More adventures in FLL

I spent Thursday and Friday in my employers Florida office. These were uneventful days of training a coworker interrupted by me being required to do some billable work. The travel was somewhat adventurous.

Having just come back from the Phillipines, I was short on both cash and credit on my credit card with an intentionally low limit. I arranged for my employer to buy the plane tickets beforehand for me, and had enough to cover the rental and meals on my credit card.

Well, it seems that the rental car company wanted to authorize significantly more than what the rental fee was and it wouldn't go through. I was advised to try another rental company because their computer system would not allow for the card to be swiped again for 24 hours to avoid the company getting charged back.

So I took public transportation. The tri-rail system in quite convient, and I got a ride from a coworker at the train station closest to my companies Florida office. I of course forgot to arrange for my employer to pay for my hotel in advanc, but a manager faxed over his credit card info to them.

Everything was relatively uneventful until it came time to get on the plane. I was in row three so I got in the plane last. While waiting in line to get on the plane an older gentleman pushed ahead of me with his luggage. Then we all watched 3 drunk twenty something men take the walk of shame out since they were on the wrong plane.

When I got on the plane the gentleman in front of me shoved his luggage in the overhead bin and proceded to sit in my seat. I told him it was my seat and he discovered that this flicgh was going to JFK and not Texas. That was the fourth walk of shame of the flight.

Before takeoff, I made some smalltalk with the women next to me, an attractive woman in her mid thirties with raven black hair and an all black outfit. During the flight I kept to myself and enjoyed the direct TV through my BOSE triports, which I mainly use on flights.

When we landed the woman wanted to get her bag down before we started deplaningto get her coat. She was having some trouble and a man about her age started helping her with her bag and began to flirt. He was mentioning that Spinal Tap just came on and how he was disappointed that he couldn't finish watching it. She said heah it was a pretty good movie and eventually said Rob Reiner was her uncle. Not getting the hint that maybe she didn't want to talk about a movie she was probably sick of, he proceded to say how he used to be a "working musician", and how he had similar experiences to that of the band in the movie.

Well I deplaned and ended up on the same shuttle bus from the temporary gates to the main Jet Blue gate area. I didn't see him. After that was an uneventful trip home. This counts as the closest I've come to a celebrity encounter, besides walking past Ben Stiller driving a white corvette out of a Manhattan parking garage. However, I didn't recongnize him and can only assume the people traveling with me identified him correctly.