The Florida trip- Day one

Once again, I am off traveling solo. My wife and daughter are on the road looking at colleges and I have a 3 day weekend, so I decided to hop a flight down to Florida and enjoy the sun and a few baseball games. It seemed like a nice relaxing type trip, which I definitely needed.

I happened to be flying first class on the way down, thanks to the general idiocy of airline fares. I made the reservation kind of late, and at that particular moment first class tickets were $170 cheaper than coach, so I wasn't going to argue. The fortuitousness of this selection did not hit me until I got to the airport and saw the security line stretching nearly all the way to the parking garage. Note: this is not an exaggeration; the line went beyond the far end of the moving sidewalk. But the First Class security line was about 15 people.

I've had my issues going through security recently, mostly because on a couple of occasions I had my garage door opener, which seems to set off all kinds of alerts, in my jacket pocket. One time, they ran it through the x-ray 3 times and then went off to manually inspect it.

Then last time I flew they wanted to put me in a glass cylinder and irradiate me. When I refused I was scolded by the TSA agent for saying "I ain't going in that thing." when apparently I'm supposed to say "I request a hand screening." Pardon me for speaking like a human being instead of a robot, or someone just out of TSA training.

The hand screenings are a bit time-consuming but I haven't found them to be particularly unpleasant, especially since they've been patting me down every time I've entered a sporting event lately. At least these guys seem to know what they're doing. My favorite part was he decided that he had to run one of those bomb detecting swabs all around the Ace bandage that I have on my calf these days.

The flight itself was fine, and I got to the Phillies park well before the game. I went to my first spring training in 1976 and it's gotten a lot slicker since then, but it's still nice to see big league ballplayers in small parks when nobody is taking the proceedings too seriously.

From there I went to my hotel, which is laughingly called a Resort. It's not like there's anything wrong with it. The rooms are large and well equipped, but to me a Resort is a place where there's a variety of activities and amenities. Here, they have a pool, but the only activity I can find is doing laundry. It's a motel. There's miniature golf a block away and the beach is across the street, but you have to make your own fun. Then again, as David Mamet notes in State and Main, if you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun, it's entertainment.

In the interest of making some fun, I took the little trolley up to the main beach area and lay on the sand for an hour or so. And then when I got up to head back, I suddenly realized that my wallet was missing.

I completely freaked. At home it would be an irritation, but on the road by yourself with no credit cards and no money? I retraced all my steps in and around the beach but found nothing. As I got back close to the street, trying to figure out what to do, I saw a trolley go by and went running after it, (note to those who have been following the adventures of me and my reluctant right leg,yes, I actually ran). I flagged it down and asked the driver if someone had left a wallet on a trolley and she replied musically, to my ears anyway, "Are you Frank?"

So yes, I'd left it on the trolley and another driver was driving around with it. He was all the way on the other end of the island, so I had to wait a half hour for him to make his way back, but he had it and nothing was missing. Amazing. Completely lucky.

I headed over to Frenchy's Rockaway Grill, my favorite spot around here, and had a grouper sandwich to celebrate my good fortune. Then back to my room for a night's sleep with nothing planned for the morning.