Here I am at Seatac, awaiting my flight to, hopefully, warmth and sunshine. They're forecasting another big winter storm to hit a good part of the south today, but theoretically it should be staying up in Alabama. And Chicago, where I change planes, is sunny with only a 10 percent chance of snow, so perhaps I will squeeze through this narrow window of decent weather.
It's certainly not decent here. We had an inch or two of snow yesterday morning, our first (and probably only) of the winter. And although the snow is pretty much gone now, it's 38 and raining this morning. A good time to get out of here!
I will be visiting cousins Kris in Orlando tonight and tomorrow night, then driving to North Port, just north of Fort Myer, to visit cousin Mary for a couple of days. Then back up to Tampa to pick up Gerry and Jill, who are flying in from Seattle to meet me. The three of us will spend about ten days bicycling, mostly on trails, along the Gulf coast.
I am the tour director for this trip, and I've used WomanTours' Florida tour as an outline. They charge about $2800, and I think we will come in at a little over half of that per person. Still, we certainly don't have all the benefits they do, and I would highly recommend any tour that they offer. Just the effort of organizing this trip is probably worth a good $400.( Luckily, I do mostly enjoy the organizing.)
We will rent bikes in Clearwater, and they have promised me a rack that will carry three bikes to go on the rental car. With the rack on the back, we wouldn't be able to access the trunk, so I reserved an SUV. When I first made my reservation a month or two ago, the cheapest SUV I could find was close to $1200 for two weeks. But I checked again a few days ago and got one for less than half of that! I've found it's always a goo idea to check and recheck car rental prices.
And airfare too, if you're flying Southwest, as I always do. If you find one, you can change to a cheaper flight with no penalty. You also get to check two bags for free, and my experience has been that if I stop at the restroom before going to the baggage area, my bag is usually there on the conveyor waiting for me. Flights are on time, flight attendants are friendly, checkin is easy. Last fall I left my coat on a plane, and they actually found it and sent it back to me! Southwest, you're welcome for the advert!
Back to the bike rental. Oddly enough, I could not find any place that rents bikes with racks on the back. The place I finally rented from wanted us to buy racks for $55 apiece. I finally got them to agree to loan us racks for the price of installing and uninstalling them, which will be $40 total for the three bikes.
Following the WomanTours outline, we will be kayaking one day, through mangrove tunnels where manatees hang out, but probably not this time of year.
I've got hotels all reserved, all but one either through hotels.com (a couple more and I will be elegible for a free night), ChoiceHotels, or Best Western. The one exception is a boutique hotel in downtown Tampa. I've used hotels.com quite a bit in the past and have had good luck with it. I have NOT had good luck with Priceline.com for hotels, but sometimes with cars, although this time Priceline wanted a lot more than Alamo.
As long as I'm doing free advertising, Dish Delish has become my favorite place at Seatac to buy food to take on the plane. They package stuff so it doesn't leak, they don't use those stupid clumsy clamshell things for their sandwiches, they have a great Mediterranean quinoa salad, and their water bottles have the nice close able spouts on them instead of just a screw top.
And while we're on that subject, if you fly through Chicago Midway, be sure and stop at Nuts On Clark for possibly the best popcorn in the world. Just follow your nose.
Ok, enough with the advertising. Gotta get on the plane.
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