Leaving San Diego for Fort Lauderdale

We finished packing today, well let me say, Judy finished packing, while I monitored the College Football Playoffs.  Being a Big 10 fan, specifically Ohio State, I was pleased to see the great success the conference had this bowl season – 7-1.  I was less pleased to see both SEC teams end up in the finals, but it should be a good game nevertheless.

I take care of packing all the computers and related peripherals, while Judy does the rest.  We each have our own laptop, plus we bring the portable scanner, portable printer, several spare external hard drives for backup, plus the cameras, video cameras, binoculars.  I’ll show you my setup once we get established on the ship.

If you want any advice on packing light, you have come to the wrong place.  One of the pleasures of touring by cruise ship is that if you pack heavy, you only have to move all your stuff twice – getting on and getting off.  Porters are always available everywhere, so if you have a few pictures of dead presidents, you can easily find people to help you with your bags.  Once on the ship, you can stow quite a bit of stuff in the closets, drawers and in the suitcases under the bed.  The key is to keep an inventory of what is where so you don’t have to spend much time searching for things.

Living in a condo makes leaving for extended trips a breeze.  All we need to do is shut the door and turn off the water – and that’s about it.  There are a few things we do inside:  empty the refrigerator, unplug many items that still draw power when not in use, and this year we saran wrapped the toilets to keep the water in the bowls from evaporating and keeping the swamp gasses from wafting into our condo.

Our car service arrived promptly at 8:30 PM to whisk us away to the San Diego International Airport where we would catch the redeye to Atlanta and  then connect to an early morning flight to Fort Lauderdale.  We have been using the same car service for 10 years and they are very reliable and cost about the same as a taxi.  If you find yourself in San Diego, you can’t go wrong using San Diego Transporter for any local transportation requirements.

The airport is only 16 miles from our house, it only takes about 25 minutes to get there – and the San Diego Airport is a nice size – big enough for lots of flights, but not so big where everything is really far or you have to take a train inside the terminal.

We were surprised to find that there were no lines for curbside check in, or for security.  One hour after we left Imperial Beach, we were sitting at an airport restaurant getting some food for our flight.  Our flight with Delta left on time and it will only be 3.5 hours to Atlanta – with the help of our 85 mph tail wind.

There is about 1 hour left in our flight as I write this, so we will sign off for now.  More tomorrow after we check into our hotel in Fort Lauderdale.