The Borderlands: The Experience - Day 0 - A Dysfunctional Departure

“The Borderlands: The Experience”

10/28/16, “A Dysfunctional Departure”

John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York (JFK)

Typically this would be the time when I right abut how familiar this departure is, that I’m flying to Mexico City on Flight Aeromexico 401 for the now fifth time, that I’m meeting up with Roberto for the now third time, that I am exploring World Heritage Sites in Mexico for the now sixth time, etc.  In fact, writing about how familiar this departure has become has itself become familiar.

Well, actually, this departure had none of the familiarity of the previous departures (find the familiar within the unfamiliar and experiencing the unfamiliar within the familiar, right?).  Instead, this has been an entirely dysfunctional departure.  With all due to that airport in the Caribbean where a fellow passenger told me that the last time he flew from that airport, people had brought cages with live chickens aboard as hand luggage, the past two hours have been far more dysfunctional.  From the coach to the airport to the security checkpoint to the newsstand where I got my soda, everything has just been dysfunctional.

It wasn’t even stressful, since I was well ahead of schedule and got to the gate with plenty of time for my entry before the flight, but it was the very dysfunction itself that bothered me.  It has been close to three weeks since I have last written, and that will be the longest gap that there will be these entries until the New Year.  Including this weekend, there are 10 weekends left in the year, and I will be travelling for 7 of them.  I have a friend coming to town for the only weekend in November I am not travelling, and I would have been going to Vegas that weekend if she wasn’t coming to town.

I will be away for the entirety of Thanksgiving week and the week between Christmas and New Year.  My travels through the end of the year will take me to four continents (including my seventh and final one), two natural wonders of the world (again, including my seventh and final), three more Olympic Stadiums (also including my final), and seven countries.  It promises to be a busy rest of the year before I sing Auld Lang Syne in Sydney and ring in the final calendar year of this five-year mission.

Okay, so Day 0, right.  Well, it was, by and large, extremely boring.  It was a slow and quiet day at the office.  Days -2 and -1 were far more interesting, but they are outside the scope of this Travelogue, though I will briefly mention them.  Day -2 (Wednesday) was closing night at the cigar shop and we had a nice little party there, a great crowd for a Wednesday.

Yesterday, Day -1, was an epic thunderstorm that served as the background for an outing with Stu.  A disappointing movie, an overindulgent dinner, and a chastisement from Live Schreiber was how that evening played out.  There were plenty of leftovers, and I brought those to the office today, intending to eat them both for lunch and dinner.  However, my coworker and I went to Subway instead, our Friday tradition.

I got my small sandwich loaded up with meat, sat down, started eating, and proceeded to spill my bottle of water.  Two people apologized to me.  Reader, this was 100% my fault.  I was holding the water, and I dropped it.  No one bumped into me.  No one distracted me.  I dropped it all on my own.  Two people apologized to me.  The first was the fellow customer who picked it up and handed it to me.  The second was the employee who mopped up the mess.  Again, these were two people who were doing me a service.  They both apologized to me.  I thanked them for their help and finished me meal.  I then lit up a Graycliff and biked up to Hunter.  I left my cigar outside class and biked back downtown as I smoked the rest of it on the way back downtown.

Though the cigar shop was closed, the workers were still packing everything up, so I was able to stand in the corner and smoke away from the cold.  I would have found more cheer in a graveyard.  Everyone was in such a bad mood.  It was so depressing, I quickly left and put my cigar in a planter by the bike docks.  I finished up at work and came back to the cigar store, which was now closed and locked, everything boxed up.  Another customer, whom I had sent a video from earlier, which didn’t go through until just then, thought people were still inside, so he showed up as I was about to walk away.  I retrieved my cigar from earlier, and we walked down Lexington Avenue together.  I headed to my apartment, and I was too tired and drained to go downtown for the Halloween party.

I watched TV for a bit before heading across the street to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner.  That was when the dysfunction began.  They sat me right next to the bar, and the waitress seemed not to understand basic English.  “Can I have some butter, please?”  “Butter.”  “Yes, butter, for the bread.  And a seltzer.”  “Seltzer?”  “Yes, please.”  “To drink?”  “Yes.”  The meal was as it always is, and I had some leftovers for Monday.

I went to my apartment and lit up my departure Cohiba.  Oh, I should mention that I can now legally bring Cuban cigars back from my travels.  This makes me happy.  Very happy.  I started to pack and realized quickly that a suitcase was overkill.  I would be arriving Saturday morning and flying home Sunday morning, which meant that all I needed to pack was my pajamas, one shirt, one pair of socks, and one pair of boxers.  I could find room in my computer bag for such a wardrobe, and I did.  Soon enough, changed into my travelling suit, and with my computer bag slung over my shoulders and nothing else, I left my apartment and biked up to Grand Central.

It was slightly past 8 PM.  The coach buses to JFK are every half-hour.  The next one was at 8:30 PM, or so they said.  It was almost 8:45 PM when it arrived.  I wasn’t pressed for time, so I didn’t really care.  I had finished my Cohiba, though, and I wished I had more of it for the wait.  When the bus came, it was a huge coach, much bigger than usual, 56 seats total.  It was just me and one other passenger.  The revenue they got from the two of us was much less than a taxi driver would get from one passenger, and these buses are much more expensive to run.

When we got to my terminal (Terminal 1), he stopped the bus, onloaded a passenger, and kept going, without making any announcement.  This despite him asking me at the start of the ride what terminal I was.  More dysfunction.  It had been such a short ride so far, about half an hour, that I thought we were still on the highway, which meant I was rather confused as to why he was onloading a passenger.  I checked Google Maps and discovered we were at Terminal 1.  Fortunately, he was able to let me off before he had gone much further.

The check-in process was relatively painless, but I was put in a middle seat.  However, due to my Delta frequent flyer status, they put me on an upgrade list.  When I went to the security checkpoint, that was when the fun began.  When I got to the checkpoint, the person in front of me took the last tray, as in the plastic trays I need to use to put my coat and laptop separate.  In other words, those are necessary for the basic function of the security checkpoint.  When I got to my turn to put my bag on the conveyer belt, the new trays still had not come out yet.  It was okay.  I had time.  I was patient.  It was just so dysfunctional.  One of the officers soon wheeled a stack of trays by me, and I reached for one, only for him to tell me that he needed to wheel the trays all the way to the end of the line, where I would need to walk to retrieve the tray and then walk back to the conveyer belt.  “Fuck that shit,” I thought to myself, and grabbed the tray anyway.  By this point, the conveyer belt had turned off, so I had to wait for it to start up again.

After the screening, I went down the usual corridor and headed towards the gate printed on my boarding pass.  “Oslo” it said.  Nope.  I checked the monitors.  The flight was now at Gate 1, a different corridor.  I headed there.  I needed a seltzer, but, that, too, proved a challenge, and the water fountain had very low pressure.  I cycled back to the first corridor to get my seltzer, and I won’t even get into how dysfunctional the cashier was there.  Eventually, I had my seltzer, and I went to my gate, where I sat down and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish before I get on my flight and pass out.