Back from a PA washout weekend

This is a long one. This weekend was our trip to PA for me to play in the Pottstown Rumble, my favorite volleyball tournament ever. Due to all the money we spent last month, I booked the flight out of Fort Lauderdale to save a couple bucks. (a 2 hour drive) The drive was long and the airport was very busy. Our connection flight to Atlanta left a half hour late but the flight itself was uneventful. However the late take off meant we had about 15 minutes to get to the next gate. We hurried to the gate and got there during the final boarding call. Whew! We found our seats and were taxing out to the runway when the plane stops. After a delay, the captain informs us that our flight to Philly was going to be pushed back an hour and a half due to the crappy weather in PA. BY the time we taxied back to the gate, it was only going to be 15 minutes till they began boarding again so we just stayed put on the plane. We finally got in the air and soared into Philly, as we approached and got down into the clouds, it got amazingly dark. We could not even see the ground until 30 seconds before landing. When we emerged there was nothing but grayness and rain pouring down. It was nasty, real nasty.

Our next leg of the journey was a drive to my bro’s place. Of course to do so we needed a rental car. I pulled out my reservation form I printed from the internet. 34 bucks a day for a full size car for 3 days. Came to about 130 odd bucks. The person behind the counter asks me for the driver license, and if I wanted the minimal, medium or full coverage on the vehicle. I said minimal of course since I have rental car coverage through my auto insurance policy. She prints up the bill and the total is over 200 dollars. Woah! Wait a sec, I say. What is this? This is almost a 100 bucks more than my quote from the internet! She goes over the charges and lists the 19.99 a day charge for minimal “insurance” !!! The way she presented it, it was like there was no option for NO additional insurance. When pressured, she said I didn’t have to take any additional coverage. Nice. They try to just slip that in and hope you shrug it off. Bastards. That really pissed me off. Don’t rent from Dollar. At least the car was VERY nice. A Chrysler Concorde with all the goodies.

Normally, this entire drive may take an hour and a half. It took double that because of the rain. Flooding everywhere. We were starved and decided to just pull off and eat dinner, hoping traffic would ease a little bit. We wound up not getting to my brothers until 10 pm. Our travel day started at 7 am. You do the math.

Eating at the back of my mind this entire time is what was going to happen with the volleyball tournament. The Rumble is ALWAYS hot and humid. Saturday was forecast to have even more rain and be in the MID 60’s! Unbelievable. As soon as I got to my Bro’s I hopped on the internet and looked at the tournament site. It said on there RAIN or SHINE , BE PREPARED. The weather was so bad that even I, a diehard when it comes to stuff like this, was considering calling up my partner and telling him that we should just bag it. Playing in the cold and rain sucks all of the enjoyment out of a volleyball tournament. If it isn’t enjoyable, what is the point. So, I called him up to hash it out and he told me the tournament had to be cancelled, the field was literally underwater. Ah geez! Even though I was contemplating bagging it myself, hearing that it was cancelled really bummed me out. 1200 miles for nothing. A bitter disappointment but I had to admit that even if it was played, it would have been horrible. So my depression was at a pretty deep level the entire weekend. Instead of battling it out at the Rumble my Saturday was spent visiting friends and family. Always a good time but I had a hard time masking my general feelings of blah.

Saturday night through Monday morning were spent at my brother and sister-in-laws. They scheduled the christening of their daughter (my neice) around this trip. I got to meet my 5 month old neice Lauryn for the first time. She is a little sweetheart. The christening went well, followed by a luncheon and then some family came back to their place. There was the normal drama that seems to pop up during family gatherings. By the end people were mad at other people and it was time for it to wrap up. My bro and sis-in-law are in an in between townhouse until they buy another house, so room was tight and I could tell it was a bit of an inconvenience for them to have us there. I slept one night on the floor and the other on their couch.

We pulled out Monday. The weather was great! 80 degrees and sunny. 🙁 The flight home was uneventful and we actually arrived back in Florida 15 minutes early. The 50 dollar parking fee and 2 hour drive back after a day of flying stiffened my resolve to never fly out of the other coast for the sake of saving a few bucks.

We got home to our house around 9pm. Evidently it has rained like mad while we were gone. 10 plus inches of rain over the weekend! Our property that was dry when we left was filled with standing water when we returned. Another 3 inches of rain in 2 hours Tuesday afternoon, totally flooded the low lying areas. Pics of it to follow.

So that’s it. In a nutshell the things that were enjoyable about the trip were:

Nice rental car

Seeing friends and family

Every other aspect of it, basically SUCKED.

Leave for AZ in 2 days. Not again…..