Don't Forget to Bring a Swimsuit

It's not quite Towelie from South Park (Don't forget to bring a towel!), but it's good advice. Let me set up a scenario. You've got a wedding in Miami Beach. You go. It's a short trip, so you try not to get adjusted to East coast time, opting instead for Miami Beach time, going to bed at five or six in the morning, and sleeping in to noon or one in the afternoon. Let's suppose you get back to your hotel after the Sunday evening wedding, maybe around eleven. You find a piece of paper from the Miami Beach public works department telling you that the water will be turned off Monday from 11-3. You decide to go to bed a little after one, which still won't mess with your time zones for when you go back to the West coast. The next morning you wake up just after ten, slowly getting ready for your seven hours of plane rides back to the Northwest. At 10:30 you go to step into the shower to find that the public works department has accidentally broken the water line as they were exposing it for the work to be done, and now you're without running water. Maybe you're right next door to a corner market, and can buy some bottled water for a sponge bath in your hotel. Better yet, you throw on the board shorts and hike across the road, and walk down the boardwalk a few blocks until you find one of the outdoor beach showers. You could stand there scrubbing like a homeless person in the street. How nice. Then the water you buy at the corner market is just the finishing touch back in the hotel. Success.

Now suppose you board the plane, and find that at least a couple of people in the immediate vicinity did not make the same effort. Imagine sitting in that vicinity for five hours and twenty minutes to San Francisco. Hopefully the last leg to the NW will be better.

That was Monday.