Three Weekends ‘til Christmas

We caught the plane and flew, but did not catch the flu on the plane.

So, what do you do when you’ve got a bazillion things to do and Christmas is fast approaching?  Why, go to Florida, of course.

Actually, the story is a little more involved than that.  The old neighborhood crew has been trying to get a trip to the Mastro’s condo together for many years.  A myriad of responsibilities and some unforeseen twists of fate have put the kibosh on several planned trips.  But this time, due to some inevitable changes and a strengthened desire to get away, a quorum was able to break away for a short trip.

Windy

Sandy was a super storm.  The same system that did so much damage in New York and New Jersey did some noticeable damage to the beach.  

Undercutting

The "Replace the Sand" approach.

The barrier sustained damage, but did its job.

Plan B walkway

Somewhere, there is a big hole where all this replacement sand is coming from.

Singer Island is the barrier island for Riviera Beach.  Clearly, barrier islands move.  Rebuilding is in progress.  Not sure which is better...concrete and steel, or just replacing the sand until next time.

We took long walks on the beach with birds of many feathers.

Pelicans in formation

Wonder where they flew before the tall buildings got in their way.

“You are a determined man,” said Tony to the fisherman as we passed him for the second time on our long morning walk.  “Fishing is patience,” he replied.

Dave drinks only Blue.

Johnny Walker Blue was what we had promised ourselves.  Originally, the toast was to have been in honor of Tony’s Uncle Danny, the original owner of the condo.  However, I don’t think Uncle Danny would mind that we expanded his tribute to include Mary, Tony’s Mom; Roy, my wife Mary’s Dad; and Keith, my father.  A nice moment with raised glasses.

Every morning, we had coffee on the 12th floor balcony.  Tony likes the high solid-concrete wall that serves as a railing.  I don’t think anyone in our party would prefer to replace it with an iron or glass railing, regardless of view augmentation.

Doing nothing on the beach is a fine pursuit.  Much better than writing a patent application, which I was doing the previous day.  

“Randy, when did you become a business tycoon?” asked Tony.  

“More like a business typhoon,” I replied.

“Nawww...” added Dave.  “More like a business buffoon.”

Our group.

Successfully doing nothing.

We are those little specs on the left.

I go golfing once per year.  As you might guess, my game was nicely sharpened up for the Palm Beach golf course designed for Christmas season play by Saint Nicklaus.  Or at least you’d think Jack was a saint from all the worship he gets in the area.  I had a truly outstanding round, getting way more strokes for the money than the other guys.

Yeah, like I'm going to hit the little white ball through this without mishap?

Tony's comment is not printable.

Going right in!

After smacking little balls in unintended directions, we went to a nice outdoor restaurant on a by-way off the intercoastal waterway.  Very nice to sip and munch by the water as the sun goes down.

He did not kill himself when he jumped down,
but he did spill his beer.  Bad form.

Dancing?

That's the Captain's hand on my shoulder.

All the palms in the area seem to grow with lights on them.
Lightfruit?

Didn't go here.

TIKI !

Did go here.

Later, we took in another near a marina.  Then Gail directed us to a swingin’ hot spot.  Maybe not a direct route, but she got us there.

We continued to investigate the beach,  watch the birds and a work on our sunburns.  I wore my big floppy hat and slathered on the SPF 451 lotion.

On our last night, we headed to Palm Beach.  The Breakers is an interesting place.  Very expensive, no doubt to keep out the riff-raff like me.  When the bill for our drinks arrived, Tony said something like, "What? We drank diamonds?"  (Forgive the poetic license, Tony...this is a G-rated blog.)

Inside the Breakers.

Breakers wine rack.

Some of the lovely ladies at the breakers.

Very cool bar with fish swimming under your drinks.
Not good if you've had too much alcohol.

Impressive view of the Breakers.

Nice decorations on one of the main drags in Palm Beach.  

It was a wrong number.

 Unfortunately, the stores were all closed.  

With a word, they couldn’t get what they came for.

