It took me more than one little bit of wrangling to get to the 15th floor from the 13th floor that smelled like someone drop kicked me down an old root cellar, left unopened since the Civil War, filled with mold somewhere in a dark, dank corner that held my room. No longer the Wyndham, the Aruba Resort, Spa & Casino is undergoing major renovation (not sure when) but I’m jumping aheadof the story. Wayne and I made the airport in Vegas, and stood in line with other dealers from Bellagio that were trying to get luggage checked and line passes. We were flying American. They had one person behind the counter for over a half hour and finally picked up a few more as it got closer to flight time. We did get a chance to visit and hang out while we stood in line.I can’t help but wonder why cocktails are never served, as a courtesy of the airlines, when we pay for all the glitz and get nothing in return except cramped seating and no service. No service is a key factor here, I don’t fly very often but when I do, I’m more and more amazed at how bare bones, uncomfortable, and crappy it gets. No snacks, no food, no bottles of water, no nothing except people jammed into your side and no place to put your feet or legs while you’re hurtling through the air…and if you want to listen to their feature film, buy the damn head phones.

We made the head of the line, checked our baggage, and headed for the ‘D’ gates. Of course going through the initial line to get to the security check point always pisses me off. There are normally three to four final, ticket/id checkpoints, and instead of people forming a line to take the next available, they run over you to cut in front of you and make sure they get through the line before you do. I seriously doubt that they are in jeopardy of missing their plane, they are just rude assholes.

When we hit the security check points, I had to remove my pc from the case, put my camera in a separate bin, take off my shoes, and with all the stuff I was packing, I had four bins to push through the x-ray machine. Unfortunately, I had a full bottle of water with the seal still intact. After I cleared the metal detector and was putting on my shoes, pulling my bins of stuff together to load up and move out of the way for the next traveler, a security agent stood on the other side of the conveyor belt, holding my fanny pack and bottle of water up, “We have to examine this,” nodding at my fanny pack, “And you cannot take this on the plane.”

I dead panned with, “Well…ok. I refuse to give up my flight over a bottle of water so I guess you have to keep it.”

The dead zone. No humor, no flicker, no recognition of what I said for at least 45 seconds, then he curtly told me to just leave my stuff and follow him. Sweet! NOT! So other people coming through could just grab what they wanted? Thankfully, Wayne was right there with me and took up the slack by putting things back together for me. In the meantime, Security Guy put on his gloves, finger checked all the bills in the back pouch of my bag, looked through the contents like I had some hidden treasure in there, and took cloth and ran it over the edges of the inside of the bag and put the cloth into the machine tester. Yup, that bag is so damned big and has so many little hidden compartments that it probably could hide a few invisible explosives. Oh Well! We were on our way after that. We ordered some food…and found out we were boarding in 10 minutes. Nice. We didn’t have to sit and wait for an hour and a half.

Let the agony begin. I hate flying. My legs always go into ‘alien leg mode’…AKA RLS. It does happen on other rare occasions but usually flying brings out the best of it. It’s horrible. Settling down and trying to sleep is almost out of the question and I can’t get comfortable. I think it’s the length of the seat, it hits me right at mid thigh and there seems to be a slight lip to it that makes the seat worse. I do take an inflatable cushion and fold it over; sometimes putting it under one ‘cheek’, just to change the angle I sit at. But alas. Over five hours on the plain to Miami and then a four hour layover in Miami, then another two and a half to three hour flight into Aruba, going through customs, waiting for a cab, check in with 9M other people and more lines, and it makes for a very long, tiring day.

Wayne and Jim are rooming together, I’m rooming by myself. We tried, again this year, to get adjoining rooms. NO CAN DO! Why is that so complicated? They had all the reservations set in stone, and dealer check in was at least much easier and faster this year, a table was set up with all of our names, rooms numbers, etc. in advance. I was given a room on the 13th floor; the Kids Across the Hall are now the Kids a few floors down and dubbed ‘the Duo’. They are on the fifth floor. The Deluxe Side (so I found out later) of the hotel is the side that my room was on for the last two years. It has a much better view of the ocean and pool, plus it gets the sun most of the day, and the rooms on that side don’t have the dank, ugly mildew smell. That’s the side the Duo are on this year. I, on the other hand, was on the side they were on last year…and their room smelled like mildew. I told them to complain and be moved but they stuck it out, even though they admitted that it S-T-U-N-K. MEN! What more can I say.

I refused to spend 12 days and nights with the smell, amazingly, the whole floor, from the time you step off the elevators has that smell. I went back to the desk. It took them over a half hour to find another room that I could move in to, that was the 15th floor and on the Deluxe Side. By this time Jim had arrived from the airport and was on his way up to their room. I finally got my key and stopped by their room. Away we went…up to take some of my stuff from the 13th floor to the 15th floor. We hung out in my room for about a half an hour, trying to decide what we should do…go to the grocery store and load up or put it off until tomorrow, sleep a few hours and then go on a rampage, go eat,..Kee-rist! Somebody get a plan!!! Finally we decided on food.

While we were ordering at the Beachside Cafe, a few of our fellow Vegas dealers stopped over. The plan was hatched for a boat ride/barbecue/drinks trip to the city and back that started at 8 p.m. Jim jumped on it. Wayne wasn’t sure if he would go or not. I knew exactly what I was going to do. There was a bed on the 15th floor with my name on it. We finished our meal, I said goodnight, and headed up. Just after I got into the room, the phone rang. I thought it was the Duo. Wrong. It was the front desk. They wanted to move me to another room. W-H-A-T??? They said housekeeping still had some things they wanted to do to this room. I said, “No Way!” I explained that I had already unpacked and I was too tired to do anything. They said ok but if I had any problems to let them know. Wonder what that means. But at that point, I would have puked and died if I’d had to do one more thing. It was all of 5:30 p.m. EST, and COMA TIME!