My flight to Ft. Lauderdale left at 9:20pm from Long Beach. It was a direct flight to Ft. Lauderdale, so that was convenient. I departed my apartment around 4:40pm, and it took until 6:45 or so to get down to the airport area. I snagged a bite to eat, then parked the car, checked in, went through security, and hung out at the gate. The flight itself was actually really nice – JetBlue is definitely an ace airline. Very friendly courteous staff, comfy seats, and the free snacks and DirecTV is certainly a major perk. I ended up watching “Entourage” on my iPod instead, and played a bit of Portal. I tried to sleep, but just couldn’t do it. I got maybe 20 minutes at most, if that.
We had an amazing tailwind, and at one point, the on-screen GPS had us clocked at over 700mph! Crazy! As such, we landed 30 minutes early – at 4:30am EST. Urgh. Luckily the Haitian cabbie that drove me to my grandma’s started driving the wrong way – so after going south for about 10 minutes, I asked if he was headed to Coconut Creek. Oops. He thought I meant Coconut Grove. We managed to barter the rate down, because of his screw up.
It was about 5:30 when we finally found the right place, and luckily my dad was awake. I wasn’t very tired anymore (got my second wind) and we spent a bit of time talking, as the sun rose. I did manage to get a few hours of sleep before we went to the 2pm funeral service, which was very moving. We then went back, got a bite to eat, packed up, and headed to the airport, for a 7pm flight to Boston. That flight was not very full, so we were able to be comfortable. I watched some TV, and then dozed off for about 20 minutes before we landed smoothly in Boston. It’s much colder here. It’s been a rather crazy 24 hours (as one can imagine) and the next 24 will be rather busy too.