  But they enjoyed themselves nonetheless.

Our last day, I was disappointed to observe that maturity has set in.  I still wanted to hurl water balloons, but just to watch them splat on the pavement...not on unsuspecting passers by.

That morning, I woke up at sunrise.  The sun teased by staying well behind the wall of clouds a half mile off shore.  Finally it made its debut, I took this picture, and went back to sleep.

More long walks and then a dip in the pool before we headed out to the airport.  

Scary denizen of the deep.
Must be from the manatee family.
Or maybe a beluga.

Our little friend beckoned us to return.

But thank goodness we've returned home to gray skies and freezing drizzle!  

We were so tired of sipping our coffee in the warm air and looking out over the ocean from the 12th floor veranda.  

But we do thank our hosts...

Italy Epilogue

If you read the "Arrivederci Roma" post, you know I was peeved with the service we got from Delta Airlines on our way home.  You might also remember that I wrote an entertaining letter (at least it entertained me) to the Delta CEO, but never sent it.


But "never" was the wrong word.   "Not yet" sent would be a better choice.  On the basis of encouragement from a number of people, I sent the entire letter, dripping with sarcasm, off to the Delta people.  Why not?  Nothing to lose, eh?


I was pleased to see the following response:

Thank you for writing and allowing me the opportunity to further review your concerns regarding your experiences at John F. Kennedy.

Mr. Fredlund, as our customer, you are in the best position to point out areas that need attention. I understand your frustration when there was no one to meet you at the gate when your plane got in late and you missed your connecting flight to Rochester.

Your email makes it clear that we did not demonstrate the dependable, responsive service our customers have a right to expect. We fully realize that the true test of customer service excellence is how we perform when things go wrong. Feedback like you have provided will help us to improve our overall customer experience. Despite delays being inherently inconvenient, proper customer service can help ease the said inconvenience.

I am truly sorry in this instance you did not receive the service you expected and should have received. Feedback like yours will help us improve our overall customer experience. Be assured I will be sharing your comments with our Airport Customer Service leadership team for internal follow up.

In addition, I understand your concerns with the way your luggage was handled. Please know that we check bags to the airport of arrival. I understand the inconvenience you were caused when you had to move around with your bags after missing your connecting flight. Due to security and storage space limitations, checked baggage cannot be accepted in advance. Furthermore, I am disappointed to learn of the delays you experienced while checking in for your flight the following morning. Passengers are encouraged to use the scales in the check in area to weigh their bags before they get to the counter. I agree that rearranging luggage delays everyone and our staff should have asked the passenger to move and serve other passengers instead of holding up the line.

I know what you're thinking.  "Well, that's all very nice, but words are cheap."  But let me tell you...Mr. Shep Macintosh, Coordinator,  Corporate Customer Care, Delta Air Lines must actually mean what he says, because the next day, I received the following:

We have each been granted travel vouchers for $125.  Do you have any idea what this means?  That's right!  For an additional 4 dollars and 60 cents, we can all take a round trip back to JFK and relive our experience!


But seriously, Mr. Macintosh made a nice gesture that is appreciated.  And I, for one, will appreciate his gesture for as long as I live.  Why is that?  Because from this point on, I can say that I have actually been paid for writing, and my resume will proudly sport the title of, "Professional Author."  

Arrivederci Roma

24/25-Settembre-2011 (The dates when things happened.)


On Saturday, we broke fast with our final continental morning meal and soon were back to Monti to buy a present for Katie.  Should have dickered over the price of the ring, but we were too American.  

Green architecture.

As the shopping wound down, I peeked into a previously unexamined corner building on the piazza.  Inside were the remains of a destroyed bar.  Looked like one wild party.  What happened there?  Another of life’s unsolved mysteries.

If you believe the bit about broken mirrors, this is a lot of bad luck.

We hung around in the delightfully sleepy Monti neighborhood as long as we dared.  

The flower vendor's truck at the not-so-busy intersection.

The flower vendor verifying the sleepiness of Monti.

