I am writing from an airplane high above Tennessee, on our
way to Georgia. We are off on spring break 2018, heading to The Masters golf
tournament. It’s a bucket list item for us. Thanks to a customer of Dan’s, we
have this opportunity.
This would have been something you do as a foursome. In
fact, in order to book this trip, we needed to have 4 of us to make the Masters
badges and off-day tee times work. We had a foursome once, but life – and death
– are unpredictable. And, as we’ve learned in the past 7 years, sometimes you
have to recalibrate, adjust and carry on.
So, it’s the three amigos and our good friend Ellen. She
rivals Dan as the biggest golf freak I know. Ellen will love every minute of
this and she is the perfect fit for our foursome. We have tickets to the Masters
on Thursday and Saturday and we get to play golf ourselves on Wednesday and
Friday.
High school golf season started two weeks ago and no courses in
Rochester have been able to open yet due to the late arrival of spring weather.
Now, remember when I said life is unpredictable? We were supposed to leave on
Tuesday afternoon, not Monday. But, mother nature is smacking us in
the face again.
Sunday night, they began forecasting another winter storm - scheduled to hit Tuesday and last until Wed. morning. They
are predicting 10 inches of snow in Rochester.
So, when we woke up this morning, Ellen called to discuss
alternate travel plans. See, our flight was supposed to be RST to ATL Tuesday
afternoon at 4pm. And, there’s only one flight a day to ATL.
We tried to call Delta and it was a two hour wait to get an
agent. Dan called his sister Katie,who works for Delta, and she looked and
could see that there were seats on today’s RST-ATL flight at 4pm. So, Ellen came
and picked up me and Dan and the three of us went to the airport in Rochester
to see if we could change tickets. We all had to go because we were on three
different reservations!
This nice man named Peter was working the ticket counter. We
told him – it’s really simple, we want to move from tomorrow’s flight to
today’s flight. No connections, no need to change anything else. There were 10
empty seats so it was no problem. And, he didn’t even charge us a ticket change
fee.
So, by 8:15am we knew that we were leaving today. It was
time for mad scramble mode. Erin was supposed to work a shift this afternoon,
so the first thing was to wake Erin up and have her find a sub (she did). Then,
I had to crank out some laundry since all my clothes were dirty from AZ... oh,
did I fail to mention I just returned home from visiting a friend about 18
hours ago? 4 loads of laundry. Done.
Then, we needed a place to stay tonight since we don’t get
into our house in Aiken, SC until tomorrow. Dan got on with Marriott and got us
two rooms tonight at the Atlanta airport. Then, I had to call the neighbors and
see if they could take care of our pets starting tonight instead of tomorrow… check.
Erin ran to Target for a few things and we picked up lunch. Dan
and I worked and then when the laundry was done, we all packed our bags. We are
not traveling light – three suitcases and three sets of golf clubs. We got it
all packed, Ellen came over at 2:15, and we were in the air by 4pm. Holy shit.
It will be great to get to play golf and watch the most
prestigious golf tournament in the world. So, we are off on an amazing
adventure. The days and trips with Erin are numbered. We’re cherishing every
minute of it.
