The first morning of 2023 dawned a little bit misty over Smith Mountain Lake, and it’s always a good look.

This mist wasn’t so cute last night, though. It derailed our family’s flight into Roanoke’s tiny airport, so much so that our rattled American Airlines flight crew diverted the plane full of rattled passengers to Richmond, Virginia, which is three hours down the road. After some back and forth and a hasty reboarding, the whole thing was canceled.

Instead of decamping to a hotel to try again this morning, the Reynolds crew was rescued by the kind folks at Enterprise Rent-a-Car: we piled in a Camry and drove home, arriving about an hour and a half into the New Year.

On the bright side: we did NOT wake up with hangovers this morning.

And seriously, it’s hard to complain, because we were coming from an amazing destination. Jim and I had enticed our grown-up kids to spend the week after Christmas with us on a trip to Cancun, Mexico.

I took a trip to Cancun back in 1992, right after I’d started my first grown-up job. One of my college friends had just graduated from business school, and she and four friends were going to Cancun to celebrate. My buddy invited me along. While waiting for out taxi to the hotel, one of the friends started talking enthusiastically about playing pinochle during the trip. Trying to be a good sport, I enthusiastically said that I’d love to learn how to play.

“It’s a four-person game,” she replied coolly. And that was just about how the rest of the trip went.

But that was then, this was now. This time around, we absolutely delighted in spending time with the grown-up kids.

And Cancun was lovely. We stayed at the Wyndham Alltra Cancun, an establishment that probably has the nicest people in the whole field of hospitality working for it.

So, lessons for the new year: travel companions make all the difference, a Plan B can save the day, and fog looks a whole lot better in daytime than in the dark.

Happy New Year (and Feliz Año)!