Outhouse to Penthouse

5 May 2011
I find myself now in Tampa, Florida for a dermatology review course. The time change is a killer…I didn’t make it to my hotel room until 12:45 AM and I don’t think I fell asleep until 3:00 (that would have been midnight AZ time). It made for a tough 6:30 AM wake up call. Unfortunately I felt compelled to eat breakfast (some sort of internal policy about not passing up on complimentary breakfast) though I don’t generally and my body thinks it’s 4 am- imagine getting up at 3:30 and eating bacon) and am feeling a little sick about now. I had a real scare at the Tampa airport last night. I was last man standing at the luggage carousel and the familiar “my luggage didn’t make the plane transfer” feeling was there. Several years ago Jill and I survived 4 days with just the clothes on our back on the Big Island in Hawaii when our luggage didn’t make it. Luckily for me my bag was here. I was scanning the belts looking for a black bag with a large yellow stripe. Somewhere along the way my bag was compressed by some luggage jockey and the outer zipper was closed hiding the indentifying yellow stripe (and smashing my Poor Brothers jalapeno chips in the process- yep I pack and expect my chips to arrive intact- see previous post about how being a doctor doesn’t mean you have any common sense). I’m betting my bag made 2 or 3 trips on the conveyor belt before I realized it was mine.
This hotel has one of the nicer rooms I’ve stayed at before. Likely that’s explained by the culture shock of going from trailer park to hotel room in a 12 hour span. On a down note the nights I’m here for the conference are costing me more than two months at Quail Ridge RV (living the high life has its price). I’ve heard they even have a “cement pond”. I’ll believe it when I see it.