Flying Back to Jakarta

We left Boston at 8:30 in the morning, and drove to NY City. It took only about 4 hours. Traffic was not bad considering it was a Saturday, and the Yankees had a double header. The radio was saying that there were traffic delays most everywhere, but we must have been lucky to avoid the jams.

The big story was returning the car seat to Pam. We bought a box (well, two boxes) while in Connecticut, and took the box and car seat to the post office in Connecticut to have it weighed and priced. They put a price sticker on the box, and the plan was to mail it when in NY. Well, the tricky part was finding a post office near Kennedy Airport. We parked the car at the airport, carried the seat and box to the terminal only to find out that the post office in the terminal only accepted letters. So, back to the car. It cost us 6 bucks to park....argggggh....then we plugged "post office" into the nav system, and it took us to a non-existing post office in a not-so-nice part of town. So, we tried another entry in the nav system, and it took us to another post office. Closed. Hours of operation on a Saturday were from 9:00 - 2:30.....arggggh.....so our only other option was to take the car to Hertz and see if they would mail it for us.

While backing out of the parking spot of the post office, I backed into a yellow post putting a nice dent with yellow markings on the bumper.....argggggh.......you can imagine the bad words spoken at that moment.

Back to the airport. We parked the car, searched for abandoned carts in the parking lot (they cost money in the states), loaded up our heaps of luggage, and carried them to the terminal. I dropped the girls off in the terminal with the bags while I returned the rental car.

Parking was only 3 dollars if you were there for less than 30 minutes. It jumped to 6 bucks after 30 minutes to an hour. I was in line to pay for parking at the 25 minute mark. Some idiot in front of me with diplomat plates had some kind of problem paying.....I had to wait 10 minutes for him to finally move away. When I got to the booth to pay, the attendant told me I owed 6 bucks. I argued that I had to wait for the guy in front of me for 10 minutes which put me over the 30 minute mark....I won the argument, and was only charged 3 bucks. One point for me.

When I returned the rental car, I didn't say anything about the little mishap in the post office parking lot. The guy walked around the car, and I waited in anticipation of the feared words....but, the guy said nothing. Asked me how the car was, and then printed my receipt. One more point for me.

I then asked the guy about the car seat. He was Pakistani or something, and didn't speak English very well. I told him the story of the car seat, and asked nicely if Hertz could mail the package. He mumbled something, and put the box to the side.....I am not sure if that box will ever make it out of the Hertz parking lot, but Pam, I tried....hopefully, you will get the seat in the mail.

The flight to Jakarta was long, but Kayla was incredible. Not a single complaint, no crying, no bad moods....she sat in her seat quietly the entire 20 or so hours it took to get home. She is an unbelievably good traveler. I was very happy and proud of her.

Our movies didn't work on the plane, and I complained about that as that is one of the best things about flying Singapore Air....the choice of movies. They gave each of us (Kayla, Tika and me) a $75 gift certificate to purchase anything from their on-board duty free catalog. I bought a Braun shaver, and a 4-gig USB drive, and Tika bought some perfume.....not a bad deal.....the movies started to work later in the flight, but the flight attendants said we could keep the gifts anyway......good airline.