We are back in the United States. Specifically Cleveland, the Cozumel of Ohio. This was the plan. How we arrived here, shockingly, did not go to plan. This was the fault of American Airlines.

Got to hand it to those airline people, boy. They can’t do the one thing you hire them to do.

I’m not over it. I am, in fact, slightly traumatized by the entire American Airlines Inferiority Experience.

TL;DR — They were just as bad, or worse, this Saturday as last Saturday.

I was standing in a line at the Cozumel airport talking with a man from Mobile. He’d gone down there some years back, fell in love with the place and bought a bar. Said he’d never seen the airport like this. It was conert-hall packed.

You know those vinyl roped retractable stanchions you weave through? The maze maximizes the foot traffic in a limited space. The line at the security checkpoint at the Cozumel airport went well beyond that maze. The line somehow formed itself into several of its own zig zags. And the point where the self-policed line joined the maze was the most dangerous place in the airport, because everyone was eyeing the clock and stressed and sure you were breaking in line. I saw two almost-fights right in front of me. It was amazing ugly-American people watching.

Also? our plane? Departed late.

It arrived in Chicago … late.

See where this is going?

Once again they couldn’t get the plane attached to the airport, and then they couldn’t get the door opened for a long time.

Then there’s customs and border control. And we got separated.

We had too much divide and conquer for a vacation, if you ask me.

In the wisdom of the TSA and whatever other agencies were involved in this, you have to claim your bags from your international and re-scan them for your domestic flight. And you have to go through security again. I get it, coming from Cozumel. That procedure Saturday afternoon was laughable, as almost all airport security is when the agents look up and realize that thousands of angry people are waiting to get through their chokepoints. Theater only goes so far.

Anyway, we get to the point where you have to check your luggage back in, and the American Airlines agent says, matter of factly, “You’re not making that flight. They’re in final boarding.”

Never mind that her colleagues made us late. Or that boarding just started. The defeatist said it wasn’t happening, and blamed the airport.

She could get us on a plane tomorrow. Through Winnipeg or some such. That’s not going to happen. For a host of reasons we had to be back that night. Relieved to just be through with American Airlines, I said, “Forget it. Get me a rental car, I will drive us to our car at Indy.”

And that’s how I came to drive four hours to Indianapolis after arriving two hours early at a Mexican airport, to barely make it through security in time, only to find that the plane at the gate prior to ours was an hour-plus late, making our flight late, and the pilot of the flying sky tube was out for a Saturday stroll the whole way up North America.

So we got to the Indy airport, dumped the rental, caught the shuttle to the park-n-fly, and then drove the one final hour to the house. It was 2 a.m.

Which was when I got to deal with things like unpacking, starting laundry, cat puke. And ants.

So at 4-something I went to bed, and woke up about six hours later. Happily, Sunday was relaxing. It was just finishing the laundry, making some videos, spending a little quality time with the cats, and then packing again.

Because now it’s Cleveland!

You might remember that my lovely bride had a planned surgery last year. It was a left leg thing, a circulatory issue. It’s an obscure and rare problem, relatively speaking, which is part of why it took 20 years to find someone that took it seriously, and could put her in front of the right experts. Turns out the two top surgeons for this work are at John Hopkins, and at the Cleveland Clinic. And, as we learned in the extra-curricular reading, there are other surgeons doing it poorly. Well, we got in with the guy at Cleveland. Actually, last summer, we had an appointment with a resident and he said “I’ve done a few of these. But let me see if the chair is in. He does all of these.” And he was, and he was great. Explained everything. Answered everything.

I went into reporter mode, asking every question under the sun, and reframed certain questions to see if they would elicit different answers. That first day, when his colleague just pulled him out of his office, he patiently and kindly and thoroughly answered questions for 48 minutes. That was just the Q&A part. He explained it all. It’s similar to when you cinch up a garden hose. There are five arteries in your leg, and in The Yankee’s legs the artery behind her knees get cinched up because of her muscular development. (She has muscular legs.) She had all the symptoms. The timeline tracks. Every benchmark he presented, she complained about. He drew a diagram and said “This is how your arteries are supposed to look. We’ll do some scans, but I bet yours look like this.” He did some scans and her legs looked exactly like his sketch.

The procedure, the doctor said, is essentially like tearing a muscle. He took out a bit of muscle below and above the popliteal fossa. The popliteal artery goes where it is supposed to, circulation is returned to normal, and now one of her legs doesn’t tingle and her foot feels like a foot is supposed to feel, not ice-cold.

She did the procedure on her left leg in October. She was weight bearing the next day, and took increasingly longer walks for two weeks before PT began. Ultimately a near-perfect recovery.

At her checkup-slash-prep appointment today he had her talk to a teenager about the procedure. She deserves kickbacks.

The doctor was pleased to see her do the deep knee bends he uses as a metric. She has to get it stretched and warmed up, and has a little nerve issue, but it’s otherwise all working as it should, that left leg. He was impressed she ran a 10K with me in December. (Ran better than I did that day, in fact.)

Which means it is time to do the right leg. Which is tomorrow.