Change In Plans

Greetings from Destin, the beautiful, white-sand heart of Florida’s Gulf Coast!

Our plan was pretty simple: fly from New York to Atlanta on Saturday morning, drive to Destin, meet up with India’s family on Saturday afternoon, enjoy my birthday on the beach together on Sunday. I would fly back early on Monday morning.

After a year of traveling the world, this should have been straightforward. Instead it became a comedy of small errors. No harm done, a lot of cultural learnings for me, and some quality family time for us all.

There are mixed opinions, by the way, about whether the term ‘redneck’ is acceptable. Every person I’ve asked in the South has said its OK, so I will go with that. I don’t mean it in any pejorative sense, and if anyone posts a comment suggesting a different word, I will change the title of this post. The ‘Redneck Riviera’ alliteration is irresistible, though. Given how sunburnt we all are, it is factually accurate as well.

India had assured me that the drive from Atlanta to Destin was three hours. When I got around to checking on Google maps, while waiting in line at Hertz in the Atlanta airport, it turned out to be 320 miles. Estimated drive time: 6-7 hours. Ouch!

At India’s suggestion, we upgraded our rental to a convertible, and got everyone excited about a proper roadtrip to the beach.

When Tallulah and Zola saw the dark-blue Mustang, they both got wildly excited. Zola started saying “Yeah, baby!” over and over again in his Austin Powers accent. Wisely, Tallulah also dug her hairbrush out of her backpack.

Pretty quickly, we realized that the cobertible was an impractical choice. Our luggage overflowed the tiny trunk, and we had to stack it in the back seat between the kids. Each of them was wedged in tightly by bags. The top-down cruising was also a lot windier than I think they expected. As stylin’ as Zola felt (”Yeah, baby!”), ten minutes south of the airport he and Tallulah were pleading for us to put the roof up.

With the roof up, however, the crowding from the luggage was claustrophobically unbearable. We had to put the roof back down. Tallulah hid under a blanket for the first couple of hours, and Zola huddled low and out of the wind. A good time was had by all, or at least by India and me.

As we drove, I heard lots of stories from India about college and law-school road trips to Destin, and about family vacations on the beach. I heard about her friend picking up the rocker, Tommy Two Tone, and bringing him back to India’s motel room. I hadn’t really appreciated how important this place was to her in the years before we knew each other.

The trip south had many highlights. I saw a billboard that read “God, Guns and Guts Made America Great!” The New York equivalent would probably read “Money, Chutzpah, and Take-Out Chinese Food”. We saw another billboard advertising “Concealed Weapons Permit Classes.” I’m not sure what exactly they teach in that one.

Somewhere near Dothan, Alabama, we passed a commercial yeast factory. The smell was overwhelming and bad. Having been silent for over an hour, Tallulah popped up from under her wind shelter and yelled, “Someone pooped!”

Stranger still, after a similar period of silence, Zola informed us gravely that he “hadn’t picked a booger in over a year.” Maybe the sun was cooking his head.

Far to the north, the three-vehicle Nashville convoy with the rest of India’s family had somehow missed their planned departure time of 7 am. They actually rolled out at 12:30 pm, which put them on track for a 9 pm arrival. Somehow this made us feel a little better about our own travel challenges.

порно бабы

After a wind-swept eternity, we pulled into Destin at 6:30 pm, picked up the keys to the rental house, and found the place, across the street from the beach. Excitedly, we hauled our bags inside, and found … a disgusting mess.

Somehow the house had not been cleaned after its last occupants had checked out. The previous occupants had not been a college fraternity, or a traveling rock band, but the place was pretty gross.

The challenge was to get the house cleaned before my cleanliness-valuing (some night say germphobic) mother-in-law arrived a few hours later.

To the rental agency’s great credit, they got on it right away. Within two minutes of calling to report the problem, Todd, the manager had called back, apologized profusely, and dispatched his best cleaner, Esmeralda, and a large team. He even offered to pay for dinner so we could get out of the cleaning team’s way.

We went to the beach for a while, and swam in the warm Gulf water. The sand is white, so the water looks beautiful and blue. The kids dug and built castles until sunset, and then we went off to “Captain Dave’s” for a fish dinner (thanks, Todd).
Eventually, the Nashville convoy rolled in, Zola and Tallulah were reunited joyously with their cousins, and all was well.

It was a long, funny, interesting and complicated last day before turning 43. This was a fitting ending to our long, funny, interesting and complicated year.