10/12/15, “Sometimes I
Close Too Soon”
New York, New York
I am going
to do something that I almost never do: reopen a trip after I close it
out. However, I would be remiss if I did
not include the final leg of the Return Journey. Recently I saw the movie “A Walk in the
Woods,” in which an aging travel writer attempts to hike the Appalachian Trail
with an old friend. Every time something
adventurous happens, the friend says something like, “This has to go in the
book.” When I travel with friends, my
friends always say things like, “Is this going to go in the blog?” The cab ride back home can’t not go in
here.
After I closed, we soon made our
descent, and I headed to the baggage claim once we landed. The dominatrix looked so commonplace ahead of
me, maybe a little Goth, but shee seemed the last person you’d expect to be
engaged in such activities. Reader, if
you have Instagram, look up Mistress Tangent.
That’s her. I’m not going to go
into any more details. The Instagram
page speaks for itself. I got a bagel,
coffee, and donut from Dunkin Donuts by baggage claim.
By the time my box came out and I got
outside, my bag was ripping apart, so I did something I never do: accept a ride
from a car service driver. This driver
was also Uber. As I walked towards him,
a yellow taxi driver (as in, the driver of a yellow taxi, not a taxi driver was
yellow, though the term fits both ways) started screaming. The Uber driver told me to put my bag in the
trunk and jump in the backseat, quickly.
The taxi driver was walking towards us.
There was an altercation, as in a physical altercation, with physical
contact. The taxi driver tried to stand
in front of the car or grab the mirror or something to prevent him from taking
me. The Uber driver moved the car back
and forth. The taxi driver reached in
the window and grabbed the guys arm.
The
Uber driver sped off, cursing and threatening to deck him when he got
back. The entire drive was fast and
erratic, and the driver didn’t wear his seatbelt. The speedometer wasn’t even working. I knew this had to go in the Travelogue. I asked if I could smoke. He didn’t care. I lit up an H. Upmann I got at SJO. Three times someone called him about the
incident. “The whole airport knows,” he
announced to me. He kept saying he
couldn’t do anything because he had a passenger, but he would deck the taxi
driver when he got back. I asked if he
was serious. He swore on his mother’s
life that he was going to lay him out, knock him to the ground with one punch
when he got back.
This couldn’t not go
in the Travelogue. I was at my apartment
in record time. I changed into casual
clothes and sat in my chair, where I proceeded to write this entry, which I
will now close, along with closing out the trip again. Next stop: Atlanta.
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