Day 1 Freezing cold to humid warmth

We got up way too early (3:00) to be ready for a 4:30 Lyft pickup to the airport.  Had a very nice driver from Brandon who does Lyft full time now because he's a government worker at EROS Data Center and they are totally shut down.  Tipped him well.  We were a little worried about the weather because they were forecasting ground blizzard conditions because of 40 mph winds, but the weather and roads were fine.

We got checked in at the airport just fine, then stood in the TSA line until we were almost to the front and then noticed we could have gone through the pre-check line (on our boarding pass).  We hopped over to that much shorter line and got right through security without having to open anything up or take off anything (except my wrist brace and Bob's hat.)   We found our gate and it was full of people, so we sat in a gate area not our own.  Bob had time to go get a coffee.  We had Delta Comfort+ seats so we got to board right after first class.  Nice!  Very full flight, but we lucked out and no one was in our third seat, so we got to spread out.  It was only less than an hour flight, but it was still nice.  Got to Mpls. and were just about to land when the pilot suddenly pulled up.  There was another plane that was still taxiing on the runway and the controller told him to circle around.  We flew around Mpls. for about 15 minutes and came back over the same buildings as we came in for the approach again.   We were a little late landing then.

We were supposed to have an hour layover but we walked to our next gate (not far) and they were already announcing boarding notes.  So only about a 15 minutes wait before we got on the plane.  This flight was completely full.  Had a big guy in the window seat next to us.  It was very warm on this flight.  Bob was melting in the heat and  asked for it to be cooled down a couple times.  By the time we stopped in Miami, the air vents were finally blowing out cold air.  We got lots of snacks and beverages along the way.  Watched movies to pass the time.  We had some luggage bin problems at the start that maintenance had to come in a fix.  Then a de-icing stop before we took off, so we left 45 minutes late.  Then as we got to Florida there were thunderstorms so we actually flew farther south and came up around the tip of Florida to Miami.  We were almost an hour late.  Didn't matter to us because we had nowhere we had to be. Got out luggage and Bob called for a Lyft ride.  We were picked up by Andres (from Venezuela) and he drove us to our hotel in Ft. Lauderdale. Lots of traffic but we okayed him paying for the express lane so we went much faster.  It started raining on our way (the thunderstorms we flew around).  

Got to our hotel (Best Western of course) and checked in.  Got to our room and freshened up a little.  Then we went down and had a drink and some nachos (our late lunch but not very good).  It was pouring rain, so we took a nap and then went back down to the bar/restaurant and had supper, better than the nachos, thankfully.  Still raining so we actually used the exercise room after supper.  Then we just vegged out in our room.