Thursday, August 09, 2007

So Much for Mexico

As I mentioned, I was supposed to leave for Mexico yesterday. I was hoping to get away from a rash of bad luck and stress.

But I am still in New York.



The gods (perhaps Zeus?) decided to keep me here by unleashing a massive storm on the city.



The obstacles created by said storm were too much for me to overcome.

I left for JFK (the NYC airport) at 7 am for a drive that normally takes between 35 minutes to an hour and a half depending on traffic.

My flight was at 10:35.



As I started making my way on the freeway, traffic got progressively slower and more congested.

Until it came to a complete stop.

I managed to get off the freeway and began to meander my way through side streets.

It quickly became apparent that this was not going to work either.

At some point I began to second guess myself and began thinking that I should have taken public transportation to the airport.









The radio soon let me know that I would have probably found myself in a worse predicament as most of the subway system shut down due to flooding.

This left people waiting or if you were lucky you were informed before you began to wait that you should just give up.


It was somewhere in between the stopped freeways and the congested and obstacle-ridden roads that I went from being stressed to being zenfully resigned.

The radio mentioned that there was a tornado near the airport and that there were massive flight delays.

So perhaps it would all work out. If not, there was not much I could do.

As I slowly progressed towards the airport, the the skies cleared and the sun came out as if to taunt me. How could I be so late in such a clear and sunny day?

I arrived at the airport at 10:50.

My flight was gone.

For once a flight left on time even when there was inclement weather.


As you can imagine, the airport was full of some very unhappy people. I was given the choice to re-book for today making three or more connections or for tomorrow with one connection (my flight yesterday was non-stop). I chose the latter.

Given the traffic chaos, the fact that I had already parked the car in an off-airport location, and that I am flying out of LaGuardia on Friday (but we are flying back to JFK) I decided to take the subway back home. The A train runs from JFK to where we live, but it is the whole line of the longest line in New York. Moreover, it usually runs express (skipping over many stations), but to add insult to injury, yesterday it ran local (making all the stops).

At least it was running (one of the few), it had a/c (the weather turned unbearably hot and muggy), and I had a safe home (with some very happy dogs) to return to.

Tomorrow I get to try again. The forecast is:
Showers and thundershowers likely.
High 74F.
Winds E at 10 to 15 mph.
Chance of rain 60%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
I am splurging on a private car (same cost as a taxi) and requested it for 5:15 am for my 8:00 am flight.

Let's see how that goes.

Photos from the New York Times website

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