The funniest thing about walking back up to GANNET2 Thursday afternoon was the tail wagging reaction of my wife and the utter indifference of my dog. Rusty looked up and flopped back asleep in the grass as if to say he never doubted my return, while Layne was busy unpacking her Trader Joe’s shopping list. I had a sore throat and an urgent need for tea. So ended my thirty six hour Florida shock horror drama trip. And by the way iPhone 18s are excellent with strong batteries, not too big in the hand and easy to use. I love the new facial recognition which doesn’t care if I’m wearing glasses and seems a lot less intimidating than the biometric cameras in use at border control. Knowing Palantir is storing my DNA is not a comforting thought but an easy to use iPhone…well some loss of privacy for that is okay!
My flight left Miami Wednesday night at six thirty for New York so I was bummed I didn’t have the car for my second day. I like driving and I’d have happily buzzed down to Key West for lunch and a walk but as it was I had a late check out from the Embassy Suites and a shuttle straight to the airport so that was that. The hotel was odd with its huge interior plaza and barely warm showers but it did the job and is close to the airport. Oh and it rained hard in the night too.
Miami airport is vast, spread out across miles of what seems like permanent construction zones which require much walking to negotiate. I sat in a quiet corner and wrote my last blog entry on my new phone with the bigger screen using the airport’s free WiFi and then went looking for my boarding gate. My boarding pass said Gate D11, the updated information board said D43 so I went there and had a con leche and a Cuban sandwich at the Versailles café while I waited.
I’m reading Precipice by Robert Harris a suitably lightweight and involving novel for travel so when I got to the end of the chapter I put my Kindle away and strolled over to the gate.
“Not here,” said the lady at the boarding gate. “We’re loading for Guatemala City here, not New York.” She looked it up and flight 2600 was leaving from gate D7. So off I walked with my carry on and my new lilac tote bag from Layne’s favorite grocery store Trader Joe’s. It’s a new product that is selling at a discount and I knew Layne would like it so I used it as my personal bag for the flight and put my camera bag inside. It actually worked quite well. It took an age but I got to D7 eventually, about thirty minutes before scheduled boarding at the decrepit Miami airport.
There was nobody at D7, no boarding agents no plane no passengers…I couldn’t spot any American Airline people to ask except a lady driving the golf cart used to haul handicapped passengers around so I asked her. She looked it up on her tablet which said D7 but she looked at the empty gate and told me to wait in her cart while she went to the office. I sat in the golf cart with my carry on and trendy Trader Joe’s lilac, lined tote bag (I’m going to make it a trendy travel accessory) and waited.
“The office says D43. It’s getting late I’ll take you there.” So off we went dodging pedestrians. She told me two drivers got fired in the last year when pedestrians walked into their golf carts. She was pissed too, pointing out how unfair that even though the investigations put the pedestrians entirely at fault still the drivers got fired. I told her Argentina is much better, no liability laws so if you do something stupid it’s on you. Her Cuban eyes flashed a glance of appreciation. Back at gate 43 I sat and waited. I overheard a man telling an elderly lady next to me her flight to New York was leaving from gate D7 so I intervened. I explained I’d just come from D7 and they said it was here. The lady spoke a little English but it turned out she was Russian and Valentina was visiting her son in New York after attending a psychology convention in Miami. The man also said the airport was locked down as there had been a shooting which might explain the confusion. He was right too.
Valentina followed me to the desk. “Definitely Gate D7” the agent told us. I asked her to call a golf cart please as we were out of time. Valentina panicked and gathered her bags to start walking. Thank goodness for Google Translate as I explained the problem one painfully slow sentence at a time. Once I had her calmed down we could wait with my glowing neon lilac Trader Joe’s tote bag. Pretty cool huh? Bet you wish you had one. 
We did eventually get on the plane after one last id check by TSA agents. I did notice a lot more ICE presence at the airport but my own experience was normal enough. The plane though looked weird smoking from the roof. The cabin crew said it was normal when plugged into airport air conditioning. Who knew?
JFK airport was shutting down when we arrived at nine o’clock at night which surprised me. No beer no barstool no nothing. The flight out of Miami was uneventful though I was sorry to be going. 
There was a sadness I felt which must be homesickness. I was surprised but I could happily have stayed a few days…driving around on $4:50 a gallon gas. Cheaper than Argentina, half the price of gas in Uruguay. It’s all in the perspective. 
Boarding the fully loaded 777 aircraft in New York was an epic cluster fuck such as I never want to experience again. They were checking hand luggage as we entered but my carry on is soft sided and folds down when empty which is handy for a van dweller and my luminous Trader Joe’s tote bag in seductive lilac was my personal carry on so that passed muster. Inside the plane was a traffic jam such as I have never seen. The aisles were packed, cabin crew were trying to restore order, bags were being passed hand to hand to hand over passengers’ heads while others were trying to stuff oversized bags into bins in an effort to not have them checked. It was primordial, so I opened a jump seat in the boarding area and waited and forgot to take a photograph of the scrum in the aisle. This was the next morning as people woke up after eleven hours in the plane:
I’m pretty sure I’m going to hell as before I escaped the tangle of bodies I came between a Hasidic Jew in full winter woolen Polish regalia with hat and tassels and his modest wife who looked horrified by the pressing crush of humanity and if I say I copped a feel in that crush it was a purely involuntary act and I don’t think either of us enjoyed it as much as we might have. That I believed was the low point of the boarding process but when I was asked if I was a member of a group by a rather accusatory harassed employee and then someone asked if I was the one who had lost my bag in the tone of one seeking to blame someone else for a disaster I denied both charges, averted my eyes from the nice lady in black and found a jump seat in a quiet corner.
“The FAA would love to see that” another, more friendly crew member smiled. I stayed put, exhausted, rules be damned. I’m an honorary Argentinian.
It could not have been a more Fellini-esque journey.