Free Range Friday Ft. Lauderdale~ or ~ 'scuse me while I kiss the sky

SNAFU - Situation normal, all fucked up. A military term (really) which also describes that awareness when, once seated on the plane for the last half of a journey with a joyful destination, the announcement comes that the plane, let alone the passengers, will be remaining steadfastly in touch with terra cemento for the foreseeable future. In fact, all will be returning to the terminal until ssshhhhqwakkkkkscreech WEEE chuchu deeeee or other is fixed. Which took 5 hours.

In my email after I got plugged in at my brother's:

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience you experienced on JetBlue Flight #1754. We understand how challenging it is when your travel plans are disrupted.

As a gesture of apology and goodwill, we have issued each person on this flight a service credit in the amount of $100.*

Thank you Jet Blue. I don't know who your public relations writer is but I'm sure they could always find a job in politics.

The funniest part was this (and truly, the entire staff was patient and kind and thoughtful throughout) and you have to be a regular flyer into Puerto Rico to get this, as I assume most of you are. We all troop back onto the plane. The attendant again apologizes profusely and let's us know it will be made up to us (which I assumed correctly meant free drinks, of which I promptly took advantage). That announment started up a scattering of light applause...and that's when, after hours of patience and charm, he lost it. "PLEASE! Don't CLAP!! There are some really disgusted people on this plane right now. Just please! don't clap. Please!"

I started laughing...and laughed again later when another attendant told me what happened. Apparently on St. Croix during the regular review pre-flight maintenance (do I need to go into details? Ok, I'll make it short, but you know where this is going) instead of doing the exterior of the plane first, they did the interior...and maybe not the exterior.  The upshot was there was a big hole in a screen surrounding electronics that shouldn't have been there and they needed to find this ONE engineer in BRAZIL to say if it was safe to fly. I hope he was having a better time than we were. But on a life changing scale? T'wern't no big thing...nobody died.

Leaving Culebra

I do love this wee place

I was quite looking forward to taking cloud and island photos on the second half of the trip. But there was instead the glorious full moon. Which I only saw when we were leaving the runway. At last!

This is sort of how we felt.

Ft. Lauderdale coast line!

 My brother and an old friend of ours who lives on Maui but was in the Caribbean and had popped in were there, patiently waiting for me. After lots of hugs and getting back to home base, they went to sleep, she on the couch, bro to the room. I was still wired and went for a walk to the beach. The moon shone whitely over city lights and I wanted to ask a local...'Is this the same moon that we have at home?'

Self portrait

I got back, pulled up a floor and pillows and slept awhile. Now the sun is up, it's a beautiful day and I'm heading to the intercoastal and then the beach to see what I can see.

But first. Where's the food part, MJ? Here, right here. Because when I got back I realized I was hungry, after having eaten two little bags of sesame crunchy things and one a few hours later of blue chips. With sleeping people, I didn't want to clatter much so I just poked around. And there...were sweet plantains! Perfect munchy food. One was enough. ZZZZZZzzzzzzz. The trick to these is, have a Pollo Tropical around your neighborhood, use lightly.

 Have a fly freely Friday! Do something foreseeable. HAHAHAHAHAHA