The layover

Note: I appear to have misplaced the sections before and after this story. The former is kinda summarized here. As for the latter, you know I got back safely.

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Today is Saturday, so breakfast downstairs lasted an hour longer than it does during the week. It also gave me an excuse to be downstairs and continue trying to “modify” my reservation.

The agent was different, a young Black man with a light Southern accent and a heavy lisp, but the script remained largely the same. Fortunately, the older, cranky agent from last night did most of the heavy lifting within the confines of their relatively primitive reservation system (which looked like something we used back in the 90s, but on newer computers), so the simple exchange went through successfully, and far less time than I expected. Score!

Which is what I had planned to do with the rest of my morning as Google Maps shows a half dozen thrift stores with a fifteen minute walk of my hotel. Only two problems: 1) it’s 22֯ degrees outside, and 2) I’d have to find a way to get anything I buy into my carry-on. Oh, and last night’s post isn’t going to edit itself.

By 1pm, it was a balmy 28֯, and I had blissfully forgotten all about thrifting. Now the focus was on lunch, and much like with the thrift stores I had no want of choice in regards to restaurants… so long as I crossed at least one eight-lane highway. So, as much as I hated doing it, I was forced to call rideshare (as these small fares add up quickly) which all but guarantees another disappointing meal at the hotel for dinner.

I put in a place at one of the dozen or so generic strip malls along the highway and spent nearly an hour after lunch puttering around said strip mall just to justify the trip to myself. After all, it’s my money I’m spending here. Someone has to keep me accountable for it…

Travel Day – Morning rush

If it rained in Virginia Beach overnight, I was blissfully unaware of it, However, it is snowing in my first destination of Richmond and it’s continuing to snow in Baltimore. The 6:29am NE Regional left Norfolk on time, and it’s not showing any significant delays or cancellations for any other part of the route (though either a WAS or NYP routing wouldn’t surprise me).

I missed my chance at free breakfast at the hotel, but I guess I can find something nearby. Once my phone is charged enough (which is taking forever), I can leave for breakfast… or I could just leave now. Sure, I CAN continue lying in bed, but I’d rather, at least, pretend to be productive.

I return from breakfast around 10:28am, got a coffee from the Starbucks in the lobby and found a table to continue charging my phone at. I got back earlier than expected, but since my phone was refusing to charge so I ended up leaving… exactly on time actually. It just felt later than it was. No, I won’t explain that.

It’s a sixteen minute trip from Newtown Road (light rail) Station to Norfolk Amtrak which is a relatively new building with modest furniture. It wasn’t until the connecting bus from Virginia Beach Convention Center arrived that the already small waiting room started to feel crowded. Fortunately, the train itself arrived only a few minutes thereafter and cars kept pulling up to the curb until nearly the moment the train doors closed (a full minute early).

Meanwhile, the weather apps on my phone show some light flurries passing over the Richmond area as the train slowly pulls out of the station. I doubt any of it will stick (it didn’t)… but the same RADAR also showed Baltimore/DC getting inundated with snow. I still can’t find a consistent snowfall estimate for the area, but the DC area looks like it’ll start clearing up by 4pm.

Apparently, the Café Car is open. I must have missed the announcement, but I guess this is as good a time as any to close. This is probably as charged as my phone will get anyway…

The not-so-calm before the storm

8:15pm – I have been obsessing over every weather website I can find without actually learning anything new. However, the storm seems to be moving at a slightly brisker pace than initially forecast, so it should arrive TONIGHT and move up the coast all day tomorrow.

Thankfully, Virginia Beach, where I am now, is only expecting some light rain showers overnight and even those were downgraded since this morning so my train ride from Norfolk tomorrow afternoon shouldn’t be effected… unless the entire line is cancelled (as I don’t see them running an NFK-WAS train). However, no such announcement has been made yet, so I guess I won’t find out until morning.

9:21pm – No precip in VAB (yet), but it’s already snowing in western parts of the state. Meanwhile, the first bands have started tapering off in the Baltimore/DC metro (though they’re expected to resume overnight).

