Which didn’t involve the usual BBQ place, as the afternoon had other commitments. But the morning?
I got up early, fished, paged through the inbound mail, didn’t see any emergencies, and I took a nap. Then I woke up again, started a fresh round of horoscopes, played online with the airlines as the free ticket thing wasn’t giving me what I wanted. I selected a gift cigar from the humidor, affixed fresh bait (power lizard) to the end of the pole, and fished some more. It rained sometime in the morning. I puffed big clouds of cigar smoke out over the river, not expecting any success (but ever hopeful & vigilant), and marveled at the beauty of the leaden sky, the clouds of cigar smoke, the tranquility of it all.
The second part of the two-meat special, what got my motor running? While I was guilt-tripping Sister, an option to go to London came up, and I was poking around on the various airline sites, looking for a deal. Somehow, I wound up with enough miles on one airline to get a free ticket over and back. That looked great. Except.
1) My first spin through reservation suggested that I would have to leave Austin July 3, but leave Dallas July 4. At 6 AM. 8-10 hour layover in DFW, nice as airports go, but not my idea of place to crash for a few hours. Plus the flight landed in London’s Heathrow (very convenient for Tube access) after the tube quits running for the night. Not good.
2) The flight back? When I started reading the fine print, the first leg flew into JFK (NYC) – arriving at 11 at night, then the connection to Austin flew out of LGA (NYC) at 6 the next morning. I may not be really hip on airport codes, but I sensed there was a problem there.
It took a call to customer service, thank Collette, and I might have some other options. Looks like I’ll miss yet another 4th of July in Austin at Shady Acres. Looks like I can go to Paris for Bastille Day. C’est tres bein.
Moon slid on into Pisces and none of this looks less daunting now. Maybe I’ll figure out that website.
