sid_9169

And, just like Sunday afternoon at Augusta, one of my oldest vacation traditions... The pile of dirty laundry dumped out on the floor... One Platinum benefit that I'll probably never use. I just can't imagine my stuff rolling around on that massive washing machine with all those strangers' dirty drawers...

Home sweet home... Now it's time for another shower. Also, I'm glad I left the air conditioning cranked up the whole time I was gone. It's hot here... I guess I could've bumped it up to 72° while I was gone, but 66° sure feels nice to come home to.

A few wackos on the train aside, I'll be home soon...

On the floor here in Hotlanta... It's about as humid as the Caribbean here as I wait for the next Northbound train... With a bit of luck I'll be home sweet home before 5:00... It's been a wild crazy adventure, and I can't wait to share it all with you. Just a warning: I only took about 10% to 15% as many food and drink pictures as I normally do, but hopefully the narrative alone will keep you all engaged. The one thing that was completely new and different to me this time around was just being able to live in the moment without the burden of carrying around my phone, as well as taking pictures of every single piece of food or adult beverage. There'll be plenty more to come in the next several days, and we'll wrap this thing up in a nice bow for you...

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We're about to push back from the gate... Next stop: ATL, and hopefully a quick and painless subway ride and Uber home... See you all "on the other side"...

Made it on board and successfully found a place for my carry on stowed. The idiot next to me doesn't believe in putting his personal item under the seat, and put both his carry on AND personal item in the overhead bin. Either way, I just pray for a nice smooth on time flight, and hopefully I'll be home sooner than later...

They haven't even called zone one yet and already fifty people have decided that they need to board with the handicapped and parents with children...

I'm reading every bit of it while sitting here at the airport waiting for my flight... I absolutely love my readers / Tribe...

All in all not the worst pizza I've ever had in my life... It'll hold me off till I get back home later. Probably going to be an early night for me tonight, as I didn't sleep well at all last night... I've been awake since probably around 4:30, but laid there trying to get back to sleep until I just gave up and got out of bed at 5:50...

So, this is what it's come to... Airport Buffalo Chicken pizza. About the size of a Carnival pizza, but cost $17 with a small bottle of water. Being back to reality sucks...

I just looked at the water outage map, and fortunately it looks like I'm outside the affected zone. I put a little red square right about where I live, which is just North of the outage zone... I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't take another shower after what's going to be a long day...

Hitting the "oh crap" button... I didn't know that...

I've got pages and pages and pages of notes, but just for a teaser I'll go back to the very first pictures from the point where we left off on last Saturday afternoon at the Alchemy Bar... All mezcal, which is not really my favorite, but I was trying to build a rapport with "new to me" Alchemy bartenders... We'll just say that it was mostly a success, and I became pretty close with Diana, Sara, Karen, and Ivana...

Before I begin posting from where we left off at Alchemy Bar last Saturday afternoon, I'll just let y'all know that I did indeed go completely "off the grid" since that exact moment. I haven't even began to sift through the over 1,000 emails on three different accounts. One thing I will tell you about the first night and directly after, was that there was NO TEQUILA WHATSOEVER at the Alchemy Bar on the first night. NONE, only one lonely bottle of mezcal, so that's what I had begrudgingly. On the second night, there was STILL no tequila, and I ended up walking back and forth to Pig and Anchor Bar to retrieve it, whilst also trying to have the bartenders or other passengers to save my seat. This almost resulted in a scuffle on more than one occasion, and eventually I just gave up and started drinking the Patron Silver they eventually found... All together, it was one of my stranger experiences at Alchemy as the week went on... Finally, I got sick of the Patron Silver and just started drinking "filthy dirty martinis" channeling Saint Greg... ***Just my Yahoo email account alone this morning...

It's safe to say that it's been a crazy crazy morning already. That "digital debarkation" turned out to be a cluster "you know what" as I assume that 90% of the passengers ignored it and just went down to deck 3 whenever they felt like it. It took me an hour and a half just to get from the elevator lobby on deck 5 down two flights of stairs to deck 3... I was "supposed" to be off board at 9:15, but it ended up being more like 10:00, as I just stood there in a crowd trying to get to the stairs. To make matters EVEN WORSE, people using the elevator to get to deck 3 ended up jumping in front of thousands of people standing there waiting. It's safe to say that this was the worst debarkation for me in almost 30 cruises... I had been trying to coordinate with "C", as she planned on coming over to pick me up at 9:15, but I told her don't even come across the bridge to the port until I was all the way outside and called her. Fortunately, she didn't have any trouble finding me, as I gave her specific instructions on exactly where I'd be standing. I actually walked to the left, all the way away from where the other people were waiting for transportation, and just stood alone on the side of the road. We made it up to FLL in wayyy plenty time for my flight, and with TSA pre check, I was through security in ten minutes. Now it's still more than two hours till my flight, and there's basically nothing to do in this tiny airport. I'm probably going to break my cardinal rule of not eating at the airport, as all I've had all day is three fried eggs, three strips of bacon, and two large black Americano coffees... With a bit of luck I'll be home in the late afternoon, and start getting ready for another long week over at the 'ol salt mine...

I just realized that y'all posted ten pages of stuff whilst I was off the grid! I'll go back and read all of it, but for right now I've gotta get ready to debark... More later...

I'm back!!!... Up before the sun on what's going to be a long travel day. I can never ever sleep well on the last night of the cruise, so I just got up and stood in line at the coffee place and waited for them to open. "C" is supposed to pick me up around 9:00 or a bit after for the drive up to Ft Lauderdale, and my very first time flying out of there. I'll fill in all the details in the coming days, but for now I've still got some packing to do and breakfast to eat...

We're moving... I'm about to engage airplane mode, and we'll continue in a week and one day from now. Until then, thanks to all of you following along, and hopefully you'll return to see what happens... Peace.........

As my luck would have it, there's not a single bottle of tequila of any kind here... Is this even a bar? Double u tee eff?