9:34pm – Battery on my laptop is getting low, so I’ll probably just call it a night…

Photos: Virginia Aquarium

Photo: Undersea adventures

ID: Decorative mural of a sea turtle against a blue backdrop with yellow text reading: “Welcome to Virginia Aquarium.”

MORE Scouting for good news!

It’s raining out, and I’m bored so I’ve decided to do laundry and compile another list of inspirational stories from the world of Scouting (as it’s one of my least used categories on this blog).

• An all-girl troop in Illinois is thriving four years after the BSA invited (court ordered to actually) girls to join their organization. They have 28 members and have visited all the high-adventure bases – including Philmont Scout Ranch and Summit Bechtel Reserve.
• Scouts in Texas got to spend the day touring Fort Hood (as it was closed to outsiders due to COVID restrictions). They also received an opportunity to observe a live fire exercise… and the chance to actually climb inside an Abrams tank.
• A Sea Scout (a program I always wished I could join) has installed/replaced recycling tubes for used fishing line at various marinas in northern Virginia. He also built nesting/feeding boxes for Southern flying squirrels for a local nature center (no link provided).

Busch Gardens Williamsburg

So, the day started off slowly – even by my standards – as due to a “lack of drivers” in the ENTIRE HAMPTOM ROADS AREA, the wait for rideshare vehicles to get to the park was over an hour! Yes, I get I’m going to a theme park, so some waiting will be expected, but not BEFORE I get there.

Anyway, I arrived at the park… or should I say the bus stop on the far side of the parking lot where the cab driver (who took 25 minutes to arrive, on top of the 45 I’d already waited for Lyft) lazily dropped me off around 11:30am, and I found the long line for security moved surprisingly quick. This means I need to find food… unfortunately, like their non-coaster rides, most of their restaurants are still closed due to COVID.

There is, conveniently enough, a built-in solution: Busch Gardens F&W (as all theme parks are legally required to have a “food & wine festival” these days). Unlike BG Tampa which hosts all of their special event food kiosks in ONE tiny centralized area, BGW takes a page from Universal Studios’ Mardi Gras and tucks them into far flung niches throughout the twisty park (sadly, no, F&W “Tribute Store,” lol).

This means I ended up lost trying to find food not once but TWICE. I eventually did find all of them, but because of they’re the ONLY food around (remember, their restaurants are closed), the lines were almost as long as for the coasters.

On the plus side, I got more than enough exercise for one weekend. I also found out that I missed their grand “hiring event” by ONE DAY!!! I could’ve gotten a job and settled the whole “where ya moving this summer” question right there…. but not if I’m waiting over an hour to get to/from work three or four days a week!

Okay, that last part wasn’t fair. It only took Lyft 35 minutes to pick me up on my way out of the park…

Big things ahead

In my previous post, I said I wanted to “eat healthier, catch up on travel and rely less on ‘convenience apps.” The first one is going well enough, and I’m working on the second one as I type this (I might have something fun planned for the second half of this month)… and the third is a work in progress.

What I didn’t mention was, I want to stop living in fear of my previous editors and get my novel out there. I also want to put out a shorter book about my life in Baltimore which has the added benefit of enabling to delete all or part of my blog posts from 2009-2014 (as, believe me, no-one is reading them) which would free up a considerable amount of space for future writing/photos. The problem is, I don’t know if I have enough material for the latter book (as the copies of said posts on my laptop are long gone due to a transfer error on my previous computer. #techisfun), and it’s a bit late to start adding to it now.

I have other plans, some of which I can’t make yet due to the pandemic (I think have or, at least, had COVID at some point) as many events are either cancelled or postponed. For instance, Universal Orlando has not announced the dates for its Mardi Gras celebration (though Busch Gardens has :p), and Family Kingdom in Myrtle Beach, SC has no operating hours through the end of April.

