Life After Windbird, Day 22: Patsy and Joe Arrive—Hurray, Hurray
Date: Saturday, September 3, 2016
Weather: Partly Sunny with High Temp in the upper-70’s F
Location: At Home in The Studio #8, Falmouth, MA
We are so happy that my sister and brother-in-law, Patsy and Joe, arrived today. We are looking forward to a wonderful week of visiting together. They flew into Logan in Boston and I drove up to meet them. Thankfully their daughter Janet had arranged for them to wheelchair assistance from the gate to the baggage claim. I thought that was the case, but wasn’t sure. So when I arrived at the airport, I first drove through Terminal A to check things out. I stopped to ask a state policemen where I should park. I explained that I was picking up arrivals with wheel chair assistance but made it clear that they were not wheel chair bound, just challenged with long airport walks. He started to tell me that I should park in Central Parking, walk a long way back to the terminal, meet them to see if they should need assistance, and then go back to Central Parking and drive to pick them up. Half way through that scenario, he looked at me and told me to just go park beside a vehicle in a special parking area next to Terminal A. I was elated and thanked him profusely. But even parking so close to the baggage claim area, it was still like running a marathon to go to the Southwest ticket counter to get permission to go to the gate to meet them. And then I am sure I walked at least half a mile to the gate. I didn’t quite get there when I saw Patsy and Joe in wheel chairs being pushed by Southwest employees. We hugged joyously and then continued the half mile walk back to baggage claim. But I must give both Southwest and the state police and big thumbs up for being so helpful. And our good luck continued as we had absolutely no traffic on the way home. Mark was waiting for us with a smile, but he had a bit of a rough day with more pain than usual. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for him.
