Good morning!
The overhead bins were full and JetBlue Flight 533 was ready for takeoff from Hartford to Tampa, but the young passenger stood helplessly in the aisle balancing his two carry-ons. “There’s no space,” he said.
I nodded and ducked into an empty row that was one up from my assigned seat, where two passengers were eyeing me like three’s a crowd. I put the computer case in my lap and tried shoving my carry-on suitcase under the seat.
A Tiger Mother flight attendant was admonishing passengers to buckle up but the college-age kid remained in the aisle. Another flight attendant approached and asked, “All right, just these two?”
The kid wheeled and looked at me. “And his!” he said.
She hadn’t noticed, and said almost apologetically, “The row needs to be clear.”
“Thanks pal,” I muttered, and handed over my suitcase.
“Six-E?” she asked.
“Seven-E,” I said, admitting I was in the wrong seat.
She nodded and left with the bags.
Airport travel is stressful from start to finish. I’d left my car unlocked with the keys in the glovebox because I reasoned that losing the keys in Florida would be easier than losing the car in a secured parking lot.
Inside, I spotted Rick Archer putting suitcases through a metal detector. The affable Archer was a popular radio announcer in Greenfield when WHAI was the only show in town. He left after 9/11 to work for TSA and he introduced me to his co-worker Paula. “Safe travels,” she smiled.
Going through security can be mildly harrowing — handing over the ID card and boarding pass, stepping toward the scanning machines and putting, coins, shoes, belt, watch and wallet in one tray and the laptop, cell phone, and other electronics in another — then stepping inside a body scanner and outside to get frisked.
Time went quickly waiting for the passengers to start boarding. The JetBlue pilot spoke with a British accent and identified himself as Batman. His co-pilot was Superman. It was Veterans Day and the passengers clapped when he thanked them for their service.
“You may have noticed it’s gusty today. We’ll get bounced about a bit — wind versus machinery — stay buckled until we reach cruising altitude.”
Moments later the Airbus A320 sped down the runway and lifted off over the dormant November landscape. Tobacco barns shrank to the size of game pieces on a Monopoly board and hillsides looked like mounds of brown moss.
When the aircraft leveled off, the flight attendant returned with my baggage-claim check. She had a blonde pony tail and a cheerful smile. “You had to check your bag but I guess you got a little bit lucky,” she said.
Indeed I could stretch out, get up without bothering anyone and watch three different TV shows at once. I could do anything except get three bags of complimentary cookies, just one per passenger.
In two hours we were descending over the Gulf of Mexico into Tampa International Airport, the ninth busiest in the U.S. averaging 45,000 daily travelers. Signs pointed to baggage carousels, shuttle services and car-rental locations. I’d reserved a full-size vehicle that was upgraded to premium “because we’re out of full size.” The Enterprise agent was working from behind a booth inside the dusty, dark, dank and noisy parking garage.
It cost $248 for the three-day rental plus $77 for insurance to cover any dents “bigger than a golf ball.”
Satellite radio? Nope, it cost $4.99 a day.
The Grand Cherokee reeked of cheap air freshener and the 29,664 miles on the odometer was like 10 big ones in dog years. Potholes? What potholes?
The seats were stained and a stale potato chip was in the cup holder. Later I found three toys under the driver’s seat, including a football trophy inscribed: “Lakewood Jr. Spartans. Zayvion Werts #27. JV Mighty Mites.”
My mood improved after I hit the highway and rolled down the window. The Florida warmth and soft sea breeze felt good on the trip to Sarasota to visit my former college roommate Pete Dailey. He was waiting for me at a local dive sports bar called the Red Barn.
We’d roomed together after college until he moved to Sarasota on June 18, 1977. I remember the date because the previous day we were at Fenway Park watching the Yankees, and Billy Martin pulled Reggie Jackson from right field for dogging it.
Peter married a Georgia girl named Lisa and they raised two children, Austin is an Atlanta-based attorney and Caroline was recently was accepted into University of South Carolina law school.
