Bahamas 2007, Day 1

Our (unexpectedly) second annual trip to the Bahamas began in pre-dawn darkness that felt little removed from post-dusk darkness. I, in particular, had barreled headlong into the trip on the heels of a ridiculously busy week that kept me occupied until midnight the morning we were to leave. After scrambling to finish a trial brief into Friday evening for the trial that had threatened to prevent me from going on the trip, but which was scheduled to begin as early as Monday anyway, I dashed up to a camp above Lake Castaic to give a kickoff speech for a leadership retreat. The trip includes 30 miles of lightly traveled backwoods twisties, which are particularly entertaining in the dark. Fortunately, I’ve made the trip before and had a passing familiarity with the road. I managed to pull into a parking space outside the camp hall at about 8:42, just in time for my 8:45 speaking engagement. Of course, I had to make myself nearly carsick to get there in time, but that’s what Porsches are for, right?

After the speech and a little socializing, I dashed back into the night. We were due to leave for the airport in five hours, I was an hour from home, and I hadn’t packed for the trip yet. Thankfully, Cheryl had taken care of 95% of the packing, including much of my own, so after throwing a bunch of brightly colored shirts and bathing suits in my bag, I was pretty well done. Lights out at 1, lights on again at 3. It’s vacation, kids, get a move on!

We caravanned with Cheryl’s parents down to LAX, arriving about half an hour ahead of the beginning of the Saturday travel rush.

Check in and all of the security measures were easy and quick at that hour, made much easier by the fact that we no longer have to travel with either a stroller or car seat.

The last time we made this trip, we traveled on Delta’s Song subsidiary, their answer to JetBlue. That means one thing: in-flight TV. Flying on Delta itself, we had no such luck this time. Michael was quite disappointed, which made Daddy quite disappointed, too. Still, the flight was uneventful, and we landed on time in Atlanta, where we were to meet up with Cheryl’s sister and her family, who had flown in from San Francisco just minutes ahead of us. The cousins enjoyed their reunion:



Our next flight, aboard the same airplane that delivered the San Francisco crew, took us to Orlando, where we would spend the night. I can only imagine that Orlando has a unique and feared reputation among flight attendants. Upon boarding the (substantially overbooked) flight, it became obvious that this was the Disney milk run. Adults and children populated the airplane in about equal number, and the preflight din was unusually loud and high pitched. Much to the delight of all, the seating was perfect. Cheryl’s parents had two seats to themselves on one side of the plane, Cheryl’s sister and her husband had two seats together on the other side of the plane, Cheryl and I were in the middle section roughly between them, the three girl cousins took up the middle section behind us, and the two boy cousins sat together across the aisle from them:


The Orlando airport comes complete with a Hyatt right in the middle of the facility.


The airport is so immense, spread out over 23 square miles (I looked it up), that there is little more jet noise in the hotel than you would find just living in the general vicinity of a regional airport. The Hyatt is quite a nice hotel, and we got a room with a balcony overlooking the runways (my request).


After a very nice dinner in a hotel restaurant, we finally got some needed sleep in preparation for the start of the cruise the next day.