Rough Start

A dark cloud hangs over me as I begin my travels. It’s December 14, 2008 and Ma and I are driving from Ma’s house in the small hamlet of Watertown to the airport shuttle bus stop in the bustling metropolis of nearby Waterbury. This should be pretty routine since I’ve caught this shuttle bus in Waterbury, heading to JFK airport in New York City, at least a dozen times over the past 20 years. Ma and I pull up to the bus stop and wait; we’re about 15 minutes early. Once at JFK, I’ll be catching a quick 12 hour flight to Beirut, Lebanon with a couple hours layover in Milan, Italy. I’m heading to Beirut to spend the winter with my girlfriend, Amy, who’s working in Beirut. We’re both looking forward to a few months of fun, sun and civil unrest. But first, I need to focus on catching the airport shuttle bus. It’s now about 5 minutes past when the bus was supposed to leave and there’s been no sign of it. No big deal, it usually runs a few minutes late, so we wait. To pass the time, I start reminiscing about all the good times I’ve had at this bus stop over the years. When I was in high school I used to walk past this bus stop and watch all the old, drunk men lined up outside the OTB (off track betting) office, waiting to lose their money on the ponies or the puppies. Then there was the time, just last year, that Amy dropped me off here in the icy, single degree weather to catch a flight to India for the winter and I mistakenly got on a Peter Pan bus heading for Pittsburgh. Fortunately, I realized I was on the wrong bus by the end of the block. And, of course, who could forget the time that Ma, more than 20 years ago now, dropped me off at this very bus stop a few days after I had graduated college and was on my way, bags in hand, moving to Los Angeles. I remember my mom taking that opportunity to talk to me about staying away from drugs and dirty girls. Unfortunately, I had to tell her that she was about 8 years too late with the talk.
Now, 20 years later, here we sit, waiting on that same shuttle. Only this time, it’s about 20 minutes late and I start to worry. So I use Ma’s cell phone to give the company a call. The woman at the shuttle company informs me that the bus left about 20 minutes ago and is wondering where I was.
Wondering where I was? “What do you mean?” I asked, “I’m sitting here at the bus stop in front of the OTB, just like I’ve done for the past 20 years!”
“Oh,” she replied, “we don’t pick up from in front of the OTB anymore.”
“Since when?” I inquired, as if that mattered now.
“Since about 2 months ago.” She let me know.
“Perfect!” I exclaim, “I made my reservation 2 ½ months ago and it would have been nice to get a heads up! Where’s the bus now?!”
“It will be picking up and leaving Danbury in 25 minutes, can you make it there in time?” she asked.
“Tell them to keep an eye out for me.” I said as I dropped the phone. I now had 25 minutes to drive 37 miles to Danbury. “Sorry, Ma” I said as I kicked her to the passenger seat, “there’s only three guys who could make this drive in time and two of them are in prison.” And with that I hit the highway.
I’m pretty sure whatever hair my mother had in her head fell out that day as I made it to Danbury, literally, about 60 seconds before the bus pulled away. Ma and I said our goodbyes and off I went towards JFK.
For those of you who don’t know about it, I tweaked my back at work this past summer and had to spend part of this past fall doing doctor’s visits and physical therapy. I’m still fighting with Worker’s Comp over it, but that’ll be another blog. Anyway, for the past few months I’ve been using this lumbar pillow when I sit that saves my life every time I’ve got to sit for long periods of time, like being on a 12 hour flight. I’ve got that pillow with me on the airport shuttle ride to JFK and am looking forward to the many relaxing hours the pillow and I will be spending together over the next few months of traveling.
As we arrive at JFK, I realize that my airline will be the last one the driver drops off at. No worries though, I’ve got plenty of time. The problem, though, is that since I was the last one on the shuttle van, I’m the guy who’s stuck sitting in the seat by the van doors and has to get up and out for anyone to exit. After about 6 times of doing this, we finally get to my terminal and the guy sitting in the seat next to me tells me that he’s in a hurry and running late and asks if he can hop out quickly. No problem, I say and I get out and let the guy past. By this time the driver has tossed my backpack onto the dirty sidewalk like a sack of laundry and is looking for a tip for doing so. I slip him a couple bucks and off he goes. The van’s not more than 100 yards away when I realize that I left that lumbar pillow on the seat. I felt like I just lost a child. I drop to my knees and raise my hands and shout, “Aloi, aloi, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?!!” OK, maybe I just said, “shit” under my breath, but I was pissed just the same. The day is not going as smoothly as planned and it’s a long way from over. I grab my bag and head to the Alitalia Airlines counter.
