USA 1998

Background
and
Dramatis Personae.

   This story has been written, both as a reminder for those who enjoyed the vacation, and to fulfill the expectations raised among the ELDERS by Fran relaying my threat to write it up, as I did my wedding.  The story should really be prefaced by the history of how it came to involve the UK based dramatis personae that it did, and why the destination was chosen as it was.

   Many years ago, when I was working, I did a fair amount of travelling on Company business.  Veronica might even have said too much travelling, and was heard to remark on one occasion, that if she had not wanted her husband at home, she would have married a salesman in the first place.

   During the time of the travelling, I composed a short list of places that I had been sent, that I would considered it worth taking Veronica, when I got the chance.  Number one on this list was Western Canada, and the month after my retirement, we flew to Calgary, before renting a car to drive to Vancouver and back - but that is another story altogether, and was before I joined ELDERS.

   The second destination on the list was San Francisco, and once again, before joining ELDERS, this city was visited.  So far, Veronica was very happy with my choice of places to take her.

   By this time, we had realised that in the spring, the airlines have spare seats on their flights, and offer special deals in order to try to fill them, and it is just a question of keeping ones eyes open at the appropriate time of year to chose the airline and destination to visit.  It was our intention this year, to visit our son who lives in Houston, Texas.  Although he does not recommend Houston as a holiday destination, the idea was to use the special deal tickets for the Atlantic crossing, and then after a brief visit to him, to depart for somewhere else in a rented car.  Having been a member of ELDERS for some time, I had in mind that Downtown Holly Springs was within driving distance of Houston, and possibly New Mexico and Colorado might not be too great a distance.

   So much for plans.  We might have guessed that things would not be as straightforward as they might otherwise be, once we had the booking slip and reference number to quote to British Airways when making our booking, to give us the 50 percent discount.  The booking had to be made by a certain date, with a number of restrictions, and were unchangeable after being made.  At this critical time, our son Andrew in Houston disappeared from his email!  I was all for booking a date to suit us, and hope it was OK by him, but Veronica said "No", and she is the boss.  "Let us go to San Francisco again" she said.  Like a dutiful husband, I rang BA, and booked the tickets.

   A couple of days later, our oldest son, who lives just down the road in Newmarket, learned when and where we were going, and asked which flights.  Next day, he booked seats on those flights.  Andrew re-appeared on his email, and was told what our plans were, and said he would try to join us for one weekend.

   There were two things which being a member of ELDERS made easy.  The first was choice of hotel in San Francisco.  The ones I had stayed in previously were both satisfactory as hotels (although the one I had used on an expense account was a bit expensive, if I had to pay from my own pocket), but both were some distance away from a Catholic Church, and I preferred one not so far away.  The other thing was that Veronica has been finding walking increasingly difficult due to her back pains and her asthma, and does not find wheelchairs the standard size in the UK large enough, but we thought it would be easier to get one in the US.  Fran was able to come up with the answers to both problems - a reasonably priced hotel, 1/2 block from St Patrick’s Catholic Church - and a rented large wheelchair, delivered to the hotel the day after our arrival.