Just What the Doctor Ordered
Sure, there were no doctors involved, but I bet if one was, he would have ordered me to go on vacation. Anyway, with two week’s worth of activities to blather on about, I’m going to break it up in multiple posts (besides, that gives you something to look forward to the next day).
It all started nearly two weeks ago. Randy and I drove down to my parents for Christmas. Prior to my arrival, my mother notified me that she brought my dad to the hospital again with Pneumonia (his sceond time in as many months). She made it sound like he was feeling better, but that he wasn’t up for going to our friend’s Christmas Eve party…just in case.
Unfortunately, what Randy and I discovered upon our arrival was a feeble, frail shell of my father. Seriously, he hadn’t cleaned or shaved in days, he never got out of pajamas, he could barely lift his eyes, and scariest of all, he had lost all sense of balance. At nearly 80 years old he kept losing his balance and collapsing. Fortunately, he had a walker to help, but the damn fool kept saying he didn’t need it and would get up, lose balance, then either fall or get caught by one of us (or by a wall).
He needed to be in the hospital, but he refused to go. Consequently, our Merry Christmas Eve, Day, and Day after Christmas were spent worrying on constantly that he was going to collapse and break a hip.
But Christmas wasn’t all miserable. We did manage to have a nice meal, we played lots of games, and had a fun time exchanging gifts. Randy and I went for a nice ride to photograph the holiday lihts on the mansions of Osterville and Cotuit.
And after daily hounding, my father FINALLY agreed to go to the hospital the day after we left. They diagnosed him with hyper-thyroidism and said that the pneumonia was already out of the system. He’s now in a rehab facility building up stregth. Though, it sure would have been nice if he’d listened to us BEFORE Christmas and gone to the damn hospital to be diagnosed (and start recuperating) earlier.
So, on Friday Randy and I drove to Boston, finished packing, and caught our flight to Miami with our friends, Chris and Pete. We arrived arrived and checked into a nearby hotel just after 10PM and immediately headed down to the hot tub. Ah yes, a good start to the vacation.
But things began turning to shit the next morning when Randy and I took a cab to the car rental facility only to find that, despite our 3 month old confirmation, they had no cars for us. Having cell phones, we called their main reservations number only to find they didn’t have a single car in Miami. But wait, it gets worse. We asked them to expand their search…perhaps Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, or Homestead? Nothing. There wasn’t a single rental car available in southern Florida (again, despite our written confirmation number).
We took the cab back tot he hotel room (right now a total expense of $50 wasted) and started going online and calling EVERY auto rental center we could (Avis, Hertz, Enterprise, Dollar, Thrifty, National, etc…) and every single one had run out of cars in ALL of their southern Florida locations.
How the F*&K does this happen? Could they not have sent me a call/email letting me know that my confirmation wasn’t going to be honored so that I could make other plans? Frantic, we called Pete’s father who lives in West Palm Beach. After a few calls he saved the day. He got his condo building’s superintendent, Mel, to drive the four of us down to Key West.
We waited and hour and a half for him to arrive, then spent 5+ hours driving through the Keys in the worst traffic jam imaginable.
OK – here’s where I skip the great middle parts of the trip (beachs, dinners, strippers, Mojitos) and jump to the return drive from Key West to Miami/Ft. Lauderdale. I’ll post about those other great parts in the next few days).
At the end of our trip we managed to find a car rental (at Dollar) in Key West that allowed us to drop the car off in Miami. We made it through the Keys easy enough and were just entering the marshy/swampy Everglades portion of south Florida when “pop”, wiggle, wobble…the rear tire blew. Here we were on a 55MPH two lane highway with traffic coming at us in the other lane. The area was under construction so there was no shoulder to pull into so I pulled over (throgh construction cones) into a ravine of sorts. A muddy/clay ravine.
Between the 4 of us (OK, the 3 of them) we managed to get a replacement tire on (but not until after the jack twisted in the dirty and collapsed the car on us).
Long story short, we needed to get the car to the agency to replace it. The nearest place was Miami…70 miles away. We got there, slowly and wobbly, only to get lost finding the place. Seriously, the signage sucks and we essentially circled the ghettos of Miami dozens of times.
But that’s it for the bad stuff. From here on end, only good memories from a great trip! I promise! Like I said, I can promise you stories about strippers, drag queens, $2 Mojitos, chickens, lizards, 6-toes cats, and Hulk Hogan!
Tune back in tomorrow!
2 Comments
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Karl, sorry to hear about your dad, hope he will get better now that they know what’s going on. Can’t wait for the next installment of your trip.
Worst traffic ever?? That part was a bit of a dramatization.