September 18, 2004

Today is the travel day, Min and I are flying south to Tampa, Fla for John and Michelle’s wedding. We didn’t have to fly out until late in the day so Min was able to get home from work and take a little bit of a nap before she had to get up and pack. It is too bad that they decided to keep her late at work so that she got a lot less sleep than she would have otherwise. She didn’t get in until almost 10:00 and she had to get up at 1:00. Three hours is not a lot of sleep before flying all day.

Min got up at 1:00 and we packed and got everything ready to go. We left around 2:45 to go up to Tom Wahl’s and get some lunch. We took Andy out to lunch since he is dropping us off at the airport.

We got to Rochester’s airport with plenty of time to get to our plane. We can get through Rochester so fast and easily that it makes flying a lot less stressful than it might otherwise be.

The flight to BWI was fine and short. It is onlyabout 45 minutes of airtime from Rochester to Baltimore so that is an easy flight. We had almost no time in the airport there which made the flight extra fast (but dangerous since we were running a little bit late on the way down and only had a few minutes to get to the next plane.) The next leg of the trip was a bit longer, a couple of hours from BWI to Tampa. Min really doesn’t like flying and a long leg like that is really hard for her. It was especially bad because the flight was loaded with little kids who were being really obnoxious the whole way. They were fighting and bouncing and being loud the entire way. The were being so rough in their seats that they kept crashing into Min making her unable to sleep or relax. It was kind of bad for me too since my seat didn’t recline properly and I was stuck in that uncomfortable crash position the entire time.

We arrived in Tampa and decided to rent a car rather than to get a taxi because it was likely that the rental would be cheaper and definitely a million times more convenient. We went to Avis because we have had Hertz beat into us what idiots we are for ever trying to use them. Avis was great, cheap and polite and the car was fine so that all worked out really well. I have used them before and was very happy with them.

It took us about twenty minutes to find our hotel out in Clearwater. We stayed at the Fairfield out there not because Min is working there now but they had the best deal that we managed to find in the area. We got checked in and checked out our room quickly. Then we headed right out to find the rest of the wedding partiers out on Sand Key. We had good directions and didn’t have any problem finding our way out there. Our hotel was about ten minutes away from Sand Key so that wasn’t bad at all. Everyone was at a restaurant called Backwater out on the deck waiting for us.

Dinner was nice, the food was really good and interesting. The best thing was the fried mac and cheese (eat your heart out, Andy!) We ate dinner but didn’t hang out really. Min and I went back to the hotel to get some sleep. I guess John and Michelle went out and hung out on the beach until late. I don’t know who all went out and hung out with them.

It was really nice because we got a chance to meet John’s sister Allison and her husband Dan was live out in Colorado. I have never met them before so that was really cool. We all got along really well and had a really good time.

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