20180410 – Sad. Time To Go Home. Goodbye Park City Until 6th June

Well somewhat belatedly here’s my final blog of this adventure.

A crap morning dealing with Axa, trying to get my flight booked. Every time you speak to them it’s a different tale. They either lie or are totally incompetent. Bit like trying to plat fog.

Yet another lazy day in going stir crazy. Want to ban waterboarding, then here’s a physical pain free solution that’s way worse. Not allowed out all day, so start to suffer with cabin fever; add in looking after a 1 and 4 year old all day; add in kids TV all day with Baby Enistein and Peppa Pig running non stop and on an infinite repeating loop; prohibited from going shooting as planned; then because of my retirement commandments I can’t ease the day with, alcohol, sleep or TV. Water board or shoot me – role on 17:00, when I can have some medicine!

When 17:00 finally arrives Fiona helps me down a bottle of Gnarly Head, Zinfandel – she’s definitely a bad influence. To cauterise the mental torture I finish the day with a few High West whiskeys from my collection and then slither up the stairs to bed.

Todays I end up madder than a jihaddy bomber who arrives in paradise to find they’ve run out of virgins as I try to reconcile hospital bills, with the numpties in Intermountain Health accounts department. You need to be a Philadelphia lawyer with a Phd in forensic accountancy to understand their accounting system and statements. It takes three of them over an hour and they still can’t understand their own system. It’s a complete mystery. If you weren’t ill when you started dealing with them, you’ll certainly be in need of major psychiatric care by the end. I finally realise I might as well chalk pentagrams and stroke my toad.

Finally get to go shooting. Wendy had decreed that it was better to go today as she needed me out the way whilst she cleaned up. Enjoyed my last taste of the forbidden fruits with my favourite 9mm Wilson Combat.

Then it’s off to the liquor store to buy some booze to take home – cheaper than duty free and I can get the whiskeys I really want. Buy a bottle of High West Double Rye and Bourye, along with a Basil Hayden.

Rosita rings me back from Intermountain Healthcare, at last someone with a brain, and she has finally figured out whats wrong. They’ve made a posting error of some $300+, plus a smaller error on my PCMR bill and have included a bill from last years incident.

In the evening Bob and Marilyn pick us up and we go out to the free sports club volunteers appreciation dinner at the Dejoria Centre. Pleasant evening with PCMSC leaders. Lovely location but sadly the food seems to consist of charred chicken that was dryer than a dessert cactus skin and would have been great to resole my shoes with; along with congealed pasta and a chocolate browny that you could have used to hammer home 6″ nails in with and probably was a left over from the Easter buffet two weeks ago.

Kurt drove us down to the airport and they flew home.

Swapped our 7 seater Ford Explorer for a top of the range 7 seater accura QX60. Someone had forgot their wallet along with paper driving license. Good old hertz can’t accept an image of driving licence on my iPhone. I wouldn’t mind imy license is over 50 years with no picture. But hey ho, rules is rules, please don’t apply any common sense. Anyway to her credit Mrs Hertz swapped the rental over to Wendy, looked at me on my cripple sticks and said but you won’t be able to drive it, and gave Wendy my upgrade to a premier class vehicle – very swish. Wendy very bravely drove back up to Park City in a snow storm.

Called in at the outlet stores to see a summer dress Wendy had her eye on. Reduced from $50 to $15. In typical female fashion, that has no comprehension of the difference of the words “want” and “need”, she buys 5 of them. Just think she saved me $175. I was chuffed as a credit card in a silk purse!

Rest of the day spent tidying up and finishing packing. At least by Wendy, whilst I sat and contemplated my cripple sticks.

In the evening Bob and Marilyn came round for a farewell dinner. Mexican takeaway from Chubasco’s. Sadly not up to their usual standard. Barbara and Steve popped round to say a fond farewell until next winter, and like the typical good neighbors cleared the 3” of new snow off our porch to save me from breaking my neck. Yes, we finally get some snow today – 3″ not bad – too dam late.

Then an early night after a few easy watching episode of “Still Game” – a poor mans version of “One Foot in the Grave” that needs subtitles on to cope with the Glaswegian accent that you could cut with a cut throat razor.

First class flights for me. Wendy’s consigned to cattle class. I wonder how the poor people are doing?

Tsa are about as bright as a box of rocks. They want to know if I can walk through scanner without my cripple sticks. What do they think they are some latest Armani fashion accessory.

You really do have to worry about the lack of profiling when they think that a 68 year old cripple represents a plausible threat. Meanwhile they’re too busy groping and swabbing me down to sniff for explosives, everything out of my pockets, so Sherlock only knows where they thought I’d have explosives on me, must have thought I had an explosives implant. Meanwhile someone comes through unchallenged

Delta first class not worth the money, no better than premium economy. Food was disgusting. Only consolation is that they had some Woodford Reserve.

Upper class on Virgin is as comfortable as ever. Although at these prices I really don’t expect to be told that they’ve run out of the beef dish – to be fair though, as I kicked off, they credit my account with 8,000 air miles. Come on there’s only 14 of us spoilt passengers. All looked after by two first class flight managers.

I pop back into cattle class to see how the poor people are doing and to show Wendy what are my menu choices for dinner. She keeps sneaking into upper class and gets her breakfast with me to make up for the vile concoctions served in cattle class.

With the exception of the usual senseless TSA ordeal this is certainly the way to travel although $6,000 is a tad too fast a way to fritter away our kids inheritance.

First site after customs in the UK is a black bin liner burka clad wench, perambulating around like a lost Dalek – well could have been a fellla jihadi on his way to claim his just desserts and pummel 70 perpetual black eyed, buxom virgins. The airport is infested with muslims. Quite a culture shock as in 10 weeks in PC I’ve seen just one muslim. Makes us ponder on how many there are in the UK.

Welcome back. Just 6 weeks in the frozen wastelands before we escape back to Park City.

Final thoughts for this trip.

No more skiing this lifetime.

SHIT HAPPENS, SUCK IT UP. There are people a lot worse off.