As I mentioned last week, I recently returned from a week of sailing with my son and his Boy Scout Troop at Sea Base, which is a camp operated by the Boy Scouts of America. Sea Base is located about 75 miles from Miami on the Florida Keys (Islamorada, to be exact).

This was my oldest son’s last “high adventure” trip as a scout. He turns 18 in December and then will age out. A “high adventure” trip is a trip where the boys are participating in activities that they wouldn’t normally do on our monthly weekend outings. The trips are usually a week or more in length and as was in this case, a pretty hefty distance from home.

My son has gone on previous trips to Wyoming, where the troop backpacked for a week in the Big Horns Mountains, Phlimont, which is another BSA run camp in New Mexico, a “Sea To Sky” trip to Oregon and now, Sea Base.

I have never traveled with him on one of these trips.

One of my regrets.

Oh, I’ve done many weekend trips and even spent a week with my boys at a scout camp, which I enjoyed very much, but never one like this. And this was my last chance with my oldest!

One last chance to create a wonderful memory and the chance to spend a week with my son learning how to sail and being part of a crew on a sailboat!

The trip started very early for us, 5:00 AM was the meeting time for the group of 16 scouts and 8 adults who signed up well over a year ago for this trip. We met at a local school, in a driving rain, to quickly get a headcount, meet our drivers (who volunteered to take us to the airport at that early hour), load our gear and be on our way to the Minneapolis airport to catch our 7:30 AM flight to Miami.

The flight was uneventful, which is the best kind, and we landed in Miami on time.

The adult leader in charge of this journey soon found out that the bus company that was supposed to pick us up and take us to our Fort Lauderdale hotel was running just a “tad” late.

My definition of “tad” has always been, “small amount”, like, “be there in a couple of minutes”, apparently though, in south Florida it has a totally different meaning!

Oh, it started out as “Be there soon!”, but we quickly found out we had PLENTY of time to pay for & consume very overpriced airport food!

It became comical!

Every now and then we would receive word the bus was actually in transit but was encountering tremendous amounts of obstacles en route to Miami International Airport!

The excuses started to flow…

Another bus in the fleet had broken down.

Traffic was a mess.

Bad traffic on a bridge!

Road construction!

We were waiting for, “My dog ate my bus!” when we finally heard he was pulling in to pick us up!

Except…

Not on our level, which was currently the “baggage” level!

(The level most people use following arrival at an airport!)

No he needed to pick us up on the “departure” level since the designers of “MIA” must have not envisioned tour buses when they figured out the clearance needed for vehicles on the baggage level!

So, like the theme song from the TV show, “The Jefferson’s”, we were…

“Movin’ on up!”

Moving on up to the departure level!

That’s when we met him!

For the sake of protecting his identity, for whatever noble reason, I’ll call him, “Tony”! (Actually, he looked and acted much more like a “Tony” and I really believe his parents messed up on this one!)

A “northeasterner” transplant to the sunshine state!

You know how you can pretty well size someone up in a split second? Someone you’ve never met before in your whole life, but you instantly know what that person’s personality will be!

That was our “Tony”!

None of that sappy, “Sorry for the delay and I’ll do my very best to make it up to you guys!” for “Tony”!

Nope, he was instantly complaining about the speed to which our guys were loading their bags under the bus, which by the way, wasn’t slow at all! (It took about one minute to load our bags!)

It was almost like he was blaming us for his troubles!

Just a hunch, I don’t think “Tony” moonlights for Disney in his spare time!

But okay, relax, we’re finally on the bus, we’re in Florida, life is good! We’ll be at our hotel in no time and relaxing on the beach…

One slight problem…

We need to pick-up another troop at some “gatorland” place (which just happens to be halfway in between someplace and nowhere) and take them to the Fort Lauderdale airport!

You see, “Tony” was the kind of bus driver who liked to disclose his schedule on a “need-to-know” basis and that moment was pretty much when we were pulling into “Gatorland”!

We pulled into “Gatorland”, our boy honked twice and the troop came running! (They must have encountered “Tony” before!) One problem, they were a scout short! This didn’t make “Mr. Efficient” very happy! It seems the scout had briefly stopped off to use the restroom since he probably didn’t know if the bus ride would last 20 minutes or 20 hours!

“Hey, before I drop you guys off, I need to pick-up another group in Orlando!”

I must say, the Fort Lauderdale airport looked nice!

A rather clean, efficient looking airport!

Good news…

The bus was able to fit on the appropriate level!

We dropped off the troop, which was heading home to Wisconsin, and more importantly, we didn’t pick-up anyone else! We were finally on our way to our hotel!

Following a lot of “honking” by “Tony” at passing vehicles, he dropped us off at the “Bahia Cabana” in Fort Lauderdale around 4:00. (Two hours later than planned.) The scouts still had time to enjoy the beach and get their first taste of salt water!

The good news…

“Tony” was assigned to take us to Sea Base the following morning…

To Be Continued…

“Things I Learned This Week”…

I’ll cover a whole list of things I learned on the trip later next week, but I couldn’t pass up this one…

*We actually have a LEAGUE in this country for eating contests!

It’s called, “Major League Eating” and apparently the league was in a dispute with “star” eater, Takeru Kobayashi, which kept him from participating in Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island this past Sunday!

You know the contest…

Always on the Fourth of July…

The one where contestants see how many hot dogs and buns they can shove into their face in ten minutes and win, oh I don’t know, a t-shirt?

Who knew we actually had a league for this?

Who knew there was more than one of these contests a year?

Anyway, Joey Chestnut won the thing by “eating” 54 dogs in ten minutes!

Kobayashi tried to “crash” the event and won an all-inclusive stay at the county jail!

Happy Weekend!