The long week concludes

(long, with little hockey content)

Wednesday
The Bluefish box arrives, and after banging it in, I’m out the door. No more thoughts of workin’ for a few days. Rejoice!

Thursday
Up early, pack the car, off to La Guardia via the motherland. Drop off the folks at the terminal and drive down 94th Street to Dollar Rent-a-Car, where I’ve parked three of the past four times I’ve flown out of LGA. Quick, painless, not cheap, but what is? So I pull in, tell the woman I’ve got a reservation, give her the number…

Whereupon she insists it’s an “old” number and isn’t valid.

I don’t understand. She re-insists this number can’t be good. I made this reservation three weeks earlier. She shows me the list of reservations; there’s a few in the 18000s (mine is 19762), and a bunch with later numbers in the 20000s. Somehow, this means my number can’t be any good.

She goes to her manager, who tells her to let me in, but at the indoor rate instead of the outdoor rate. As it turns out, we’re there long enough that the weekly rate applies, anyway. But she continues to insist that my number could not be valid.


We are both idiots, I discover upon returning home. The reservation is a perfectly valid one, as one would imagine their computers should have shown them. It’s just a perfectly valid reservation for Friday morning.

So off I go to the terminal, and my folks are already checked in, so I go up to the desk to check in, and they ask for my confirmation number… which my dad has. Find a way to get him over, and the woman gives me my boarding pass…

With the dreaded letters “SSSS” in the corner.

Joy.

So yup, secondary screening awaits after running my stuff through the X-ray machine. They pat me down. They check my computer bag (sans computer – no more thoughts of workin’ for a few days) for explosive residue. I guess I check out. They send me on my way.

We eventually board the 737. We’ve got window-aisle-aisle, with a seat in between two of us; I’m on the window, because I get twitchy if I can’t see what’s going on. One of the last dudes on the plane looks at where he’s supposed to go and says to the flight attendant, “You’re kidding, right? You expect me to squeeze in between those two?”

Skinny people, lemme tell you something about flying as a fat guy (albeit one who, at last, fits in the damn seat again). For as uncomfortable as you think you’ll be sitting next to me, it’s gonna be worse for me, because I’m gonna do everything I can to stay out of your space, out of your way, out of your memories. Unless you call me and my family “those two” within my earshot.

Unfortunately, the flight attendant took him away to another seat, somewhere. It would have been kind of fun to see what happened after I kicked out the right arm a few times.

Things are otherwise uneventful as we fly to Midway. We rent a car with only a little delay. We hit the road. My father insists I turn right coming out of the airport. He insists I got this wrong the last time. He’s got me shaken. I turn right. We head east, away from I-55.

Fortunately, after some furtive looks at the map — I don’t wanna look a bit like a tourist, though the Tennessee plates on the car can’t be helping that — I find the place to turn left and head back north, and we do finally get on the Stevenson to join the rush-hour blitz away from Chicago.

And eventually, we make it to Joliet, where waiting for us is my brother, The Little Punk, the reason we’re here.

Friday

TLP’s gotta work. So we hang out at the hotel, which for some reason has only two chairs for three people (and a huge, wasted empty space in the corner) and only two towels for three people (that, a little more easily rectified) and wait for him. We go to the movies; then we go to dinner at his sports-bar hangout. Work intrudes: The NCAA softball tournament is on TV, and Cat Osterman is pitching to Aimee Minor. It’s not long before the Sox game winds up on that TV, too, though.

Saturday

We get in the rental car and drive out to the home of one of TLP’s buddies for a pre-Memorial Day bash with a bunch of the guys who went out to Joliet from Connecticut. Steve’s house is in a town a little southwest, Minooka, an Indian word meaning “Suburb of Scranton.” The backyard currently looks north over about two miles of absolutely nothing. That part hasn’t been developed yet. The land is flat as can be out there; drive along I-80 at night on a stormy night, and you’ll watch lightning strikes in all directions. You can look from cell phone tower to cell phone tower to cell phone tower. A different world.

The guys who came are all in a fantasy league at work. That, understandably, dominated the conversation. Late in the afternoon, A-Rod went for Schilling and Abreu. Things got chilly after that.

At night, Steve put the Oilers-Ducks game on in High-Definition. First time I’d seen hockey in hi-def. Oh my. Felt like I could yell into the TV and ask Torres to get a guy off the bike for me again. If the prices come down, I am so there.

Sunday

Diners aren’t big out there. The closest thing is a Pancake House on the Lincoln Highway, between the hotel and TLP’s apartment. We met there for lunch a lot.

TLP’s birthday. We hung out in the swimming pool. Three guys came in with a little boy and a little girl. The little girl spent the afternoon running around the edge of the pool, screaming. The little boy, the guys used as a ball, flipping him around. Interesting afternoon.

