I thought I had booked a 5:30PM departure from Tampa. I thought wrong. When I rechecked my itinerary I had selected one of the first outbound flights from TPA. It wouldn’t be so bad I reassured myself. At least I can escape the bridge traffic and have some smooth sailing.

When my alarm clock went off at 3:30AM my body hated the mistake. But I pushed through and headed towards Tampa. As I was crossing the bridge I noticed to lights on the two outside lanes of interstate. They were closed. What could possibly be happening at 4AM. As I drew closer I could see that there had been a wreck. It was no big deal due to the lack of cars though. What stuck out to me were the people standing around the wrecked cars. One police office and three prostitutes. I kid you not. Three prostitutes wearing strait hooker clothes. Its 2012, I honestly didn’t think they still dressed in a way to stand out from a crowd. I mean, isn’t there some sort of app to find hookers these days? It wouldn’t surprise me.

I have never been to the airport so early that the security line wasn’t even open yet. So I had to wait for 10 minutes for the TSA people to set up shop. I will say the lines are much more efficient when everyone is fresh on the shift.

When I finally set down to wait on plane boarding a little girl and her mother came to sit next to me. While still fighting the sleep from my eyes I felt the little girl’s hand touch my arm. Being polite I just ignored it and went on with my sleep fighting. Then she put her hand on my knee. At this point the mom chimes in to inform me that the little girl must think I am her father. “Your daddy’s not here anymore,” she tells the girl. “It just you and me now.” She continued saying these things as if they were an attack at me for being a man. She wasn’t even speaking directly to me, but she was speaking so that I could hear her and feel some sort of sympathy for her while being ashamed of being a man. I was probably less annoyed by the little girls curiosity of the world than this woman’s monologue.

Great, its only 4:30 and the day has already thrown enough curveballs at me. After boarding the plane, I noticed a guy dressed as a pilot who looked younger than I sit a few rows back. It struck me as weird but later as we were preparing for our final descent and I noticed his presence had vanished I began to prepare myself for my least favorite part of the flight, the landing. It was definitely the roughest landing I have ever experienced and I would say I fly a fairly decent amount. It hard to describe an unbalanced landing but I am safe so no harm done.

I was wearing my Florida Gators t-shirt when I went to rent my car (Which by the way, myth busted, I am only 24), and some man began attacking me for wearing a Florida shirt. I have lived in Louisville for six years, worn this shirt most of the time and never been attacked. Hell, Louisville is also tied for my favorite college sports program. But I guess this was just the foreshadowing of my weekend in a town where I was no longer a resident.

Friday I had some time to kill so I went to the record store and the mall. It was cold and rainy. I was under dressed and didn’t need the reminder of the weather I had left behind. As I was driving throughout the city something was different. It took me some time to figure out what it was, but Louisville just didn’t feel like home anymore. I finally realized what it was. When you have a place you are living, no matter where you go out and about, there is a central magnetic force pulling you back in. I no longer lived at my friend Marty’s house so that gravitational force was absent and I was just a visitor in another city.

The rest of the evening included your typical Bardstown Rd. shenanigans. Something I thought i had left behind. I am too old for that stuff.

Saturday I was awoke early (with only 4 hours of sleep, 7 in the past 48 hours) and went to the airport to pick up my friend/date for the wedding. We spent the day working on my Kentucky Fried Bucket List Adventures blog at Cherokee Park before the wedding. The wedding was my reason for visiting. It was actually a reception on the boat at Captain’s Quarters.

I had never been to Captain’s Quarters but I have always heard great things. So I figured it would be a great place to snag a few photo’s.

The reception was actually alcohol free, which worked out to be a good thing since I had several hours of driving ahead of me. So I took the opportunity to knock back several virgin Mint Juleps which were very delightful. The reception turned out to be a great time and an opportunity to catch up with some old co-worker’s I hadn’t seen in months. There was some dancing and even a carefully practiced dance by the bride and the groom.

Afterwards, I had to drive to Georgetown and then back to Louisville. By the time I finally had the opportunity to lay down it was 3:45AM. I needed to be at the airport early so I set my alarm for 6:45. (10 Hours of sleep for four days, love it!)

Just as the plane is pulling onto the runway guess what? The front wheel breaks.The captain comes on the speaker to tell us that apparently some safety mechanism for managing the load of the plane snapped off so we had to sit there for an hour. Some guy in front of me is complaining on the phone to someone about how the flight carrier is Delta and they have to go through several safety checks before the plane can continue. I am sorry, but I appreciate that. I didn’t purchase a Southwest ticket for a reason.

Then as I am asking the attendant (mainly cause she was smoking hot) if she had ever experienced anything like this, some know-it-all alpha male steps in to tell me “yeah, there’s this safety clip on the front wheel for checking the load of the plane and it snapped off.” Thanks captain obvious, I heard the pilot say that 30 seconds ago.