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Bonaire Part5: Epilogue

The last post should have been the end of the story about my Bonaire trip. Just a boring day of travel back to Boise. Turns out that wasn't the case.

It started out routinely enough. After Mickey caught his flight, I had a couple more hours to kill in the Miami airport before my flight to Denver. I spent most of the time reading. We boarded on time and pulled out from the gate. Then the pilot made an announcement that there was a "maintenance issue" and we had to go back to the gate. Fine. I had two hours to make my connection in Denver. My experience with these things was that they took about a half an hour or so to fix which meant I would probably be ok.

Or not. Right on schedule, after half an hour, the captain came on with an announcement. Only it was that the flight was cancelled.

This was not good. United has very little presence in Miami. They only have two routes from Miami to Boise with just a single stop. One was through Denver, which had just been cancelled. The other was through Houston. But the flight to Houston that connected to Boise had left two hours earlier. To add insult to injury, I had been booked on that flight. Since it only had a one hour connection time, I had switched to the Denver route to give myself more margin. Talk about outsmarting yourself!

I didn't like just coming back the next day and repeating the procedure. Both of the two flights out that connected to Boise left late in the day. There wasn't much recourse if there was a problem. I called United (and believe me, it took a lot of tries to get through) and managed to get on a flight to Houston that same night. At least I would be half way home. I had no idea what I would do overnight. I might end up sleeping in the airport.

We had a real problem at home too. Sandy was leaving for Wisconsin the next morning to visit her family for Christmas. She had to leave the house at 10 am for the airport and I didn't arrive in Boise (if I did in fact arrive) until 7:30 pm. She called some friends. Mary Beth said she was doing Zoom calls for work and could stop by in the afternoon for a while. Deborah said that she could come by later in the afternoon and evening to stay with Abby umtil I finally got home.

The flight to Houston was uneventful. Sandy texted me when I landed and suggested I stay at the airport Marriott. I figured I would just walk over there to see if they had any room. I wasn't optimistic since it was already 9 pm. Then I figured that if they were full I could save a trip by checking online. If they didn't have any available spots I wouldn't even bother leaving security. I would just find a spot in a corner somewhere to curl up and sleep. Turns out they did have a room, although expensive ($290). Well, forced moves are easy. I booked it online and headed for the hotel. It turns out for once things went my way. Fifteen minutes later, while I was in line to check in, they were turning people away because they were full. I might have gotten the last room they had available.

The next day I was booked on the only direct flight to Boise. It left late in the afternoon and arrived in the evening. I checked and saw that they had two early flights to Denver. I called and changed again to a 7:15 am flight to Denver. I had a two and a half hour layover and got to Boise in the early afternoon. Earlier was better. It was also fail safe, because if anything happened to one of my flights, there were later Houston-Denver and Denver-Boise flights that I could switch to. That was the best that I could do.

Still feeling nervous after the day before, I finally felt better when my first flight pulled out of the gate on time. And then stopped. And then the announcement came. "We have a maintenance issue and have to go back to the gate." It was like deja vu, all over again. Fifteen minutes later they announced that the flight was cancelled. Two days in a row. All I could think was "Oh no, not again!"

This time it was a little different. It was early in the day, and Houston is a United hub. They announced that they were trying to get another aircraft and sure enough. a little later they sent us to a different gate. Everyone boarded and I was thinking things weren't so bad after all. An hour and a half late, but I had two and a half hours to make my connection. I was still good. Except that they were still loading bags. And they kept loading bags, for another half hour. Some people probably cared but I didn't. I had absolutely no idea what city my bag was in, but I was pretty sure it wasn't getting on this flight. Finally we pulled away from the gate. Now I was down to half an hour for my connection.

