This One Time, In Key West... (PART FOUR - HEADING HOME)

We woke up early on our last morning, so we could grab a quick breakfast and stop into town to pick up some giant cookies for the plane ride home.  Our flight was at 5:30 later that day, but we were out the door by 9:30am.

We drove to Dunkin Donuts for what we anticipated to be a speedy on-the-go meal, but ended up being there for half an hour as the two slowest women on Earth took our orders and messed up Claudia's food three times.  When we went into town the first store we needed to go to was closed, and the cookie store didn't have the kind that Jil wanted.

"Let's just go home, I think we're done here" was the general consensus.

We drove to the airport, this time not in rush hour traffic, and also this time in the daylight.  We could see the beautiful water as we drove over bridge after bridge, and the big mansions that Oprah and other celebrities had as vacation homes.  About a third of the way into our drive, we stopped in Islamorada for a pee break (I wasn't lying when I said I always have to pee), and Jil showed us the beautiful spot where she had wanted to take us on our way down for dinner and drinks.  It's a shame, it would have been an amazing start to our trip had we not been delayed for ten years of our lives.

One last group pic with our best friend, the selfie stick

The one thing that was not so amazing about Islamorada; there was water beneath the bridge that was filled with tarpons.  For those of you who aren't familiar, they are fish that are roughly the size of a basketball player.  These things are HUGE, and they jump straight out of the water to catch food and their eyes are half the size of my face.  It's not ok.  More ok than the iguanas, but still...not great.  Also with them were sharks.  Because nothing is more comforting that looking down at fish half the size of a football field, only to have a shark mosey on by.

The monster to the left of the shark was easily 6 ft long.  WHY ARE YOU SO BIG, FISH?

We got back in the car and drove and drove and drove.  Luckily, it was sunny, beautiful weather.  We stopped to get gas and stock up on beef jerky for the plane (protein kids, it's all about protein).  We arrived at the car rental place, dropped off the car, grabbed our bags, and walked into the airport.  They weighed our bags after telling us that if they were over 40 lbs we would have to pay an extra $30 fee.  The suitcase that Jil and I had split was 39.5 lbs.  Carol and Claudia's suitcase was 42 lbs.  Carol opened the bag and, understandably frustrated, took out a bunch of clothes and threw them in the brown paper bag that had held our giant cookies.  The part that was annoying was that we had exactly the same amount of stuff in our suitcases as we did on the way down.  And remember when I said Carol hates carrying a bag?  This was not her favorite moment.  We walked to our gate, sat down, and that's when the rain came.  The sky was black, it rained down, it rained up, it rained sideways.  It was like that scene in Forrest Gump.  Jil pulled up a weather map on her phone and we saw Hurricane Harvey coming from the west and a new hurricane coming from the East.  Right down the center was a clear path that luckily included Atlanta, which we had a layover in again.

They boarded us 30 minutes late, and then we sat on the runway (Tarmac? Airport driveway?) for a full hour waiting for the rain to let up.  We then noticed that none of the seats had air sickness bags, so I started doing inventory in my head of how many random plastic bags I had in my carry-on that I could give to Carol if need be.

We finally got off the ground and again we had turbulence.  Not as bad as the trip down, but enough for us to grab the seats in front of us again.  We landed in Atlanta and they told us we had 10 minutes to get off and do whatever before we had to board again.  We ran off, peed quicker than we had peed before, went to board the plane, and were told it would still be about a 20 minute wait.

So we just threw our bags on the ground and sat where we stood.  Chairs be damned, they were a full two feet away.

The second leg of the flight went so smoothly that I thought, "If every flight was like this, I would fly all the time".  Literally the SECOND that thought left my mind, our plane started shaking again and the pilot came on and told us there would be some turbulence.  At that point, I was so exhausted I literally don't even remember what I was thinking.

At around 10:30 that night we landed, and by 11:45 we were home.

Although the travel to and from was hell, the trip itself was amazing, albeit exhausting.  I'll tell you one thing though; as I sat in my apartment the next day, with the temperature outside barely reaching 60 degrees as it poured for 24 hours straight, I desperately longed to be back in those muggy, sunny, iguana filled Florida Keys.

The EP Ladies