The Trip Home

 

My wife and I recently returned from a trip to New York to visit my son and his wife. What follows is an excerpt of my notes from that trip. Departure day.

So we and the kids (adult kids) leave by 5:30 AM. These “kids” are night owls. They rarely wake before 10:00 if they don’t have to, so we appreciate the sacrifice. Daughter-in-Law (DIL) drove us the 30 minutes to the train station. Hugs and good-byes for her (we love DIL. DIL is an irresistible force). Son navigates us a route to the platform with fewer stairs than the way we came. We get a ticket and get on the train headed for the big city and Grand Central Station.

I soon realize that this train is not an express train like the one we took coming out. Instead of taking a little over an hour like we did before, this one would take a little over an hour and a half. We stop at places with names like Cold Springs and Peekskill (on this trip we saw a lot of place names that ended in “kill” including Kaatskill, i.e. Catskill, and Wallkill, etc.. Kill is from the Dutch word for water body, usually a river or a creek). We trundled along the Hudson in darkness for the first half hour. Then the dawn light begins to infuse the landscape. We see the river. It is a majestic river, or inlet, or whatever it is. The far cliffs hang like monuments over the western side.  

In early morning light, we ride through Yonkers, and when we start seeing the Harlem River, I realize we are in the Bronx. Crossing the river (or whatever it is) we stop once in Harlem and then are soon underground for the rest of the trip. At Grand Central Station, son guides us to a ticket kiosk and we have our ticket for Jamaica. He takes us to our train. We hug and say our goodbyes.

On the rails again, this time on the Long Island RR, we make our way to Jamaica Station, first in the underground caverns that resemble some science fictional dystopian world. Then we emerge in the bright sunlight of Queens. We have obviously crossed under the East River (a river, or inlet, or whatever it is. I think maybe I will go back to calling them all kills). We bump along on the train until we get to Jamaica Station. Getting off the train, we know we have to go up a level. Wife saw that there was an elevator (yay!). We find the elevator and it is broken. We go back to the stairs where there is an escalator . . . broken. Sigh, I grabbed both suitcases and we trudge upstairs. We make our way to the Air Train. We get on the train and when we get to the first stop, I learn is not actually going to all the terminals. To get to some of the terminals you have to get off and transfer to a different train. But fortunately for us, this train was going to the terminal we needed (Terminal 7). We get off at Terminal 7 and we are at JFK! We made it.

At a kiosk we get our boarding passes. While printing wife’s pass, the display reads “Printing boarding pass.” But while printing mine, it says, “printing travel document.” Hmm. Examination of the passes reveals that while my wife has a seat assignment, mine does not. We take it to an attendant, who takes it to another attendant, and another until someone is able to figure out what is going on. The seat I was assigned is broken. They tell me they will give me a seat assignment at the gate. When we get to the gate, we have to wait an hour or so for staff to show up. When they do, they tell me that there were no seats left on First Class but they will find me a seat in Economy and I would be refunded the difference. They apologize. So, wife will be in First Class and I in Economy. Okay. In the grand scheme of things, this is not really a problem. They do let me board with her, so I can get my carry-on stowed in the overhead bin before everyone in Economy started fighting for a spot.

I sit in an aisle seat two men on my left. There is no window on our row, nor is any other window visible to me. I can tell when we were taking off. I can feel it. I cannot see anything. I notice the information placard on the seat in front of me which says that we are on a Boeing 737 Max plane. Hmm. Weren’t those the ones that kept falling out of the sky? Great.

Did I mention we had skipped breakfast because we knew we were going to be fed on the plane? Wife will get fed. She is in First Class. I get pretzels. There is no entertainment, no screen to watch anything or listen to anything. Those in the know have brought tablets with earphones, and they can apparently hook into an in-flight network for entertainment. But I have none of that. I do have a book, though the light is dim and hard to read by. Each seat has its own reading light, but as I am on the aisle, the switch is way over to the left of the men sitting next to me. I reached over and switch it on. The beam is cut off by the head of my neighbor. I read for a bit. Unsatisfactory. I get out my notepad and jot down some lines of this you are now reading. Again, it is hard to see what I am doing, and I give up after a while, close my eyes and try to sleep. This pattern is repeated: try to read, try to write, try to sleep. Near the end of our five-hour flight, we start to descend for landing. Not being able to see anything, I have to imagine what is happening. We get to a point where I think we must be getting close to the runway, then we hit some turbulence. I am thinking, this is not good, hitting turbulence as you are landing. Hmm. But it goes on and on with more turbulence, and I decide we must not be as close as I thought. I literally do not know if we are 50 feet above the ground or 1500 feet. Close your eyes. Relax. What will be, will be.

The ride smooths out. We land. We survive. Now we just have a three-hour drive home. Yay.

Star Liner