Not Dead Yet, part 4
The First Visit to Texas
Sorry about being so long, everyone. Real Life decided to smack me upside the head several times. Anyway, on with the series.
J, V, and I had intended to spend the day (!), less than a month after our father’s death and less than a week after his funeral, in Texas to take a final, in-person walkthrough of our intended house.
To get to the airport and an early flight, J, V, and I woke up at O-dark-thirty to get the car we’d arranged for. Problem 1: the driver got lost on the way to our neighborhood. Problem 2: by the time he arrived, and our travel time, we missed our flight to Dallas-Fort Worth by five minutes. (They were very strict about departure times right then.) When we reached LaGuardia, we had to make the choice: stay in NYC and take a virtual walk-through online; or take a later flight to complete the walk-through in person and hope to take the return flight on time.
I made the mistake of voting for the in-person walkthrough, because seeing such a house through someone’s camera phone didn’t make as much sense to me. J and V agreed and we flew down. We not only met our Texas realtor, Connie, but also the husband of one of J’s online friends, Micheal.
We found a later flight that had us landing at DFW Airport the same afternoon. We also discovered that even native Texans needed GPS to get around. It was worth it to see the house in person.
But because we arrived so late, so much time was taken to get to the house from DFW, and the walkthrough itself, once again we missed the flight back to LaGuardia, and the next direct flight wasn’t until 6:45 AM the following morning.
We finally had one piece of good luck, though. When Micheal heard about what happened with our flight, he offered to bring us to their home for dinner. I met Moira, his wife, for the first time, as well as RJ, her son from a previous marriage.
The original plan was to spend the night at the airport to ensure we got on our flight. The post-dinner nap turned into staying until 4 AM. Another piece of good luck: Moira keeps almost the same hours as our father (early to bed, early to rise), and was able to drive us to the airport.
The following weekend, J & V were going to a conference in North Carolina. No surprise, J was distrustful of hired cars after what had just happened to us, so it was up to me to wake up at O-dark-thirty to get them to LaGuardia for a 6:30 AM flight. This is what prompted us to plan to drive our two cars down from New York to Texas.
Or at least, that was the plan…