My next stop was Downtown Disney, where I did my most serious souvenir shopping (drawer pulls for my dresser, a set of Mickey hand spatulas, two boxes of Christmas ornaments, and the obligatory WDW photo album), and had lunch at McDonalds. But now I found that I had bought so much stuff that I couldn't fit all of it into my luggage, so I went back out to 192 to the nearest flea market to buy a new bag. The I went to Walgreens to get a new lock for that bag, and repacked my luggage, before going to Old Town for yet more shopping. I limited myself to a Mini-Me bobble-head and a Dr. Evil t-shirt.
Now I wanted to find a quiet place to rest, so I headed over to Disney's Boardwalk and staked out a nice, comfortable chair in the lobby, where I wrote out some trip notes and enjoyed the air-conditioning for a while. I was tempted to hop a boat to MGM for one last ride on Star Tours, but I didn't have enough time before I would have to get in my rental car and leave for the airport. So instead, I simply sat, enjoying the view of the Boardwalk and the calm elegance of the Boardwalk's lobby, before finally getting up and reluctantly getting on the road to come home.
My route to the airport was supposed to be on the Greenway, which is the southern highway connecting MCO with the Disney area, but first I had to drive out to 192 to fill up my rental car's gas tank. It's always a good idea to fill your tank some distance from the airport before returning a rental car, as the gas stations nearest to MCO and it's many rental car facilities always have far higher prices per gallon than those a few miles away.
Once I filled the tank, I finally got on the highway and went out to the airport. The drive was uneventful and brief, the traffic was sparse, and within 30 minutes or so I was pulling into the rental car return area of the airport parking garage. Once I dropped off my rental Hyundai Accent and draped my luggage about myself, I entered the terminal through the underground tunnel from the garage and checked in at the AirTran counter. AirTran has a policy allowing coach travelers to upgrade to business class for a small fee, so I sprung the extra $35 and got a voucher for 2 free drinks. Ordinarily, I would have been tempted to use one of these vouchers, but since I knew I'd have to drive myself home when I landed, I had to let the voucher go to waste.
After checking in, and checking my luggage, I went to the food court in the main terminal and got a light dinner at the Burger King there, and then headed out to the gates...
Only to remember when I got there that there is a small food court near the gates, with a McDonalds and a Sbarro. The Burger King in the main food court is mediocre at best, and I love Sbarro, so I had wanted to eat there on my way home, but thanks to my swiss-cheese memory, I was stuck with Burger King for dinner. Oh, well, maybe next time.
I got to the gate and sat down, filling in a few more trip notes in my notebook as I waited for my plane. The plane arrived from it's last run on time, but mechanical problems delayed boarding by 45 minutes. Finally, the plane was taken out of service and another plane was brought in for my flight. By this time, all the passengers in the boarding area were getting antsy and impatient, so the AirTran staff tried to speed things up by lining us all up to board before the plane was ready; this was a mistake, because those of us in the front of the line got stuck in the jetway for ten or fifteen minutes until the plane was ready. Now, a jetway at Orlando International Airport in September can be a fairly warm place, and when it's crammed full of people and carry-on luggage, it becomes a sauna. Tempers rose along with the temperature, and by the time we were finally allowed onto the plane and seated, quite a few passengers were loudly complaining to those around them about the series of screw-ups we had endured.
Personally, I was unhappy at the inconveniences, but I didn't consider any of them to be capitol offenses.
The plane took off at 6:50, about an hour late, but the pilot announced that he would increase our cruising speed a little and shorten our flight time from the usual 2:10 to about 1:40. The flight was quick, but very bumpy (Turbulence: Solar radiation heats the Earth's crust, warm air rises, cold air falls... turbulence. I hate that!) I did luck out, however, in that once again I got the whole row (in business class, there are only two seats per row) to myself, which meant I could put my laptop bag on the other seat as I typed up the trip notes I'd been writing in my notebook during the whole trip.
My plane landed at about 8:40, and I picked up my luggage and returned to my own truck on the BWI parking lot without incident. I was home that night by 10pm.
Walk Miles: 8.24
Drive miles: 66.0
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