Wheels up

Two years ago, the Mayor and I headed north with his best friend Andrew and his mom Michelle to a Selects tournament in Minnesota.  We were originally slated to go to tournaments in Minneapolis and Boston, but opted out of the Boston trip when the stars aligned and round two of the Stanley Cup put game four of Minnesota vs. Chicago there during our trip.  It wasn’t a tough choice.

From the first minute of the trip, I knew it was going to be an epic weekend.  We were flying out of PBI on Zachary’s birthday.  When we got to the airport to check our bags at the Southwest counter, the customer service rep handed us a $200 in vouchers and a hotel voucher for a luxurious stay in Atlanta.  Lucky us!  We headed to security where we met up with our friends.  As we prepared to go through the queue, the boys felt compelled to ask if Doritos were considered a weapon.  Thankfully, TSA had a sense of humor that day.

As we waited to board, we watched in awe as several elderly passengers sat in wheel chairs waiting to get pushed to the baggage area.  The airport was not staffed to handle the volume of wheelchairs and they soon grew impatient.  No more than five minute had passed before they felt compelled to take matters into their own hands.  Soon they all stood and started pushing their chairs.  Only in Florida….

Finally boarding zone B was called and we were free to board the plane.  Our boys, on their way to their way to their first out of state tournament and their first Stanley Cup playoff game, were bouncing off the walls.  At the time, the Mayor had just turned 9 and Andrew was still 8 and only came with one volume level extra loud.  We got them calm enough to stand in line to get on the plane.

As we walked down the aisle of the plane to find some window seats for the boys and ourselves, people stopped moving as our fellow passengers put their carry-ons on the overhead.  As luck would have it, we were stopped in front of a very attractive, young black woman wearing a white shirt and no bra.  Had this site only elicited giggles, it probably would have been okay, but we were not going to get off that lucky.  Nope the boys had to announce that they could see her nipples.  Oh the shades of red Michelle and I turned as they loudly shared their discovery with us.

We continued filing to the back of the jet, but the boys could not believe what they just saw.  They were completely transfixed (pretty much like every other guy I know.)  As our flight took off and headed to Atlanta, the boys became distracted by discussions of hockey, jets and life in general.  Lucky for us, we would continue to cross paths with the women in the white shirt everywhere we went in the ATL terminal.

To be continued.