ALOOOOOO-HAA!!!

 I WILL NEVER UBER AGAIN!!  But first, let's get to my overnight stop.  I drove through Sunday traffic jam after traffic jam for two hours to get to my destination.  Sacramento!  Lucky for me, it was cool and breezy.  I stopped in at Panda for some lunch AND dinner.  Cindy said to go early to beat the crowds returning from Tahoe.  And so I did.  Panda Express is my friend!

Monday morning I woke up at 2:00 am and never went back to sleep.  I finally got up at 4:00 to get ready for my UBER ride.  I requested (in advance) a female driver.  I don't know what happened to the first one assigned to me, but the second one named Kasey showed up right on time.  That was the only good thing that happened.

She jumped out of the car and said "you sure have crappy neighbors".  Apparently she parked for awhile at the end of the street with her car music blasting.  She got lambasted (or so she said) by a guy walking his dog.  I put my bags in the trunk and got into the front seat.  

Here's my pepper spray she said.  I started to get that feeling ... you know the one.  By the time we got to the first turn, she told me she was diagnosed as bipolar last month, but she was sure they were wrong.  She continued on about how men used her, and in fact she had been raped last week and the police refused to do anything about it.  You just can't make this stuff up.

She went on to say she was going to be a pro basketball star until Covid hit and RUINED her life.  She cried.  Two minutes later she was laughing about how she didn't need men anyway.  She sang to the radio, told me she was suing UBER because they were only paying her half what they were supposed to and laughed that her ride the day before tipped her $500.00.  I kid you not, it was the scariest ride of my life, mostly because she had a hard time keeping the car on the road.  I kissed the ground when she let me off at the airport.  

Cindy said to check my heavy bag, so I did, with a little help from a lovely couple who showed me the ropes.  We were loaded up on the plane and ready for takeoff.

AND AWAY WE GO into the wild blue yonder.  

It really could have been a great flight, except my carryon did NOT fit under the seat in the Hawaiian Airlines plane, as it did on Southwest.  I had to stow it overhead.

The people sitting next to me never left their seats, so I was unable to get my phone charger in order to read for the entire FIVE hour flight.  Instead I was entertained by the husband and wife team in front of me with the 8 month old baby.  The gal never sat down the entire trip.  She carried that baby back and forth, dumped it on her husband, carried it again, changed its clothes three times, even though it didn't need it and talked the entire trip.  Nary a peep from the baby.

At long last we landed ... 15 minutes early.  YAY!  Or not, because see this plane here?  It was in our spot and had "problems".  We sat on the tarmac for an hour before it finally pulled out.  They said to get your luggage on carousel #2.  I called Cyndy who had been waiting all the time in the parking lot and she finally came to where I was.  Come to find out, my one check-in bag (that she told me to check) was on carousel #4.  60 minutes later, we left the airport.  

We went straight to Coconuts Fish House for lunch.  What a crazy place. Sadly, town is not all that busy.  Many folks cancelled their reservations due to the tropical storms moving about.  It's weird, because in all the 30 years I've been coming here, there have never been storms like this.

Lunch was fabulous1. Coconut shrimp, a HUGE basket of fries and Cole slaw .........

Along with the biggest serving of onion rings I've ever seen.  I'm having the leftovers for breakfast.  

Because of the time change, It was still early afternoon, so we hung out in the pool for a few hours.  In spite of all the storms, it's HOT with a capital H.  At 3 am this morning, it is still 78 degrees and HUMID.  Think Florida!!  

The bad news is my room has no AC, only an open window and a ceiling fan.  It's no problem however, because you can always take a dip in the ocean.  

It was a beautiful sunset, but I'll wait until tomorrow for the pictures.  Hopefully I'll be out for a run this morning because it is just now 4:00 am.  The time change is killer!!!