PART 10 – THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
It was finally here, the day I had been dreading. Waking up in our luxury King Suite for the last time I started reflecting over the last fortnight – How comes time doesn’t go as quick as this when you’re at work?
I remembered the kids faces on the morning of our departure, the turbulence trauma on the way over, that first experience of the beating Florida sun as we left Sandford airport, when we were introduced to our 'Monster Truck' and when we first arrived at what we had called ‘home’ for the last fourteen days.
In theory we still had almost a full day left as our flight wasn’t scheduled to take off til 5pm that afternoon but we knew that we couldn’t really do a lot as we had to be at the airport for about 2pm and I think as soon as you hit that last day you really just want to be home again.
We finished off any last minute packing, loaded the cases into the jeep, tidied up, locked up, said our farewell’s to the villa and headed off toward the 192 at about 10am. We made a pit-stop at Ponderosa and the idea was to fill up on breakfast buffet which would hopefully last us until we got fed on the plane. Ben seemed well up for it and managed a good four or five plates full before admitting defeat – that lad can eat for England; yet his brother is quite the opposite. Jack had two slices of water melon and some mushrooms...
Once fed and watered we walked along to the nearby Sports Outlet and had a browse to kill some time. We bought the kids a couple of Baseball T-shirts and some American Football pendants for their bedrooms back home. The time was getting on for 12.30pm so we decided we would have a slow drive up towards Sanford Airport.
The jeep was quite low on fuel with the gauge reading just under quarter of a tank – I didn’t really want to put any more gas in so decided to gamble on getting to the airport with what we had. We hit the I4 and then turned off onto the Toll Road which would pretty much take us all the way back to Sanford.
It was a beautiful day and it was a beautiful drive. Sods law would have it that on our last day and heading back to the airport we actually found a music station on the radio that actually played something other than soft rock. It hadn’t bothered me at first but I was getting a little tired of hearing “Bye Bye Miss American Pie” after two weeks so we even got some more popular and up to date music to accompany our journey back. Funny thing was that although we travelled exactly the same road back it didn’t seem familiar at all – I couldn’t remember any of it! Maybe I was too weary or maybe I was just so busy concentrating on my driving that I missed all the scenery on the initial journey?
As we approached the final toll road I think we still had about 20 mins left to travel. The fuel warning light started pinging on the dash. Should I risk it or will I run out of gas and cause not only us but everyone on the flight a boatload of grief. Me being the cautious type asked the chap on the toll booth where the nearest gas station was and we stopped to put in ten bucks of fuel.
We got to Sanford Airport in good time and I dropped the vehicle back to Alamo. We checked our luggage in without incident and I even got through Security without being searched – which is generally unheard of. We headed to the Departure Lounge and for the first time on the holiday I had a daytime beer as I had no more driving to do til the next day. The pint went down like the proverbial ‘Amber Nectar’ as did the next one! We wandered the Duty Free shop, Angela bought a nice new watch and by that time it was our turn to board the plane which was exactly on time.
As the plane sped down the runway and we ascended into the clouds leaving Florida behind we prepared ourselves for the long journey back to the North East of England. “Chilly and foggy” was the predicted weather on landing – so much for the great British Summer eh?!
Flying East meant the day sharply turned to night and the plane cabin lights dimmed. I had told the boys
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