Unfortunately, I just spent the past hour trying to fit multiple attraction visits for the second half of the month into my itinerary and my budget. I wasn’t accounting for “we downsized our routes to smaller airports” wall. All I want to do is fly into Sanford on my return trip so I can get some pictures of the Central Florida Zoo (that closed the day I came back from Baltimore last year) and then take the Sunrail back to downtown so I can transfer to… you know, I think I’ll just fly into MCO and be done with it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my groceries are here…

Norfolk: Day 4 – Portsmouth and other disappointments

It’s just after 10am, and I am standing on the dock outside the newly renovated Waterside Marketplace waiting for the ferry to cross the Elizabeth River to Portsmouth. The weather app on my phone says its 65 degrees and cloudy, but the chilly ocean wind makes it feel colder than that.

The small paddleboat arrived around 10 past the hour, it dropped off about a half dozen people and let the three of us who were waiting on dock onboard. The inside had a rusted floor with benches along the sides. Apparently, there were more benches in the center of the boat at one point, but they were removed, possibly to make room for the three beaten up fare boxes. The bench wasn’t all that comfortable, but it didn’t matter since it was only a 10 minute ride across the river to High Street landing.

Portsmouth is a charming, quiet town that kind of reminded me of a cross between Federal Hill and Fells Point. Unfortunately for me, I was visiting on a Thursday morning so nearly everything was closed: The Naval Shipbuilding Museum (for refurbishment until “early 2017”), The Lightship Portsmouth (open weekends only), Virginia Sports Museum (permanently closed) and a half dozen “historic homes” (also open weekends only).

That left the Arts & Culture Center (which was “between exhibitions”), the Virginia Children’s Museum, the TCC (Tidewater Community College) Gallery and the exteriors of various buildings. Oh, and I could purchase cheap looking, neon colored t-shirts at the visitor’s center which is coincidentally where I had to go anyway to get the ferry back to Norfolk – and it was only 12:30 (it would have been noon if I hadn’t stopped for lunch at Jimmy Johns on High Street).

I arrived back at downtown Norfolk around 1:25 where it was a balmy 69 degrees with partly cloudy skies, and I was nowhere near ready to pack it in for the day so I walked over to Nauticus (though most of the parks were closed off due to construction of the various tents for next week’s Harborfest). I walked up the ticket counter and the somewhat disinterested cashier sold me a normal base ticket for $15 (included a movie and a limited tour of the attached battleship). I couldn’t decide if I wanted a snack or to just upstairs to see the exhibits on the 3^rd floor first so I chose the latter.

The museum itself is hard to quantify. It has some exhibits that are geared towards kids (like the entry on port Norfolk, the touch a shark tank or the small “aquarium” area – which makes the former National Aquarium in DC look HUGE by comparison), but the majority of the labyrinthine museum space is ship life, Naval history, Naval recruiting and the nearby Naval base – not many of which would be of interest to the 3-12 set.

The exhibits are small, superficial and dated with broken or worn out “interactives” and little to no flow between the tightly packed exhibits – which you can’t really skip as there is only ONE path through the exhibit area (as I found out when one of the barely crowded rooms was too noisy for my tastes). The only place in the gallery that wasn’t claustrophobically small was the end where the theater, the NOAA exhibit and the stairway to the actual Hampton Roads Naval Museum\walkway to the USS Wisconsin (which were both on the second level). Though I didn’t partake in either this time as I fell asleep in the 3d movie and took that as a cue to head back to the hotel… at 3pm in the afternoon.

Not yet, first I stopped into their gift shop (my favorite part of their museum), and then I went into their café next door… but they were closed so I looked around thinking I might be able to take some snacks back to the room with me. Then a black man in black shirt hauling a large trash can behind him comes up behind me:

“Ya know,” he said. “We got a full menu.”

“Yeah, thanks, but it’s closed. There’s no-one back there.”

“What was that? I said look up there. We got a full menu up there,” he said pointing up to the large black and white sign hanging from the ceiling that I’d have to be blind to miss (I couldn’t read it with my crappy vision, but I couldn’t miss it when I came in).

“And it doesn’t do me any good if it’s CLOSED because there is NO-ONE back there.”

“’No-one back there?’ I work the café. I’D be the one ringing you up. Now, if you want to order something. Order it.”

