Miami Trip

I have a running relationship with bad luck, so when a friend suggested I meet up with him in Miami for his two hour layover in the airport--I should have said no right off the bat. It's a four hour drive from Orlando to Miami, and I had a to-do list that was hovering over me something wicked. But I'm a people person. And heck what was four hours in comparison to the three years I hadn't seen him? Plus, I had my handy new GPS, and I felt invincible. My days of getting lost were forever behind me!

Things started out bad. I struggled to get out of bed, I had to fill the gas tank up, but then I got in a good rhythm and kind of enjoyed seeing parts of Orlando I'd never encountered. "So this is what south Orlando looks like?" I eventually got on the Ronald Reagan Turnpike and was zipping (well, as much as I can zip along) until an overwhelming sleepiness came over me. I tried to fight it. But after I had one of those troublesome fantasies of just closing my eyes taking a long nice nap in the car, and after I found my car wandering into another lane, I decided a break was in order. I pulled off at a gas station and lost 20 minutes off my ETA.

Then I drove on and on and on and on. At one point my friend called and asked, "Where are you?" "I'm only 20 minutes away," I said. After talking with him, I discovered that he would be be boarding his flight in 40 minutes. "Oh no," I grumbled and willed myself to go faster...but it was around this time that things went bad. First traffic...the empty road became a bastion of slow moving cars (I watched my GPS ETA extend longer and longer). Then my GPS was very faithful in telling me--"in five hundred yards exit on the left". Unfortunately, those five hundred yards involved three lanes of traffic and people dead set on letting anyone in front of them.
(My estimated ETA got even later.)

After several loops and explorations of various Miami freeways, my friend called again. We determined that I had about 10 minutes to see him. I told him, "Run out to the drop off and pick up, and I'll meet you there." I had ten minutes left on my ETA. I could make it in time for a quick hug.

Come to find out the drop off/pick up section of the Miami Airport has one little entrance if you are wanting to be right next to the doors. I missed the entrance, and from where I was driving on an outer left lane, I couldn't see my friend. (He had been calling me from a pay phone.) I tried to exit to pull through the airport again, but I ended up pulling into a "service vehicle only" area entrance. Argh!! Eventually, I managed to swing around and go through the airport again. I got in on the inside lane. I stopped my car, got out, and looked for my friend. He was gone. I drove a little more, stopped my car and looked again--nope, he wasn't there. I realized I had missed him and pulled ahead over the curb (smack wack crunch thunk) in front of me with a heavy (and slightly embarrassed) heart.

I went immediately to Denny's for comfort. (Breakfast is the best comfort food.) I was tired and just needed some food. I sat in the booth pondering the absurdity of it all--I was in Miami with nothing to show for it. I drank a glass of cold ice water, and it slipped from my hands...ice landed on my lap and on the floor and several customers turned to see the commotion. Sigh.

I somehow hoped there was a bigger reason for me to be in Miami. I wanted to (at that point) save someone's life or run into a lost soul who needed a listening ear. Then I could say that the whole trip had been worth something. I had been sent to Miami on a mission!

No such opportunities showed up--though I did end up doing the bulk of my finals grading on a beach under a palm tree--that sure beat my office!!

There was one good thing that came out of the experience: besides lessons in better planning and more pessimism about my ability to get anywhere in the "estimated time"...the trip broke up a little wave of discontentment that had started to come over me the night before. In fact, I was so involved in my mini-pity party that Sunday night that my Miami airport friend had called me twice before I got back with him. I was trying to drown my sorrows in the Internet (reading obscure news articles and watching cat videos) that I hadn't noticed he had called me a second time.

His phone call/invitation to make a spontaneous trip to Miami changed the whole direction of my thought. I had to plan a trip! Then I had to execute it, and the execution was so poorly done that I had no time to think about the small thing making me discontent. I came back tired, amused, chagrined, and well content again.

So maybe that's what I'm walking away with. Sometimes God has to send me to Miami to get over myself.