Tampa in August

Grandpa Paul (Jess’s paternal grandfather) and Grandma Joann (actually Josephine) both had birthdays this year. Actually, I’m pretty sure they’ve both had birthdays every year for quite some time, but this year Grandpa turned 90. It took a while for the Hazelton family to get everything planned, so just in time for the heat and humidity of summer, we were off to a birthday bash in steamy Florida.

Upon arriving in Tampa, I realized that despite many trips to the area, I’d never been to the airport. Unlike Denver International Airport, the Tampa airport seems to have been designed by someone who’d actually traveled by airplane at least once. One of my biggest gripes with DIA is the poor arrangement of the baggage claim, ticketing, and baggage check areas. When someone drops you off at DIA for a flight, it’s at the baggage claim level, and after you pick up your bags from the carousel when arriving at DIA, you then have to navigate an escalator in order to reach the ground transportation and such. Of course, there could be a good reason for all of this inefficiency, but there isn’t one at DIA, just poor design.

The Tampa airport does harbor one real oddity though. After getting from the concourse to the land-side terminal via a lovely little train, we were greeted by an Escher-esque array of escalators. The display was so bewildering, I froze in place momentarily unable to process the complexity. Ultimately we had to ride down two levels only to get to a second escalator that took us back to the intermediate level. In that Paula Abdule inspired moment I became fully aware that this was no perfect airport design after all.

By the time we landed, we were pretty hungry, so it was a nice coincidence that Jess’ family was ready to head off to dinner shortly. We made a stop by the hotel to drop off our bags and rest our heels briefly before piling back into the car and heading over to meet up with the grandparents. Shortly after a round of hugs and a bit of chatting, we piled into the mini van and headed off to Romano’s Macarroni Grill. It took a while for us to get a table large enough to accommodate all of us (Grandma and Grandpa Hazleton, Jess’ parents, her brother Matt, and the two of us), but once we were seated the food was pretty good. Unfortunately it was a bit noisy, so that made dinner conversations a bit difficult to sustain, but everyone seemed to have a good time. Thanks again Chris for picking up the check!

Back at the house, we managed to fix the non-cooperative DVD player that Nancy and Bob couldn’t make behave when they visited earlier in the summer. Really the issue wasn’t the DVD player, but figuring out how to work an older television. Eventually we managed to get it working; I hope our directions make sense! Later in the trip I’d have an opportunity to take a crack at another DVD/VCR, but unfortunately I didn’t have quite as much fortune. I believe that one actually does have some issues.

We watched the end of a documentary on a great underground coal fire from Ohio’s history and learned a lot of fascinating info about the bootlegging trade. This conversation might have even inspired a new generation of Hazelton bootleggers. Let’s just hope nobody goes blind! After some additional conversation, we headed off to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

Our second day in Tampa held a similar itinerary, except for the heinous flight from Denver. We got up earlier and gorged ourselves on free breakfast. I went for a short walk along the highway where the hotel was located (mere steps from Raymond James Stadium) while Jess read by the pool, but I didn’t get too far before turning into a sweat-sodden monster. Yeah, it’s that humid at 9:00 in the morning in Tampa! A short while later we all regrouped and headed back over to the grandparents.

Matt and Jess each spent a good deal of time sorting through digital pictures on their thumb drives to make reasonably short slide shows. In the interim, we fixed a nice lunch at the house and planned a short trip to the beach. I suppose I was a bit of a buzz-kill at the beach. I’m not terribly fond of getting sand all over my feet and shoes, so I mostly just napped on the towel. It was pretty restful until our nearest beach neighbors started feeding the seagulls. The rest of the time I had flashbacks to The Birds. After a bit, we hopped back into the car and drove back to Tampa from the Clearwater Beach. We stopped at a Starbucks (sorry, no local coffee shops were spotted) on teh way back and got some refreshing beverages to quench everyone’s beach-fueled thirst.

Back in Tampa, we chatted for a while and got ready to head over Sam Seltzer’s Steak House which shared a parking lot with our hotel. The food and service were both nice, and this time we had a whole dining room to ourselves, so we could even hear each other chat. After dinner, we debuted the slide shows. Everyone enjoyed the pictures, especially Grandma Joann, but we all noticed how much sharped and more detailed Matt’s pictured appeared. Of course, he has a nice Nikon digital SLR, so now I want one even more than I did before. Thanks Matt!

As the hour dragged on, we headed back to the hotel so grandma and grandpa could get some sleep. Back in the room, Matt really wanted to hit one of the area strip clubs, but Jess and were beat. Besides, strip clubs aren’t really my favorite haunt. We saw a little bit of Cops on television, and boy did that bring back some memories. Within an hour, we were all sound a sleep.

The next morning, we all repeated the breakfast ritual from the previous day. It’s almost impossible to not gain weight on a trip like this. Eat, sit, sleep, and repeat. Nevertheless, I hadn’t had a bowl of cereal in years, especially something trashy like Count Chocula, so it was totally fun. Unfortunately, Chris, Betti, and Matt all needed to head straight to the airport after breakfast, but Jess and I weren’t flying out until after lunch. They were able to drop us off at grandma and grandpa’s for a little more visiting.

We spent the morning chatting and occasionally falling asleep on the couch. I had an ill-fated DVD/VCR repair session, and we all enjoyed a nice lunch before heading back to the airport. By early afternoon, out visit was over, and Grandpa Paul drove us back to the airport. Along the way, the conversation drifted to football. This might have something to do with driving past the Bucs stadium. Grandpa Paul, who seemingly knows everyone in Tampa, mentioned that he’d met the former Tampa coach, Jon Gruden. I’ve always thought he looked like the evil doll Chucky from the horror movies (note, I’m not alone in this observation), and from what I’ve heard he wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around either.

Back at the airport, we discovered our flight was delayed due to bad weather (somewhere). We had a long time to hang out in the Tampa airport, and somehow ended up eating a rushed bowl of chili at Chili’s just before getting onto our plane. Thankfully this flight was non-stop to Denver, so despite the late departure, we still got home with enough time to get a full night’s sleep before heading to work the next day. Many of our fellow passengers were paranoid about making their connecting flights, but apparently the bad weather was in Denver, so most of their connecting flights were also delayed.