These past few weeks have put me back on the road again, only this time I haven’t needed my passport. Sadly though, it seems that my luck has remained the same – NOT GOOD. I’m in New Hampshire now at the Democratic College Congress, and heading to Connecticut from here for Youth Venture’s annual global team meeting (do you like how I talk about entire states as if they were cities? When they’re that tiny it feels like they’re cities, because you can zip through one in a car with great ease). It was the getting to New Hampshire that was a real pain in the rear.
I was supposed to take the bus from New York City (that’s big enough to get the city subtitle) to Boston then catch a short 1-hour car ride to New Hampshire. My shoulder surgery, however, was given the green light (I’m needing to get it done before the New Year so as to avoid having my insurance deductible reset) which meant I had to get back to DC for a Monday morning intake then board a plane to Boston Monday evening (I decided to fly over taking the train or bus to save time. Hahaha).
I did all the bookings, so forth and so on and put it in the hands of the travel gods, who are apparently irritated with me. My bus back to DC from NYC took a whopping SEVEN HOURS, which is three hours more than usual. Why, might you ask? Lets ask the State of New Jersey, who thought it would be a marvelous idea to split their “expressway” into two sections, one inevitably traffic-laden and the other open as the South Africa sky.
Fast-forward 16 hours later, post-intake (everything went well and I’m going to be on lots of drugs that are going to make me really loopy and very “huh? Whuh?”). I began my trek to Boston at 2:30pm by boarding the subway at Tenleytown station. I took the subway to the Marc commuter rail to the airport shuttle to Terminal 4, checked my bag, did the security dance, and plopped down in a chair at 5:10pm, perfect timing for my 5:30pm flight. DELAYED. We were now supposed to depart at 6:51pm. At 6:56pm they announced this flight was cancelled and we were all put on other flights leaving throughout the evening. My new departure time was 7:20pm. At 7:23pm I was still sitting in the terminal, fairly certain something was wrong. Indeed, something was wrong. At 7:40pm they CANCELLED that flight too – complete hydraulics failure which controls, you know, the entire plane.
At this point people were getting very agitated and crowding the gate area, ready to claim justice. I listened as people told loved ones their plight via cell phone. “I mean (sobbing), this is just like, the worst day of my life Mom,” and “Its just always something and this is just…just (gets choked up) why me?” and “The world hates me.” Dramatic? I think yes. For whatever reason – maybe the traveling all over and then living through the Dengue – I remained largely unaffected and found the whole ordeal rather humorous. I just bought a salad, read a book, and chilled out.
We eventually left from another gate on the other side of the airport, having to go through security all over again. Our 9:30pm departure put us in Boston at 11pm, which had me at my aunt Nancy’s place by 11:45pm, a full 7 hours and 15 minutes after leaving for the airport…Now, how long does the bus take again?
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