Class, travel

It was good to get home last night. Even if it was after 11 pm. I have been traveling since Monday morning. Teaching a class in Andalusia, AL. Meeting Mama and the grandkids in Pensacola, FL. Driving home with her and the grandkids all day yesterday. Teaching the class was the pivot point that made the whole travel plan work out the way it did. I flew into Pensacola Monday morning. From there I drove to Andalusia and met with my host. The representative for the company hosting the class. He showed me the classroom he had set up for the class. It was a poor set up for the type of class I was to teach, but he was quite pleased with the effort needed to get the room set up in the manner it was. I knew it would be a tough arrangement to work with, but as an instructor, you just have to adapt. We struggled through the class which turned out fairly well even though the room was crowded. Access and egress was difficult for everyone. To access one side of the room, the participants had to walk around where I stood to teach at the front of the room. The participants would not have known the difference in the way the presentation was adapted for the class unless I had told them. Which I did not. We wrapped up about 3:30 that afternoon. I was leaving the site by 4 pm. Headed to meet Mama.

Mama and I had agreed that it would be best for us to meet at the Cordova Mall. It is less than a mile from the airport. I was there be 5:30. She and the kids had walked around, played games and basically just killed time waiting to meet me. Other than stopping to fill the rental car with gas on my way to Pensacola, I did not stop. Meeting in Pensacola was great for me and Mama since it is a familiar area for both of us. I called Mama as I was getting fuel to let her know I was only ten minutes from the mall. She told me where she was parked so I could find her easily. When I parked, I saw Mama, Cathryn and Walter coming out of the mall, so I hid behind a pillar and waited for them to pass me before I popped out to surprise them. Once Mama got through hugging and kissing me, the kids joined in. We were in no particular hurry, so we took our time saying hello.

Mama and I took a few minutes to transfer my luggage over to the Sequoia so that when I returned the car, all I would have to do was hand in the keys and get my receipt. The smaller airport made it great for us to coordinate the rental car return. Mama just followed me into the garage and parked nearby while I spoke to the attending agent. It took about ten minutes to complete the transaction. From there we headed to a hotel I had booked for us near the beach. The traffic was so heavy in a couple areas that we stopped for dinner before we even got to the causeway that would take us over to the Pensacola Beach area. What is normally a thirty-minute drive took us over an hour and a half. Dinnertime excluded.

The hotel, expensive though it was, was a bit of a disappointment; but it was across the street from Pensacola Beach. The staff was great. The room was adequate. The bed turned out to be great for me and Mama. It was only for one night. We were put in a third-floor room on the side opposite the bars that backed up to the east side of the hotel. Fortunately, elevators were available for Mama. Once we go our stuff to the room and changed, we walked to the beach. It was crowded but not overly so. A concert of sorts was going on, so the largest concentration of people was in the pavilion area. Mama, the kids and I set up a good way from the concert, a little way back from the surf and immediately started hunting for shells. Cathryn and Walter took a few minutes to get used to the waves but eventually were playing freely in the shallows. Mama and I took them across some “deep water” to a sandbar. The deep water was about eighteen inches deep, but when you are only about three feet tall, that is a considerable depth to wade through. Once on the sandbar you would have though the two of them had swan across the ocean to get where they were. They were very impressed with themselves having conquered the dangerous water crossing. After they survived the trek the first time, they went back and forth over and over again. Walter tripped and dunked himself a couple times, but did not seem bothered by it. Cathryn stayed above the water at all times.

We did not find many shells, but we had a great time (only a couple hours) at the beach. The kids were worn out by the time we got cleaned up and laid down. We needed a good night’s sleep. The drive home was going to be a long one.