Long Trip Home

It’s 7am and I’m in Newark Airport waiting for a bus to Laguardia Airport. My flight back to SF was cancelled due to the weather on the 26th (oh the weather outside was frightful…) and Delta rescheduled my flight for this morning at 5:55am. I kept checking their website and was never able to “check-in” because of a problem with their site, “we have hit some turbulance” shone the letters in in Delta maroon. Well, it turns out that the error was hiding an important issue. Most flights out of Newark were cancelled. In retrospect, I should have looked up my flight by flight number instead of assuming that my rebooked flight was ok (I had figured that since they rebooked me last time the flight was cancelled, if the new flight was cancelled they would… Well it doesn’t really matter what I figured, does it?) so now I’m on a bus to Laguardia sitting next to a Brazilian/Japanese paleative care nurse. It was enjoyable trying to chat with her, using my horrid Spanish, her Portuguese and Spanish and a translation guidebook for words like “security” (she was wondering if taking a taxi instead of the bus to Laguardia was safe). I’m on a bus to Laguardia, on to Atlanta and the San Jose. I’m a bit worried because I’m getting in to San Jose at 10pm and I don’t have a solid idea as to how to get to San Francisco. All I know is that it’ll involve at least 2 transfers and if I’m unlucky, the BART will shut down for the night before I get home. I suppose that’ll just mean an expensive cab ride home.

I gave a hand in the airport to a Brazilian woman who only speaks Portuguese and Japanese. It felt good being helpful, it helped pass the time, and it’s a little better to travel with a companion than alone. We had fun translating words like “safety” from her poor Spanish to my terrible Spanish. She was concerned about the safety of taking a cab from Newark to Laguardia.

It’s remarkable how facial expressions are almost entirely universal while languages are infinitely divergent.

It’s now 1:30 and I’m sitting at the gate in Laguardia airport. Pheh.

I can’t tell if this wordpress app for iPhone is sucking or if it’s the phone itself. It is terribly slow and sometimes loses sections I have writtens.So I will write later.

7 Comments

  1. lee says:

    Sorry about the extra carriage returns. The iPhone wordpress app threw those in and I can’t fix it without a real computer.

  2. lee says:

    Update: In hour 14 of travel. Officially homesick. Taking off from Atlanta bound for san jose in 5 min. Miss Niece Julia.

  3. Lee says:

    Update: 23 hours in motion. Ready to be home. Standing in millbrae Bart station after catching a cab with a stranger from san jose airport. We split the $90 fare. Though to be honest, the travel wasn’t “awful” except for watching the guy next to me on the plane keep throwing his shit on the floor. The bad turbulence coming into sjc was kinda fun too (knowing in retrospect that I wasn’t killed and all)

  4. lee says:

    update: 24 hours in motion is enough. I am home, I see my pillow and I’m seizing it momentarily! with my head no less!

  5. Alexis says:

    The iPhone knows what carriage returns are? :-) Here’s to happy trails…

  6. Lee Sonko says:

    I was in NJ but for a short visit. Well, it was made a little longer by getting snowed in a day, but my days and nights were jam packed just being with my niece. Sorry I didn’t come for a visit!

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