want to bike home in the dark, so we drove. We had some yummy Mexican from a food truck permanently parked by the back patio of the Dust Bowl. Unfortunately I didn’t take one single picture of us there. You’ll just have to trust me.
