Sojourn to the Berkshires 3, Last Day (kind of)

 Okee dokee. At the moment I am in a beautiful hotel room in Missoula, Montana, having hugged my son and daughter-not-in-law-but-so-for-real for the first time in a year. My lovely soul-mate is sleeping in the king-sized bed behind me, and I am up after being comatose for nearly 12 hours to (begin to) get caught up after a challenging mess of a set of flights home from Albany.

What happened, you may ask.

I may answer.

Friday morning Jimmy came by the Fairfield Inn and we took the Purple Charger to breakfast. Or we took ourselves to breakfast. A skip and a jump up the highway to the Rio Café we went. It's a cute little place with a back lawn hosting well spaced picnic tables and we took one, chatted about the play and life and family, just enjoying one another's company. It had been 7 years since we had been geolocated and it felt so, so good to be with him. And it had been around 42 or 3 years since we had met as young men in Alaska, becoming fast friends who have stayed in touch along our meandering paths through lives. I love him and trust him completely. 

After a tasty breakfast, I took a selfie. This is us, together and happy. 

Two old friends at Rio Cafe

We hugged goodbye a couple times in the motel parking lot, bid each other see-ya-later, and he drove away to his next rehearsal. I had already checked out and minutes later I was on the road northwest to Albany. I called Lee Ann and chatted a few minutes. She was elated to hear that Seamus was home from the hospital, beginning to recuperate after his two latest brain surgeries and The Virus (that's all I'll say but it was a challenging few days for my brother). I told her that since I had several hours before the flights home (an optimistic assessment), I was thinking about spending one of them at the Turn Park sculpture garden, an attraction along the way. but as we spoke I encountered a sign that said "Berkshire Botanical Garden" and quickly came up on it, turning into the entrance. That's my favorite way to travel, friends, making it up as I go. Like life, you know.

I took a number of photos during the hour I enjoyed strolling through the gardens, but I'm going to save some blog-time here by sending you to the Garden website photos, which are generally mo' better than mine. I do like this pano though, so click on it to view it larger and scroll it, then click here to see the official pics. 

Berkshire Botanical Garden

I was sweaty enough after an hour or so enjoying this beautiful set of gardens so I returned to Purple and hit the road. In Albany, I returned him and got inside through security uneventfully. I figured I would have a beer or two over the next few hours and grab a salad. 

I found my parking spot before flying home!

I spent a couple hours working on my previous post and ate a bad salad with undercooked chicken which I scraped toward the side of the plastic go container, along with two 20 oz. local draft beers, and headed to my gate at the appointed time. On the way, my phone vibrated.

What? 

In a nutshell:  Look here, there's a message from American Airlines that my flight has been cancelled. I rushed to the gate counter and sure enough, it had. No line before me, I approached the harried but really helpful service counter attendant and after some discussion of alternatives was booked on a new flight to Nashville, not through connecting flight to Chicago, but to Charlotte, North Carolina. And not arriving that night, but flying out at in an hour or so and out of Charlotte at early AM the next morning. I grabbed my phone and found a room at the Hampton Inn at a sale rate (what a deal--not subsidized by AA and costing me 250 dollars and tips for shuttles and grabbing me oh about 4 hours sleep before grabbing a Lyft another unexpected expense, at 5 a.m. to get boarded for home. The flight to Charlotte was half hour late but hit the sky, in an hour or so hitting storm turbulence that elicited at least one scream from a passenger. Perfect. 

I called the motel upon landing and barely caught the last shuttle, got into a weird suite at my ersatz bargain rate, hit the 7-11 next door for a turkey sandwich, a breakfast sandwich to micronuke the next "morning," (it already WAS morning by then), wolfed down the first, drank a canned margarita and half a liter of water, laid down on the giant bed, and did not move until my 4 a.m. alarms went off. I showered, dressed, inhaled my bad microwaved 7-11 breakfast sandwich, and raced down to my Lyft, which got me to the church on time. I had no bags to check and things went well at the airport so up in the air I was.

Let me hold forth a bit about COVID-19. I am quad-vaxed. I wore a KN-95 mask on my trip anytime I was anywhere in close proximity to strangers. I was never harassed about it, only got a few demeaning looks from others, and hated the claustrophobic feeling of the hot breath for hours at a time. In airports, I was in the fairly small minority of folks doing that, but I did not give a hoot. I'm pretty sure I do not have COVID. Enough said.

Lee Ann picked me up and home we went. I went straight to bed because we were flying at 5 something the next morning, bound for Montana. 

I'll consider this the end of my Berkshires trip, and a memorable one it was. Will I continue this blogfest with descriptions of my week-long trip to Montana? Maybe. We'll see.