Never leave a man behind unless you leave two

Sometimes your life doesn't always go the way you had it planned & it teaches the importance of friendships. I recently planned, booked & departed on a birthday trip to the Florida Keys with 6 of my good friends. The trip started simply enough as we took off on Southwest & would be changing plans in Tampa before heading on to Ft Lauderdale to pick up our van. Well, here is were the story takes a turn. One of my guys has had some health related issues in the past but had been cleared to travel by his physicians. We were about 30 minutes into our hour & half flight to Tampa when he became unresponsive. To say it freaked us out would be the understatement of the trip sooo far. Well, lucky for let's just call him Rocky, a physician is seated right across the aisle from him & went to work on accessing the current condition of our friend. As he was doing this the good people of Southwest provided all the necessary equipment on board to keep Rocky stable until we landed. I was amazed when it was determined we needed to get him to the ground asap, the pilot put the 737 into warp drive. The next 45 minutes were some of the longest of my life & I didn't want to look back at my friend for numerous reasons so I started working on plan B. As it turns out, the rest of us pretty much did the same thing. Both of the guys that grew up with Rocky wanted to go with him to the airport; hell looking back I think they just wanted to ride in the ambulance. It was determined that Matt would take one for the team & the rest of us would continue on to Ft Lauderdale to await for an update. It was determined after being probed & forced to do a heart stress test in a robe listening to his theme song, he would have to return to his hometown to have a procedure done. Our crew spent the night in Palm Beach & would pick up Matt the next day to continue on my birthday trip....and then their were 6. We reflected on the safe departure of our friend back to Louisville with every beer with a toast. Damn, he received many toasts & was in our thoughts as we powered on to Key West. The next day in Key West we had another friend have a heart or heartburn related episode at an Irish pub at 11ish in the morning. I can't believe this is happening AGAIN so me being a guy with high blood pressure, I scramble to find some aspirin to thin his blood. I find them from a nice couple, pass them down & when they get to Barry...he takes them. He isn't the one having the episode by the way, he is just hungover. Anyway it turns out to be a false alarm so we keep going. This trip turned out to be one of my best trips ever & I'm thankful our friend is making a speedy recovery. Reflecting back on the trip I realize how fortunate we are to have friends who are there during the good, the bad & the ugly times. Rocky has already RSVP for the trip next year back to Key West. I hope the rest of the crew follows suit.
Cheers,
Rip
p.s. a friend gave me a bit of advice & I'm so glad I didn't repeat it on the plane before we took
off for Tampa. " Don't die on your vacation as people will think you are lame"