With that said, I immediately turned around and decided to get dinner in the hotel and then get a start on my packing. It’s going to be another long day of traveling tomorrow – and my toes aren’t even remotely healed yet…

Norfolk: Day 1 – Travel and tribulation

It’s 10am as I’m sitting here, fighting sleep in the middle of a crowded terminal and writing this intro while waiting for my flight to begin boarding. I had less then 3 hours of sleep as my shoulder and gut bothered my for most of the night and I had to leave the condo no later than 8am to get to the airport in time to get through both the chaos at AA’s self-check-in area and the notoriously difficult TSA screening area. This is going to be a great day.

So, we arrived at PHL approximately 20 minutes early. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, except that my layover has now gone from 2 hours and 40 minutes to just under 3 hours. Three hours at an airport is a long time so I stopped to get lunch in the food court between terminals B and C before heading over to the shuttle at gate C10.

I got off the half-full shuttle, walked up to the giant monitor above the “Information” desk and saw there was a flight to Norfolk leaving in less than 30 minutes from gate F29 so after some careful consideration, I decided to go for it. I get to the counter, speak with the middle-ages agent who looks at with a plastic airline smile and says:

“I’m sorry, the last passenger has already boarded, and the plane door is already shut.”

“So,” the gravity of the situation sinking in. “You’re not saying I’m too late?”

“Yes, but don’t worry. There’s another flight in only two hours. I’m sorry. Have a nice day.”

That’s the thing about people being “sorry” for me, it’s always bad news and their semi-sincere apologies never actually change the situation. However, I likes how she said “only two hours” as if pissing away time in an airport was easy and fun. It wasn’t.

I go back to the dining area near the entrance, put my bags on a chair and sit down at the table next to them. Less than a minute later, I’m approached by a blonde-haired young man in a bright yellow vest, probably going to tell me to “move along” or something.

“My name is Alex, and I work for the airport. And I have a, um, question for you. Are you coming in or out – arriving or departing today?”

“Both,” I replied cautiously.

“You mean like a layover, um, okay, thank you. Sorry for bothering you.”

What the hell just happened? I know he was fishing for a reason to toss me out of the airport, but his body language and anxious tone said otherwise. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was…. *facepalm*

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s TWO “missed connections” in less than ten minutes. Yeah, overthinking an awkward two-minute encounter with a super-hot airport employee I’ll never see again is definitely going to make the next hour and…ugh, forty-five minutes just fly by. It didn’t.

An hour later, I was sitting in the crowded terminal area when the gate opened and people stream out of the small plane parked outside said gate, down a set of narrow stairs and down a cattle shoot to the gate that I’m supposed to be traveling out of. That is not a good sign, and it was exactly what I was afraid would happen. Guess what, it did, and as a special bonus, I was too large for my seatbelt to fit correctly and my toes were scrunched up in the same under-the-seat-in-front-of-me area as my bag. I had friction blisters on my toes, and my vacation hadn’t even started yet. The good news was it was only an hour long flight. Yep, wait three to fly one.

I leave the plane, relieved that I’m exiting into the gate rather than down those narrow stairs, and pass through the windowed bridge linking the terminal to the main lobby (which resembles the pre-security seating area at MCO) – where I could see that it was pouring rain outside. It was almost 6pm so I stopped into the only restaurant in the building that was still open – a sports bar with more TVs than patrons despite the nearly full airplane I just got off of.

I finish my food and head downstairs to the Baggage Claim area where I eventually find an information counter. When I asked the clueless young woman in the beige Navy uniform where the ground transportation counter, she just looked at me blankly. Apparently, ORF doesn’t offer “shared ride services” so if I wanted to do anything besides pick up my luggage and take it to my rental car (duh, this is America – EVERYONE drives), I was like the Navy says “SOL.”

I take my hat out of my bag, flip the hood of my raincoat up and walked around on the median until someone asked if I “needed a cab.” It wasn’t my first choice of transit, but it beat walking around on an uncovered median for another 10-15 minutes as my vacation officially opened….