Southbound...I think....

Merry Christmas everyone! Ours was going quite well, getting organized, everything humming for our departure tomorrow. The lovely snowy scene you see is indeed Marquette, a great day on the Cross Country Ski trails. But the lure of the warm climates and warm waters is too great and we are heading down the ICW again...almost. Nothing is without some drama. I pulled up my reservations on Northwest Airlines' frequent flyer page and printed my boarding pass a scant hour or so ago. Not so for Wayne. I looked with every variable at my command, but could not find a reservation for him at NWA.com. No panic, these things happen. Knowing that he had booked the flight with a credit card reward program, we figured the credit card company could provide us with some kind of number with which we could extract his flight info and print out a boarding pass. No luck there either! The E-ticket number we were given produced absolutely no current reservations. The only thing left was to try Northwest again. Again, because with the overload of people being re-booked due to atmospheric conditions, our earlier attempt was rebuffed with the message, "our system is overloaded, try your call again later." Luckily, our "later" call went through and after about 15 minutes on hold we were able to speak with our saviour of the day, Josh. Josh was a really nice guy who seemed to understand what we were saying. He could not pick up Wayne's reservation with just a first and last name, we already knew Wayne's frequent flyer number wasn't going to do us any good, but when we arrived at the idea that (for other and incredibly silly reasons) Wayne's credit card had been reissued in a different number, we were a little bit stumped. But then Josh said..."did you get a bunch of schedule changes?" Well right off the bat, Josh and I were on the same page and while I checked Wayne's email (because in fact, he had) Josh was able to root around in the old Northwest Airlines computer and pull up Wayne's reservation after all. Hosanna in the highest! While Josh gave me numbers, I plugged them into the nwa.com webpage and, miracle of miracles, there was Wayne's reservation. Too bad he is flying out at a different time than me and has to connect first through Detroit and then through Newark. No matter, our vision of having to buy a $500 plane ticket to get Wayne to Palm Beach disappeared, and we are just happy enough that he has a boarding pass. You see, we still need to buy a functioning 8hp dinghy motor when we hit Nassau (yes, Claude, we have a propeller now for the Tohatsu). With a $500 plane ticket in the unexpected budget column, the nice new dinghy motor was fading fast. That, coupled with the economic downturn in general, would have resulted in a rather dreary Christmas. But no! By hook or by crook, no matter how, we WILL bloody get to Florida, pick up the boat, and float around in Stuart for as long as it takes to get a little suntan. The action never stops on this blog, so stay tuned, sports fans!