When you have a track record of twisted travel experiences like I’ve had, you eventually learn not to tempt the ire of the vacation gods with boastful words of a single day’s success. We began this trip with plenty of preparation and hard-earned wisdom from previous tours gone sideways but were fully aware of the multiple new variables that could easily cause snags.  A new travel pit crew means a whole new team dynamic. The carcass of United Airlines’ slaughtered chair still unrepaired means putting my fancy new one in harm’s way. Throw in our first foray with a rental car, and you can see why we were a little on edge when we woke up near dawn.

After an hour-long wait in the perfectly sluggish assistance line produced boarding passes with two different departure gates, we found ourselves on a mad dash from N2, down an elevator, back onto the tram we’d just got off, up another elevator and ultimately to C15 with just enough time to board Alaska Flight 596. Claire and Nikita deftly handled the aisle chair transfer with the help of a nifty device a friend loaned me, but Savannah got hung up on the tarmac when the ground crew had to take extreme measures loading the new chair under the plane.

Miraculously, we landed in Sin City nearly on time and my fully functioning chair was waiting on the jetway when we de-boarded the plane, so we humbly hightailed it to baggage where our rental car, a fiendishly red Toyota Sienna, was waiting with a full tank of gas. A handful of GPS mix ups couldn’t keep us from the Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar where we met up with one of Claire’s former OT classmates, Jennifer Mawae, for a few hugs and a quick lunch. I met Jennifer and her husband Jonah on one my first dates with Claire, so it was fun to watch the two girls reconnect. Sadly, Jonah was a no-show. Some crap about studying for a PhD. He’s dead to me.

The only thing we had left on the schedule was a familiarly bouncy ride south on Highway 95 in the Screaming Red Devil to a place where only a few people in their right mind would call their absolute favorite vacation destination. We made our way up the rutty and rugged path of Indian Trail Road to find my grandparents anxiously awaiting our arrival with fried chicken and homemade mac and cheese. The day seemed to be wrapping up rather nicely until the lock-in pin underneath my new chair got snagged on our mini ramp, leaving me high-centered and unable to get off. It took us nearly a half an hour, along with a few random cement blocks and pieces of scrap wood, to finally get free and head back to our hotel.

In the balance of it all, today was a good day. We faced some challenges, felt our blood pressures rise a few times, but were still able to laugh about it all. That doesn’t mean shit won’t manage to get supremely weird tomorrow or somewhere further down the line, and that’s fine. The plot will reveal itself in time.