The little hole-in-the-wall on 2nd Ave called Matt's Big Breakfast. There was a wait.
Got there just in time. I'd just written my name on the little tablet on top of the water cooler outside the door to the place, the tablet that serves as a do-it-yourself waiting list, when about a dozen people pulled up and added their names to the list. The place is tiny, a scant dozen tables crowded together in two adjoining rooms both of which would fit in my kitchen/dining room, perhaps both at once. Had a wait of about 10 minutes. The service was unhurried, but the food was good. We both had omelets and hash browns.
I knew how to get to the airport from there, and we found a reasonably-priced Shell station on the way to the National turn-in lot. Arrived at Sky Harbor just a hair past noon. We'd already been checked in and had boarding passes, so dropped the luggage curbside and went in. Browsed in the Arizona shop for a while (no puzzles) before braving the security gauntlet and going to the gate.
The flight boarded and left on time, not counting the 15-minute wait on the tarmac for the plane to get clearance from Houston. Yeah, InterGalactic gets that busy in the afternoon. Lauri read for a while, then napped. I napped first, then spent the rest of the flight bringing the trip journal up to date.
Our friends Allison and Teresa scheduled their wine tasting for that evening, and we knew we wouldn't be home in time to catch the beginning of it. (It started at six, and we weren't scheduled to land until 6:10.) Still, we hoped the airport gods (or fates, or whatever) would be kind and let us at least stop by the party for a few minutes. Turns out they were not only kind, but positively generous. We landed early, gated in at Terminal C (near the baggage claim), and saw our bags come off the conveyor almost immediately. Caught the shuttle bus to the parking lot, were dropped off quickly, and ran into no traffic problems at all on the trip back to the south side. Pulled off the freeway at our exit just a minute or so shy of 7:30. Coincidentally, that's also the exit for Allison's place (she lives not far from us). We figured it would be easier to go directly to her place rather than go home first. We feared that if we got home and sat down, we wouldn't want to get up again.
So we drove to the wine tasting and had something to eat and drink, and passed around the photos of Sedona and the Desert Botanical Gardens, and regaled everyone with anecdotes from our trip. Well, we would have, had we not been upstaged. Friends Richard and Jennifer had recently returned from their honeymoon in Tahiti, so their pictures got looked at more than mine. But that's okay. They're posted here for all to see.
As a postscript to this little adventure, I just want to say that I'm glad I had one more day for recuperation before going back to . . . that "w" place. And thus endeth the account of my summer vacation 2005. Thanks for reading.