The wording on the door was "essenzadesign.it"
The product was "style."

Time running out, we retraced our steps back to the hotel to grab our stuff and head to the airport.  Ancient Rome was a city of over one million people, so I was not surprised to see new sights outside the central tourist zone.  We passed a circular temple, another huge building with columns all around that seemed governmental, a Medieval church with a line of people waiting to enter, the Pyramid of Praetor Cestius (“Bury me in a pyramid, dammit!  I want to walk ..er ah.. die like an Egyptian”), and shortly after passing through a neighborhood that could only be described as ritzy, a incongruous storefront providing Cibo Cinese - Senza Limite (Chinese Food, all-you-can-eat).

The driver went through what looked like a garbage dump to get to an unmarked on-ramp for the freeway to Leonardo da Vinci airport in Fiumicino.  We followed a dirt path weaving through piles of debris. As much as we all admire Dave’s driving skills, he would never, ever have found that on-ramp, even if he was GPS equipped.  But we arrived more quickly than I remembered from past rides to the airport.  The driver insisted that termini 1 was the correct one, since it was for Alitalia, but as listed in our paperwork, termini 3 turned out to be correct.  Plus one for the ramp, but minus one for the terminal nets you zero, but he had already disappeared with our gracious tip by the time the score was tallied.

This post is getting long winded.  Don't you feel like having a triangular sandwich?
Or one of these tramezzini, as the Italians would say?

Surprisingly, the walk between terminals was not bad, so no matter.  Then came the stress of finding the check-in desk among hundreds, which made us walk briskly along the rows of check-in counters looking for some semblance of order.  Looking for order in a busy Italian airport?  How foolish am I?  

We eventually found the proper counter by dumb luck.   Finally ticketed, Mary’s bag was checked through to Rochester, but none of the others were.  “Sometimes you just get lucky,” stated the counter woman.  More like 3 out of 4 times you are unlucky, or maybe 3 out of 4 times the counter woman is too lazy to do her entire job.  Don’t you just love airports?  The last detail was the realizaton that our flight to NYC-JFK had been delayed almost three hours, making our connection to Rochester an issue.  

We killed time by walking through the shops.  I had the opportunity to buy an Armani belt, but I thought €177 was just a little too high for a chunk of leather with a buckle.  Let’s see, with a repurposed beverage budget of $50 per week, and a conversion rate of $1.42 to the Euro, this would equal….Nope.  Not gonna happen.

Finally airborne, we settled in for the long flight.  Before exiting French airspace, the man seated in front of me got up and turned around, kneeling on his seat.  He shouted in Italian to his friend further back, but the rushing air did not allow communication.  Frustrated, he smiled and yelled, “Speak English, I can’t understand you.  It starts with a P, like pizza, you know, a spice.”  He pauses.  “Oh, persimmon, that’s it!  Grazie.”  


Then he looked around at all the people he had interrupted.  “How you all doing?”  Big smile.  “Just a few more hours.  We’ll be home.  We’ll be back in the land of Obama.”  From his facial expression, one can see that just like Mary’s Dad, he feels that an Italian should have been President before someone with African lineage.  

Some additional political commentary observed in Rome.

We arrived to chaos at JFK—what else is new?  But we made record-breaking time through customs, where the alert and attentive agent duly noted that my hair was much more blonde than my almost 10-year-old photo indicated.  

“Whaddayamean, blonde?” said Mary.  “That’s all gray.”  

“Whaddayamean, Mary?  I like this guy.  He has truthful vision.”  

Out of customs, we were dumped into the clutches of incompetent, arrogant, patronizing and distracted Delta agents without a clue or leadership.  They appeared to thrive on drama.  Had they directed us properly, and not allowed others to cut ahead, we would have made our connection.  We finally ended our ordeal with a young woman working for Alitalia, not Delta, who helped us rebook and get a hotel voucher, but even she was handicapped by an archaic computer system and redundant paperwork requirements that forced her to transfer exorbitant amounts of data from several different screens to the hand written voucher.  All this while the line of people lengthened outside her door.  