Got some reading done, too. Finished up Simon Winchester’s The Map That Changed The World. After reading several of his books, I’m almost to the point where I’ll follow Winchester to the ends of the earth to read him.

Monday

I check my e-mail on the computer in the hotel lobby. The world hasn’t ended. Good news.

We go for a drive as quick thunderstorms pass through. Down south, there’s actually a couple of hills here and there. There’s a couple of weird-looking outcrops down around Braidwood, which was once a mining town. (Places like Coal City and Diamond and Carbon Hill might tip you off, too.) We also could see the Braidwood nuclear power plant, which looked different from the others I’ve seen. I dunno.

On the way home, those thunderstorms got locally bad enough that everyone on the highway almost hydroplaned into a multi-multi-car pileup. Worked out, though.

Tuesday

Slept about two hours, but…

Homeward bound, after stopping by TLP’s workplace at 1:30 (he’s on break) to say goodbye. We start north, I-80 to I-55, with an inordinate amount of time to catch our 5:45 p.m. flight. I drive around trying to find cheap gas to fill the rental. Just as I’m about to give up, Costco comes in view. Bingo.

We’re checked in and through security and ready to go by 3. Plenty of time to sit and read and wait. And wait. And wait. And…

There’s an ATA plane at our gate… But something’s telling me it’s not right, doesn’t look big enough, that something’s wrong. We’re in trouble.

They first tell us our plane is on its way from the hangar, we’re delayed a half-hour. Then, at about 5:30, the screen goes off at our gate… and comes back with “New York LaGuardia, 7:00 p.m.” Except it’s the NEXT flight, 4208, not ours, 4206.

Hmm.

Eventually, around 6, they announce ours (two gates over) and board us, a full flight. Window-aisle-aisle again, and this time we’ve got a (very skinny) woman between us, Jackie, an actress from Tribeca. We taxi out and get on line. And wait. And wait. And wait. And…

Jackie suddenly realizes that, after going through a secondary security screen of her own, she’s left a $500 ring in the basket. She’s desperate to get the flight crew to radio back, to get on the phone, to find some way to get word back to the checkpoint. We’re all doubtful. And besides, we’re about to take off. Right?

There’s an interesting amount of activity among the flight crew, though; one or two keep looking backward. But there’s other issues, too. The skies have been darkening all afternoon. Had we left at 5:45, no problem, we’re out. But now… there’s a ground stop heading east. The captain shuts the engines down.

This is fun.

After maybe 30 minutes, including a doozy of a lightning and thunderstorm, around 8, the captain turns the engines back on. So we can go back to the gate. We need more gas.

Well, that, and there’s a sick passenger aboard, the reason for the commotion in the back. Food poisoning, apparently. She sheepishly walks to the front of the plane, and a cleaner comes aboard.

Good news, though: They’ve found Jackie’s ring. She runs down to security (quite a run, actually) and gets it and gets back before we’re done fueling.

Another guy comes aboard (there’s an empty seat now, after all), and away we go again.

Except the sky has darkened again. (Well, of course: it’s about 9 by now.) We taxi. We wait. We wait some more. And some more. They’re spacing the planes about 30 miles apart heading eastbound. There’s lots of bad weather between here and there. And we wait.

Had I gotten on I-80 eastbound instead of westbound back at 1:30, we’d be on a similar timetable as this flight by now.

It’s about 10 when we finally get off the ground — 11 Eastern. And LGA has a 1 a.m. curfew.

The captain races. We dodge the weather and make up the time and land at 12:48; we’re told the scheduled 7 p.m. flight got diverted to JFK. That woulda been fun.

Take the shuttle to get the car while the folks collect the bags; wait while someone becomes available to get the car for me. I come back; there’s almost nobody left except the cops, booting a car that had parked in the passenger pick-up lane. I pull over a ways behind them as the folks cross the street to join me. A cop walks back toward me. I open the window.

“Garage is over there, buddy.”

Do I have that kind of face? Did I look like I needed secondary screening? Did I say something about contributing to an IRA, and it got misconstrued? It’s 1:35 in the morning. Twelve hours ago, in the sunshine, I was slapping my brother’s hand in farewell. Now, after seven hours on a plane, just under two of which was spent airborne, on two hours’ sleep, just hoping my parents will hurry across the street so I can drive home, the air thick with humidity, I get… “Yes, sir, I’m just picking these people up.”

“Who?”

Um, the only two people left on the sidewalk. “Them, coming across the street.”

He looks, almost dubiously, but he moves on. “OK.”

Quick stop at the Crosstown, we walk in the door at 3:30.

Tuesday – epilogue

I sleep four hours. I somehow make it to Brakettes practice. I write my two stories. I check in for questions.

I fall asleep. Sorry to keep you waiting.

Michael Fornabaio