If you're just joining us, we last left when our heroes sped down the 60 freeway from a concert to catch a redeye flight.
When you fly the redeye, you should do all your pre-bed rituals pre-trip-to-the-airport. Having thought I'd have more time after the concert, I had packed just about everything in my luggage, yet left out my toiletries. I was to brush and floss my teeth and wash my face, then toss everything in a plastic bag which goes into my luggage--zip 'er up and go. Then I had my laptop bag in the Family Room next to my final checklist. It was a well organized set up.
However, when we got home, we found our bags already loaded into my uncle's truck, ready to go. But they did not know my plans to toss my toiletries in there, so I grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste and pulled out a line of dental floss and pocketed it for later--ran down to some hot wonton packed for the car ride--grabbed a sweater, my camcorder, my camera, my wallet, and my phone. So basically, I'm carrying a billion things out the door and into a cramp truck.
Relief fell upon me as we pulled away from the house. We had made it, sort of. It didn't happen as ideally as I would have wanted it, but we were safely on the way to the airport for our flight.
We ate like little Bruce Lee boys on the way. Then halfway to the airport, a feeling of forgetting something.
"Did you guys load my laptop bag?" I asked and received silence in return.
That bag, my friends, was my sanity. I get really antsy on planes (and long car trips). I need a survival kit, so to speak. In my bag was my iBook, Nintendo DS, iPod, and magazines.
It was too late to turn back and get it, so I sucked it up and accepted that I could get through the flight and vacation without entertainment.
So we arrived at the airport and I moped into the terminal. We only had 50 minutes till our flight and the check-in line was huge! There was no way we'd get to the front in time. Then, the gentleman in front of us pointed at the scrolling LED message above the check-in counters:
FLIGHT XX DEPARTS AT 2:35AM.
Was I reading that right? It couldn't be true. Sure enough, the lady at the counter announced that due to thunderstorms, our plane was late to leave New York.
A sucker punch to my gut and a little voice firing off in me like a boiling kettle "ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS I COULD HAVE STAYED AT THE CONCERT I ONLY GOT TO SEE ONE SONG I RACED OVER HERE ALL THE PANIC AND PRESSURE AND WORRIES ALL FOR NOTHING I COULD HAVE SEEN RUFIO DAMMIT!!!!!!"
Needless to say, I was furious. It was fate's way of letting me stick around for that once in a lifetime moment and I blew it! If only I had believed in the miracle that the flight would be delayed and checked the status. It was a hard lesson learned.
So I was at the airport with nothing to do; everything was going wrong. I called my uncle Razor Ramon and asked, nay, begged him to go back to my house and deliver my laptop bag. He agreed and now I owe him and his family a nice Red Robin dinner. There was no way I was able to survive this thing without my fun stash.
And it only got worse. Our flight departure changed from 2:35AM to 4:00AM. So we checked in our bags and my family went up through security and to the gate, while I stayed behind to fetch my bag. So with four hours to burn and in the need to vent my frustration, I phoned Angel Wing Jasmine. Blabbing these details to AWJ made me feel better.
While
we chatted, and she was half asleep, the gentleman who told us of the delay fell under a dizzy spell. And this got serious. He had to sit down on the luggage scale and was talking with security; his hand jittery. Suddenly, a whambulance and fire engine pulled up to the terminal. I gave AWJ the play-by-play as they whisked the man away. Apparently, the gentleman had a little too much to drink with his friends on his last day in California. Drinky. Drinky.So to wrap things up in this saga segment, Uncle Razor Ramon came through and delivered my wonderful bag of stuff; I skipped joyously through security; was stripped searched in a dank room; rendezvoused with my family who had staked out an entire seat bench near the bathrooms; and we waited. We slept. We miserabled. We tossed and turned and bitched and moaned until 4 effing A M in the morn.
At least the flight was relaxing, no? Read on and see exactly how "relaxing" it was...
To Be Continued.