Dailey lives in a condo off Bee Ridge Road and I was there to watch football, jog and relax. Both mornings I drove to the Cracker Barrel Restaurant off Jacaranda Blvd. in Venice and loaded up on biscuits, yogurt, fruit, sausage patties, eggs and coffee.
Afterward I drove to my favorite jogging spot on the Gulf Coast, Myakka River State Park off State Road 72 east of Sarasota. The sprawling 29,000-acre conservation area teems with alligators, snakes and feral hogs, but there’s only a few bothersome humans.
I parked off an access road near the orange-blazed Florida Trail, a 1,000-mile path that stretches from Big Cypress near Miami up to Pensacola in the Florida Panhandle.
A half-mile up, two hikers with a dog were looking at a 10-foot alligator lying motionless in a shallow swamp. The beast was close enough that a park ranger decided to steer his ATM over and warn them to keep their dog tightly leashed. “They’ll come right up and take it,” he warned.
Out on the trail a black snake slithered in front of me and a good-sized hog stopped in the middle of the trail, looked at me and bolted back into the underbrush.
On the way out I stopped and dropped quarters into a soda machine when a car horn began blaring. Who’s the idiot, I wondered until realizing I was absent-mindedly clicking my vehicle’s panic button.
I’d wanted to go to Sunday’s Bucs-Bears game in Tampa, but Peter convinced me that watching his friend Wayne Rentmeester root for the Packers would be cheaper and just as fun.
The 55-year-old Rentmeester was born in St. Vincent’s Hospital in Green Bay and moved to Florida with his family when he was 12. The Packers won three straight NFL titles while he grew up in Wisconsin, and he embraces the Vince Lombardi work ethic: “… Any man’s greatest fulfillment to what he holds dear is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle — victorious.”
During the week Rentmeester and son Jon are up at 4 a.m. each morning to work at STABIL Concrete Pavers in St. Petersburg. His wife Jane tends bar at a popular tourist spot called the Boathouse, and together they’ve put three children through college.
The Rentmeester family bleeds Packers green and gold, and for 34 years they’ve entertained family and friends on NFL Sundays. They live on a dead-end street of $500,000 homes about a mile from Siesta Key, and I found a stool between real estate attorney Paul Bietlich and retired U.S. Army Colonel Larry Schroeder. “He can kill you in 20 seconds in 20 different ways,” Dailey said of the affable Schroeder. (Peter tends to exaggerate).
Beitlich is a Minnestoan who moved to Sarasota after he attended University of Florida law school. He has a house in Gainesville and goes to every Gators game. He pays a $450 booster fee for his ticket, “plus the face value… I’m a fixture up against the wall that says, ‘This is Gators Country.’”
Wayne was serving hors’ d’oeuvres and his sister Carol was arranging a plate of cheese-and-crackers. The family dogs, a Lab named Lambeau and their son Jon’s dog named Whiskey both vied for food scraps under the table.
A different game was on each of the six wide-screen TVs, and plenty of beer was in a commercial-sized cooler.
The walls in the living room are adorned with Packers memorabilia — photos of Lombardi, linebacker Ray Nitschke, running back Paul Hornung and quarterbacks Bart Starr and Brett Favre, including a photo of South Deerfield’s Mark Chmura with others from the Super Bowl team that beat the Patriots.
A ticket from the 2003 season opener is framed alongside photos of Lambeau Field and a plaque inscribed Wayne Rentmeester Packers Fan Forever.
“My father’s company had six season tickets and he gave them to his children after he retired,” said Rentmeester, who flies north for every home opener and the playoffs and sells the rest.
Alas, not every season is a winning season and on Sunday the Packers were blown out by the Titans, 47-25, dropping to 4-5 in the NFC North.
Wayne stood quietly looking at the screen and watching his team get clobbered for the third straight week. “This is a tough pill to swallow,” he said.
I asked him what was wrong and he barked, “The whole locker room hates Aaron Rodgers, he’s an arrogant piece of shit.
