There is still no internet. The next unit over has an air conditioning truck parked out front. Having experienced both outages here, I do debate which utility is the easiest to live without. Because along with no internet, there is no TV either. I watched the sun illuminate the nearby golf course in the morning as I wondered if such utilities would ever be restored during our stay and, being Sunday, concluded with confidence that they would not.
We had breakfast and I watched the birds from the balcony. If I hadn’t already said so, I’m almost 40 so I’m into birding now. I have the Sibley’s field guide to birds back home, which I will use to accurate identify all the different birds I have seen on this trip. It’s a big book because there’s a lot of birds. I should know. I’m into birding.
Without much to do other than observe birds or read, we walked a bit around the neighborhood to discover further destruction. There was one section of road, where every street light bulb except two had been tossed across the street or shattered. Many trees, large and small, had been uprooted and felled. The winds must have truly been fierce. The traffic light at the corner is still flashing and the police are still restricting access across the bridge to St. Pete Beach. While we do hear a fair amount of sirens, it is often eerily quiet except for the flapping of wings and nearby cawing of birds who are living their best life with a clear lack of golfers to ruin their day.
I fixed us some pasta for lunch. Luckily, running water and sewage is something that is completely functional. Imagine not having that AND no internet? We went for another stroll after lunch to explore another area of Del Boca Vista Isla Del Sol. There is a small man made beach where we saw two ladies sunbathing amidst piles of trash and a boat that perhaps did not belong on aforementioned beach. We rounded the corner to watch some pelicans scouring the waters near the bridge for an afternoon snack.
Both Orlando and Tampa only do morning and evening flights to and from Los Angeles. The British Airways office in Los Angeles called me last night to let me know the bags arrived and that they were available to pick up as long as we arrived before 8:15pm when everyone leaves. Our flight is scheduled to arrive at 8:30pm. Nothing is ever easy. We tidied up and took the rental car to Tampa airport.
Despite a slowdown on one of the bridges over the bay, we arrived at a crowded terminal with time to spare. United’s computer auto-assigned all the standbys the same row despite the five rows in front of it having no passengers at all — lending fierce debate to whether incompetent humans or incompetent A.I. is better suited to run the world. And thus began a race across the country to arrive at Los Angeles in time to collect our bags.
We touched down slightly ahead of schedule, and the Amazing Race-style challenge of getting our bags before all British Airways staff left for the night commenced. Things were not straightforward. British Airways had no clearly defined office, and the last BA flight of evening had departed an hour or two earlier. This meant we had no logical place to go to get our bags. As there are only 200+ checkin counters at the Tom Bradley terminal that are shared amongst different airlines, we had no idea where to start. We asked multiple information kiosks and a woman sitting behind a giant pineapple at a desk for Hawaiian Airlines baggage. While not the airline we needed, she seemed knowledgeable on account of the pineapple alone. Ultimately, we were able to figure out which check-in counters British Airways was using. It was now Xiamen. We spoke to a woman working for Xiamen who said BA’s office was through a door behind the counter, but they didn’t have a key. She knocked twice. Six minutes later, a man appeared confused. We explained and he disappeared behind the door again. And what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a couple crew bags, with seemingly all of our gear.
We were home twenty minutes later. I was genuinely surprised that we were able to get our bags this evening. And while some unscrupulous employee/s at the Nairobi airport already took a few U.S.-style power adapters from my bag before we flew to Rwanda, everything else seemed to be accounted for. Reflections to follow.
passports & pepto bismol 