Friday, February 28: All Good Things Must End

Our bus was to pick us up at 11AM, and we'd off-loaded essentially all of our food.  Our plan was to pack and vacate the room, then bargain for extra time before we closed our account so we could enjoy the breakfast buffet.  This all worked out well, and we idled in the ocean breeze while sampling the various offerings ... a mushroom tart, a pulled-chicken dish, lots of traditional Mexican sides plus bacon & sausage.  Fresh fruit of every stripe, and a very interesting bakery section.  Lots to try!

The bus is too big to navigate the hotel grounds, so the bellboy scoots our luggage on a cart and another drives us out to the main road in a little golf cart.  I am somewhat apprehensive about our travel arrangements as the airline's on-line confirmation site has been down for days and ... unbelievable ... the people on the 800 line cannot check us in even though they know the site is down.  Ouch!  So nothing to do for it but get to the airport and check in there.

We grab our luggage, surrender the other half of the immigration form ... wonder if it really gets matched up with its mate somewhere, somehow? ... and work our way up to the check-in kiosk.  Which, of course, was malfunctioning.  An airline rep came over and assisted, in the process weighing our bags.  Both were overweight, so we had little opportunity \\to rebalance.  We were urged to take an upgrade on the flight to O'Hare, which would allow the additional weight and checking a third bag without additional charges.  While not exactly an even exchange, it also would save us the cost of dinner and drinks, so we agreed.

The flight was already an hour behind schedule, so we got on down to the gate so we'd have seats while we waited.  There are just 10 gates in the entire airport, so our waiting area served several of them and gradually filled up.  We had things to do (reading, needlework, finding electricity to keep devices charged) and eventually got onto the plane.  We were grateful to learn that we'd been reassigned to exit row seats at no upcharge, so we could sit together and actually had a lot of room.  Customs and immigration were a breeze.  The only small snag was that, though we both were TSA pre-check coded, I got to have my shoes inspected (there's some random-number-generator in the body screener that tags occasional passengers for this privilege).  No worries, they're old and tired and have no contraband.

This flight, too, was running somewhat late but we didn't care by then ... as long as we got on the plane.  While waiting, we met another Glenview resident whose daughter attends UW, and has a friend working at EPIC.  Small world, again!  We eventually took our seats, service was pleasant, and the flight touched down on time at 11:56PM.  We found our luggage, found our cab, and got home in comparatively balmy 20* weather (at one point, we had expected below-zero).  Another pleasant sojourn ... back to normal in the morning!