The following letter wrote itself:

Dear Mr. Richard H. Anderson, CEO, Delta Airlines,

Our party of four recently arrived at JFK on Alitalia to make a connection for a Delta flight to Rochester, NY.  We didn’t make it, and Delta put us up for the night in beautiful Queens.

A few questions:  

Why wasn’t there a Delta agent to meet us when we cleared customs?  We were assured later that there was someone there to help us, but that was untrue.  30 minutes of one informed agent’s time would have made much of the ensuing chaos minimized or avoidable, and might have saved your company the cost of two hotel rooms.  And even if there was no way to make our flight, a simple redirection to the area where we received hotel vouchers would have made the experience much less stressful, and your photo would probably not serve as the floor in my birdcage.

After passing customs, could we have just left our bags for delivery to Rochester the following day?  After our original flight was in the air, we were pleased to learn that would have been an option, allowing us to board more quickly.  I would have gladly driven to the Rochester airport to collect our belongings after a restful night in my own bed.  For future reference, can you tell me if such an arrangement is possible?

Why was the Alitalia agent at FCO able to tag one of our bags through to Rochester and not the other three?  “Sometimes you get lucky” and “The system won’t let me” just doesn’t make sense in the age of smart phones.  Had we been able to check our bags at the “connecting flights” area, and avoided a new check-in, it is very likely we would have been able to make our flight.  Is your computer system provided by video poker designers from Las Vegas?  Or is it programmed to stealth-bump travelers with tight connections on overbooked flights?

Why don’t you have a scale in the check-in line, or in a separate area, so that people can weigh and repack their bags as necessary before they get to the ticketing counter?  We could not reach the Delta agent for 15 minutes because a woman with two oversized bags, ushered in front of us by Bozo the Clown disguised as a Skycap, repacked her overweight bags three times.  A simple scale disconnected from the ticketing process would have eliminated this fiasco.  Alternatively, if you allow those customers waiting in line to assist, I’m sure the bags would be repacked under the weight limit in no time.  A second and perhaps more appealing alternative would be to allow the customers waiting in line to pack the woman in one bag, the Skycap in the other, and send the bags on their way.

And finally, where do you get your ticketing agents from?  It has been suggested that at least a portion are from mental institutions of one sort or another, but I personally would not want to insult those populations.  No, due to their abilities to create and act out drama, it is clear that they are all cast members of off-Broadway plays no traveler wants to see.  “To fly, or not to fly, that is the question:  Whether ‘tis nobler on the ground to suffer the things that narrow outrageous chances, or to take alarm at a sea of cretins, and by opposing, fly away from them.”  Is this where you found them?

Thank you for your attention to this matter.  I look forward to your response.

Randy Fredlund

Tired and out of sorts, we took the train to the bus that dumped us at the hotel.  



Becky and I went to the registration desk to negotiate the rooms.  Thankfully, the woman at the counter did not work for Delta.  I handed over the voucher, and before long, had only to sign on the dotted line to get the key.  

“Here you go sir, just sign here.”  Looking at Becky, she said, “And I need your wife’s signature here.”

“My wife is standing over there,” I said, pointing across the room to Mary.

The woman looked back at me, then Becky, and then back to me.  “Oh, you naughty boy.”

Mary came over and asked, “What’s all the laughing about?”

***********************

Back in NY.   Name that crooked lake!

Always good to get back home.

The next day was thankfully uneventful.  We said our so-longs and parted ways at the Rochester airport.  Returning home, Mary went to see her Dad, I carted Mom to see my Dad, and in no time at all, we were back to the elder care races.  


Almost immediately, we felt the need for more Roma-therapy.

***********************

Epilog

$500 for the car door I tweaked just before we left?  Are you kidding?  How naïve.  Fixing the door cost over two grand.  Yes, that is what insurance is for, I guess.  I also need to make sure the next time I smash something on a car that I don’t touch anything active…like a door handle.

And no, I didn't send the letter.  Do you think I should?