“I think they’re tanking it for (Christian) McCaffrey,” he added, referring to the Stanford junior and Heisman Tropy runner-up who was the only FBS player to lead his team in both rushing and receiving last season.
Rentmeester resigned himself to hoping the “Pack” would rebound tomorrow night against the Redskins in Washington.
The trip home went through Bradenton and over the Sunshine Skyline Bridge, a span of four-lane highway that connects the mainland with St. Petersburg. A mile-long bridge rises 430 feet over the bay and its twin spires resemble pyramids. The entire man-made stretch over the water provides one of the prettiest views in Florida.
At the airport I parked behind dozens of other vehicles that were being cleaned, vacuumed and washed during their slow progression to the front of the line. I looked at the receipt and saw that the total cost for the three-day rental was $431.12.
I called and complained to an Enterprise agent, who blamed it on the airport. “That location is one of the worst. They have taxed it to death,” he said. The add-ons included a concession recovery fee ($36.71), rental car facility fee ($17.85), vehicle license fee ($2.34), an “SC Rec” fee ($6) and a seven percent tax ($20.87).
The airport’s assistant vice-president of media government relations, Janet Zink, was in a meeting and her assistant communications manager Emily was unable to explain the exorbitant charges. “I don’t immediately, I um, you know… I’ll have to check and see if all these fees, um … Can I get back to you?”
Florida is the hold-onto-your-wallet state, and Governor Rick Scott had burned me again. Next time I’ll rent off-site, but the fee hassle was just the start of my troubles. At the security gate my computer briefcase was pulled off the scanner. An agent pointed to the bench where I sat and waited next to another potential miscreant.
An agent wearing thin vinyl gloves fidgeted through his leather pouch, dug deep and exclaimed “Aha!” and like a surgeon she extracted a six-inch metal wrench and held it between her thumb and index finger.
Now it was my turn. An agent looked at me and mimed a drinking motion. I’d left a half-empty bottle of water in a side pocket. Ironically, it was Smart Water. It tested negative for explosive residue and she let me go.
The 12:50 p.m. flight on Delta left on time, thanks to a flight attendant who coaxed passengers into their seats. A late arrving millennial had the window seat in my row and was holding a carry-on. The overhead bins were closed, “But I can’t get it under my seat,” he complained.
“Give it a try,” I suggested.
He wedged past us and stashed his knapsack against the seat, plugged in his smartphone, put up his hoodie and went to sleep.
During a 90-minute layover at in Atlanta, I took out my MacBook and iPhone and noted that all the TV monitors were tuned to CNN and every vending machine sold Coca-Cola.
“No Pepsi?” somebody asked. Not in Atlanta, which is the corporate home of Coke, CNN, and Delta Airlines.
Moments before boarding I set down the computer case, zipped open every compartment and, with growing panic, realized the laptop and iPhone phone were both missing. I hustled back to where I’d been working and found both where I’d left them.
Having avoided a travel calamity, I got in line behind a platinum-haired woman carrying a bug-eyed chihuahua in a baby pouch. She wore black leather pants and was chatting with the people in front of her.
The dog’s face was covered with blue sequins and it was wearing a Dallas Cowboys baby bib. “She’s a girl but we had to make her look like a boy because she’s a Cowboys fan,” the woman explained while adding, “We’re just back from Las Vegas.”
During the pre-flight safety protocol, the flight attendant went off script. “We do have a severe peanut allergy aboard today and we will not be serving any peanut products on this flight.”
She apologized for the inconvenience and added, “We ask that you refrain from eating any peanut products on today’s flight.”
This worried me, because I had just eaten a Snickers Bar and I thought maybe the nutcase was two rows up holding the dog.
Back home I called Peter and told him I’d left Jayvion Werts’ football trophy on his book shelf. “Put it on eBay,” I said. “Maybe you can sell it.”
My unlocked car was still in the lot. I started the engine, drove over to the exit gate and handed the attendant my ticket. “It’s $28.50,” she said. I gave her $30 and told her to keep the change. Thanks, she said.
“Free at last,” I replied.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley.