July 22, 2023 - Saturday - Departure Day
Our taxi to the airport is scheduled for 6:00 PM. Since we were already packed, we spent the day leisurely checking our list of things to do before leaving. After lunch we moved my car onto the driveway. This probably sounds odd, but it was a bit of an adventure. The village is resurfacing the streets in our neighborhood. Part of that project includes the replacement of deteriorating curbs and the curbing front of our driveway was on the removal list. also, three segments of our sidewalk would be removed and replaced. We had hoped that would take place while we were gone, but they removed our curb and sidewalk on Thursday. That meant we had to park across the street if we wanted to use the car. It would take week for the new curbing to cure and we would be gone then. We could not leave the car on the street while we were away because that curbing would be removed right after ours was usable again.
We had arranged to park our car in the church parking lot but we were not comfortable leaving it there unattended for a month. After surveying the situation this morning I decided that I could thread my car across the parkway to the driveway between the open trench for the curb and the excavation for the sidewalk. The usable space was almost 3 feet wider than the car. I would need clear guidance to stay on the grace. Our neighbor, Aaron stood in the sidewalk hole to mark the danger zone on that side while Alice stood next to the start of the curb trench. I was then able to pull the car onto the parkway and carefully thread the needle. Perfect. The car is now on our driveway where our neighbors will keep an eye on it while we are gone.
At 5:15 I got a notification from the American Taxi app that our driver was on the way and should arrive at 5:55. The app included a link to Google Maps that showed the location of the cab and traced its progress. He was way south of us but he made good progress in light traffic and we could see that he would be early. A 5:40 I met him on the street and showed him where he could park close to our house. He did a yeoman’s job getting our luggage from the house to his cab across the parkway. In 10 minutes we were off for what proved to be a harrowing ride to the American Airlines terminal. This guy thought he was a NASCAR driver.
We were checked in and on our way to the gate by 6:30. This was not without incident. I had entered our Global Entry numbers in our American Advantage accounts, but when the boarding passes were printed they did not indicate that we had TSA Recheck. The attendant told us where to look online to find our numbers. We did that and went back to her. She reprinted our passes with the TSA info and we zoomed through the security check. There was no one in line. in fact, the terminal was almost empty. There was nobody sitting in our flight’s waiting area. For all the talk about increased air travel, we were amazed that so few people were here.
We boarded our flight and found our Premium Economy seats. This was the first time we were flying on American with their 3rd level of economy seating. The seats were 4 inches wider and the legroom was considerably longer. This was very comfortable. We were between Business Class and Economy Plus. We also benefited from priority check-in and boarding. The flight departed on time at 10:20 PM. 30 minutes later we were served dinner on china with silverware. The quality was almost as good as business class. We were very pleased. After dinner the lights were dimmed, we took advantage of the deeper recline of our seats and managed to sleep for a part of the six-and-a-half-hour flight.
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