CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
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| Looking out the window of the plane |
There is nothing like waking up knowing that one of your favorite times of the year has finally arrived. It’s literally like being a kid on Christmas morning. I was up at 6:07, dressed, and at the airport by 6:45! I love living only 15 minutes from the airport. My flights were on time and smooth as silk, a small miracle considering I connected in Charlotte, an airport that experiences delays about as often as Donald Trump lies. (From Lori: I spent the night in Portland, set my alarm for 2 am and was at the Portland airport, sitting at my gate by 3:30am. I was so excited to use my new TSA precheck ability, only to realize that it really isn't that advantageous at 3:00am!)
I arrived in Charleston first, at least 2 ½ hours before Lori was due. The owner of our Turo rental car actually met me at baggage claim to hand over the keys, which meant no airport parking fees to pay! I left the airport and went to the grocery to pick up the supplies we would need for the week. The grocery was only 10 minutes from the airport, so I was back in the cell phone lot in plenty of time to await Lori’s text letting me know she had landed. Lori had left Portland, OR at the same time (5:30 AM PST) as I left Indy (8:30 AM EST), but her second flight was five hours long (as usual! Poor Lori is destined to have to take long flights; there are just too many little states on the eastern side of the country!) I wanted us to be able to head straight for our condo. Once she was in the car we set off for downtown Charleston.
We arrived at The Lodge Alley Inn, a Bluegreen timeshare property. Lori and I are both timeshare owners and are both great at getting full use out of them. This property is delightful and in the heart of the city, right in the middle of everything! We were settled into our one-bedroom loft by 5:00 pm and spent the next 90 minutes getting caught up on each other’s news and current events. Lori usually brings her Bose speaker with her, but this time opted for her Echo device instead. I warned her that I had not been successful at setting up an Alexa device the last few times, something to do with the Wi-Fi security layering. Lori rolled up her sleeves and declared war on the system, but after an hour of trying, had to admit defeat at least temporarily.
The sun was going down fast so we decided to go out for a quick walk before it got dark, but it was raining and a bit damp and icky. We decided to save checking out the neighborhood for another day and just grab some dinner. We found a taco place and went in to get dinner, then back to the condo, where Lori resumed her Alexa battle. No luck, and she had to acknowledge defeat. We decided to watch a show on Netflix, but Bluegreen had taken all the actual TV remotes and replaced them with simplified universal ones. We wanted to connect a laptop to the TV by an HDMI cable, but the stupidly elementary generic remotes had no option to select the input! Therefore, we were unable to switch to HDMI. So, I called Portia at the front desk for help (Portia and I were now BFFs because I had already called three times to ask for stuff.) Portia sent Damon, the maintenance man.
Damon was the bomb! He was one of those (cough*rare*cough) quietly efficient men who first listened to us, then actually believed us when we told him we had tried everything. He did find a button on the bottom of the TV we had missed and was also able to get the stupidly worthless remote to perform a few additional functions, but in the end, didn’t really get much closer to solving the problem than we had. After a while, Damon quietly told us he would be back and turned and left the room. He returned with a real, honest-to-God TV remote and we were saved!
Lori thought maybe this miracle worker could help connect the Alexa device, but sadly, Damon couldn’t get past the firewall. Finally, we let Damon leave and settled down to watch The Fall of the House of Usher, which was not good, so we switched to The Morning Show w/Jennifer Anniston, which neither of us had seen, watched S1E1, then went to bed. Great first day of GW #26.
For the first time in years, we remembered to toss the states on the first night. The survivors were Hawaii, North Dakota, Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and Alaska! I’m pulling hard for North Dakota because it is the only remaining state to which I have not yet traveled.
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