NORTH CAROLINA ADVENTURES, CHAPTER #1

My recent adventures in North Carolina give me quite a bit of fodder for writing.  It all starts when my daughter comes to pick me up at work so we can get to the airport.  I watch for her from my window, which faces the visitors' parking area, so when I see her car, I announce, "My ride's here!"  The students rush to the window and start waving, even though her car is about one hundred yards away.  I snap a picture of them in the classroom waving to her, instead.  It has been a long morning of state testing after two other long mornings of state testing, so we're all a little punchy; our waving picture is a silly but endearing.

Even though we are early for our flight, we have no trouble finding a parking spot near the terminal walkway bridge.  This is the same terminal we'll be flying back into, so it will be easy in and easy out.  We get into the security line, which is long, and I see people being frisked and checked and having luggage opened.  Many of them are in socks, having their shoes removed for the check.  A woman comes along and ushers us to the TSA pre-check area, away from this horrid snake of accosted travelers, and we are through security in about ten minutes -- the line is nine minutes and thirty seconds; our security check is thirty seconds.

We get TSA pre-check by proxy.  I had never flown before Good Friday of this year when my friend convinced me to get on an airplane.  She is TSA pre-check via flying with her military son, which made me TSA pre-check for that flight.  Apparently, since I pose no threat to national security, I am now on the TSA pre-check list, too, which means so is my daughter who is traveling with me.  This means that if I ever do have to go through the basic security at an airport, I will have no flaming idea what I am supposed to do.

We are so early we decide to get lunch.  Our waitress has other ideas and decides to chat with a pal after taking our beer order.  Waiting fifteen, maybe even twenty, minutes for draft beer, I get up, go to the bar, and pick the beer up myself.  Strike one for the waitress.  When we're ready to go, it takes almost as long to get the check.  Strike two.  I'm generally a generous tipper, but not today.  She gets what she gets at 15%.

We have a layover in DC.  I had to proctor the test this morning, so we have to work our tickets around the state of Massachusetts and the dreaded PARCC test.  Thank god it's a timed test or I'd never have made the plane to get to DC in the first place.  Dulles is swarmed with people.  It's like someone poked the hornet's nest.  They're everywhere.  We locate a bathroom then locate our gate.  After figuring out where we are, we walk a few gates away and find seats, me on a chair and my daughter on the floor.  I tug at my pocketbook and the leather strap on the zipper snaps off.  Great.  Now every time I need my money or my ID, I have to hook my pinkie into the metal ring that remains.

Our shuttle from DC to Charlotte is so small that we get to walk across the tarmac to it and climb aboard like rock stars.  The seats, even though they're tight, have more leg room than the large plane we were just on.  I am, however, disappointed to note that neither plane today has television screens, so I cannot watch the plane's progress on the map.  An extremely tall man, well over six feet, sits across the aisle from me.  His legs extend beyond the seating area though he folds himself up like a pretzel.

It's a short flight from DC to NC, and as soon as we are in the air it feels like we start descending.  We couldn't see any of DC from Dulles, which is kind of a rip-off, but we can easily see Charlotte as we approach Douglas Airport.  It's a beautiful evening, just before seven o'clock, and the fading sun beams off tall buildings downtown as we prepare for landing.  We are through the airport after a reasonably long trek from the gate, and we end up in line at the car rental place.  They're so busy the guy who checks us into the car is sweating from running around.  After a quick perusal of the bright red Fiat we will be driving, we're off.

Now, it's my turn to return my daughter's favor of getting us to the airport -- I'll be getting us out.  Only one wrong turn on the connecting highway, and we're headed to the hotel.  Good thing, too, because we cannot, for the life of us, locate the switch to turn on the headlights.  The car, with less than 17k miles on it, shakes so much it's like driving a massage car, and we accidentally keep setting off the alarm every time we open the back doors.

We do a quick meet-and-greet at my son and daughter-in-law's house to see them and the baby, but it's later in the evening by the time we get there, mostly because of my wrong turn and because it takes us five minutes to figure out the headlights while we are getting ready to leave the hotel.  We end up eating at Chili's the first night because the strip malls in NC are huge, the sizes of small towns, and it's a bit daunting in the dark.  Our Chili's waitress must be the long-lost twin of the waitress at Logan Airport back in Boston.  I almost have to find our drinks again, which seems to be something at which I need little practice (imagine that).

Tomorrow, I'll clue you in as to how I am probably on the security camera at the hotel, and why I probably will have to find a new place to stay the next time I go down.