After issuing me my boarding pass, the woman at the Alitalia counter informed me that my bags would only be checked to Milan, Italy and that in Milan, I would have to get my pack from baggage claim and recheck them in at the Middle Eastern Airlines counter, since they were a different carrier. This made absolutely no sense but there was not much else I could do but stew. I had had enough trouble with this flight reservation over the past couple of months that I thought it best not to say anything for fear I might snap like an autumn twig. I had made the reservation through Orbitz online about 2 months prior and about a month and a half later I received an email from Orbitz telling me that my flight from Milan to Beirut had been cancelled and that I needed to call them. I called and was put on hold while Orbitz called Alitalia, who then put Orbitz on hold and called Middle Eastern Airlines, who were too busy making people recheck in their luggage to answer the phone. I sat on hold for over an hour before giving up and hanging up. The next day I called Middle Eastern Airlines direct and was told that it was actually Orbitz who failed to confirm my ticket so the reservation expired and was cancelled. You can imagine the pleasure in my voice when I got back on the phone with Orbitz. After another hour’s wait on the phone with Orbitz, my ticket was confirmed and I vowed never to use them again. So now you’ve been warned too.
So now, with thoughts of how nice it was going to be to waste time at the Milan Airport baggage claim area, I wandered around JFK looking for a lumbar pillow to replace the poor little one I had lost, that was now comfortably tucked behind the beaded seat cover of the airport shuttle bus driver. JFK’s a big airport and they have stores that sell all sorts of crap that you don’t need in your home, let alone to have to carry on to a plane, but nowhere in sight was a lumbar pillow. I had to make a choice between buying and rolling up a $50 Hanna Montana sweatshirt, a $20 Spa towel or a $30 stuffed bear that said ‘I love NY’ on it. I opted for the towel and not because I’m cheap, I like the color, really.
Fortunately, we boarded our plane on time and headed out to the runway. We sat there for a while before the pilot came on to tell us that we had, no lie, “40-45 planes in front of us” and that it took about a minute or so for each plane to take off. You do the math. We sat there for about an hour before finally taking off. On the overnight flight across the Atlantic, I noticed something that also happened on my flight to India the year before. There is a huge wave of turbulence in the morning when the sun rises. Must be the changing air temperature. This time though, it wasn’t as bad as last year’s, just enough to make it so you can’t sleep and maybe start thinking about whether you’re supposed to inflate your vest inside or outside the cabin. Not that I was worried. My biggest fear in flying on Alitalia, Italy’s official air carrier, wasn’t that something mechanical would go wrong. It was that those Italians could go on strike at any minute and the pilots would walk off the job. Luckily, we made it to Milan without going to arbitration and I got my luggage re-checked in.
I had a few hours layover in Milan and sat watching the massive big screen TVs they have all over the terminal. They showed non-stop high fashion programming, with an endless line of models parading down the fashion runways of Europe. Not that I’m complaining, it was just surreal because every 15 minutes they would interrupt the programming with a news update that showed US president Bush getting that shoe thrown at him. There was no sound on any of the TVs so I had no idea what was going on or where it took place and just when I thought I’d get more footage or some sort of explanation, we’d jump right back to the models strutting their stuff on the catwalk. It would not be until about a month later in Beirut that I would meet an American journalist who lived in Baghdad and he would tell me that the reporter who threw the shoe at Bush was immediately dragged out and beaten, in his socks, of course.
Before I knew it, though, I was on my flight to see Amy. It had been about 3 and a half months since we had seen each other and I was anxious to finally get there. It was night as the plane landed and I could see nothing but the darkness over the sea that ran right along the western edge of the runway. I wondered what Amy’s apartment was like and how we’d get there from the airport as the plane taxied to the gate. I wondered where we would travel this winter and what we would see as I passed through customs and immigration. And then there was Amy, waiting for me on the other side of security! We made our way through the crowd of people and haggling taxi drivers and headed for the door. When we walked out of the airport together, it finally hit me that I wasn’t just coming to see her, I was in Beirut!