And we stopped. No dreaded announcement, but no explanation either. We sat there for over ten minutes and then finally took off. Ok, I was down to 15-20 minutes for my connection. The only good news was that when I checked online, I found out that my flight to Boise was on the same concourse and close to where we would arrive. As we pulled up to the gate, I showed twenty minutes till they closed my connecting flight. Now I just had to get off the plane. Unfortunately I was in row 31. Not the best spot to be. They did announce that people who did not have connections should wait to get off the plane and about half of the people were considerate and did wait. It still took ten minutes for me to get to the door. I didn't run but I "moved quickly" through the concourse. I made it to my Boise flight three minutes before they were scheduled to end boarding. They were on group four already so I got right on. It took another ten minutes to get everyone on, so I actually had a little margin. But not much. All I cared was that I had made it.

I was still nervous till we were in the air but there were no more problems. I made it to Boise on time. I let Mary Beth know I was back and could relieve her early. I also texted Deborah and told her we didn't need her to check on Abby that evening. We are lucky to have friends that we can call on like this when we need help. After getting home, MB and I went for lunch at Idaho Pizza Company. After two weeks, a salad and pizza sure tasted good. It had been a rough trip home but at least my troubles were over now.

Wrong!

I took Abby for a walk on Friday afternoon and two on Saturday. It was quite a shock after the warm weather for the past two weeks. Most days it was 86F/30C on Bonaire. In the morning it was 14F/-10C when I took Abby out. It wasn't that big a deal though. I've come back to winter weather after a tropical trip before. But by Saturday evening my throat and nose were tickling quite a bit. I figured it was the effect of the cold, dry air after the warm, moist air of the tropics. My sinuses usually don't care too much for the dry air in Boise and this was a pretty extreme change. But Sunday morning there was no doubt. My nasal passages and throat were on fire. I definitely had caught a bug. In fact, taking Abby for a walk actually helped. The cold air numbed my nose and throat. It was like icing your knee to reduce inflammation.

Besides a sore nose and throat, my voice was gravelly and I could barely talk. I sounded like John Reardon. Covid was the obvious suspect. We had a couple of antigen tests so I took one that morning - it was negative. I still felt poorly in the afternoon so I took another test. Still negative. Even the next day, I took a third test. Still negative. Well, I obviously had caught something but maybe it wasn't covid.

After two days the sore throat started to get better. I just got very weak. All I wanted to do was sleep. And I was cold all the time. Even with a sweatshirt on, I needed to be under a couple of blankets to keep warm. I didn't need a thermometer to know that I had a fever. Taking Abby for her two walks on Tuesday was tough. I just wanted to lie down. Late that night I had to go get Sandy from the airport. I almost texted "take a taxi" but I was tough and went to pick her up. It wasn't easy.

Next morning I did another covid test and this one came back positive. Part of me was almost glad. If I felt this crummy I wanted it to be for something significant, not just "a bad cold". It did relegate me to my office for the next few days while Sandy stayed downstairs. She used the guest bedroom at night. We were hoping that she wouldn't catch it from me. Now that she was back and could take over walking Abby, it helped. On Wednesday I slept late, napped off and on all day, and then went to bed early and slept for almost twelve hours. Waking up Thursday I didn't feel cold anymore so I figured that my fever was gone. My sore throat was gone too and I had more energy. Since it was five days since onset of symptoms, I was over the CDC isolation guideline. They still recommended wearing a mask for five more days so I continued to stay in my office all day away from Sandy.

It didn't help. Friday night she felt a sore throat coming on and was definitely sick the next day. She felt pretty bad for the next two days. We usually open presents on Christmas Eve but we postponed since she was feeling so poorly. Next day she started to get better, she was only down for two days. It lingered longer for her though. It was a full week before she felt close to normal. She did have a slight cough that hung on for a long time. And unlike me, Sandy had the iconic covid symptom - she lost her sense of smell (and therefore taste). That lasted for about two weeks, which she said was very boring.

It's a drag when eating is no fun. But she is pretty much back to normal now.

In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't terrible. Because of all the covid precautions I hadn't been sick for over three years. I had gotten a bit spoiled. It was just like a bad case of the flu for both Sandy and I. My trip to Bonaire had still been well worth it. And who knows. With the more contagious variants this winter, we might have caught it anyway.