From John F. Kennedy to Marco Polo
October 19, 2011
It was a dark and ugly Wednesday. A light rain was falling. It was a good day to leave Brooklyn. I made sure that everything was as it should be for my week away from home – lights were turned off and the windows were closed. I heaved my blue backpack up on my shoulder and began locking the various locks and deadbolts that kept my personal space secure. I was traveling light – one change of clothes with some extra socks and boxer shorts thrown in. On top of this was my camera, a few paperbacks, my passport and toothbrush.
I walked the two blocks to the subway that would shoot me out to JFK airport. Once I was underground I searched the far end of the train platform for the slender silhouette of my traveling companion, Amy. She had come from her apartment in Manhattan. We had arranged to meet at the DeKalb Ave. stop near my place and ride out to JFK together. Once the mob of rush hour commuters on their way home had dissipated I spotted her and we came together on the long narrow subway platform. We boarded the next eastbound L train that came several minutes later and were lucky to get seats. We changed trains at Broadway Junction and 35 minutes later arrived at the Howard Beach A train stop that connects to the monorail station that services JFK Airport.
The boarding gate at Terminal 2 was crowded. There were hundreds of tourists waiting to board the mammoth 767 that would take us to the land of the gondola boats. Once we boarded the plane, we found ourselves in close proximity to a rowdy bunch of middle-aged tourists from somewhere in the Midwest. My guess is that they had already been privy to several complimentary cocktails on the connecting flight that was the first leg of their journey. From the sound of their conversation, they were much more riled up about some baseball game involving the St. Louis Cardinals than any canals or gondola boats.
When one of the aging couples was unable to find space to stow their overstuffed red carry-ons, this jovial mob threatened to get ugly. The obese gentleman struggled with the bulky bag in the crowded aisle. He appeared to be breathing heavily and broke into a sweat. I felt confident that the onboard staff would be able to administer CPR if it became necessary. His wife with short spiky hair was busy barking orders and making derogatory comments about the airline. The portly gentleman disappeared up the long aisle for about ten minutes and returned bagless. There was some momentary muttering from the spouse but it seemed as though the crisis had been resolved. The mood became boisterous once again for the St. Louis fan club and Amy and I both dug earplugs out of our luggage to reduce the volume.
Amy had brought a small laptop computer in order to edit a writing project she had been working on. I chose to solve a Sudoku puzzle of medium difficulty – I wasn’t in the mood to tackle my personal writing projects at that time.
While the plane was still at the boarding gate, the pissing rain quickly escalated into a torrential downpour. I could see sheets of rain scouring the tarmac outside the tiny cabin windows. After twenty minutes of waiting, the pilot announced that our flight would be delayed due to low visibility. This was not welcome news as the flight to Venice takes nine hours on a good day. The pilot attempted to temper the bad news with an update on the St. Louis Cardinals game – they were ahead by several runs! This was met with much whooping and hollering from our noisy neighbors. I immersed myself in a mindless number-crunching Sudoku behavior while Amy kept busy cutting and pasting, rewording and deleting. After two hours of this busywork our giant bird was given permission by the man in the tower to take off and soon we were rising up through the stormy skies over Long Island. In flight diversions included four movies, a pasta and spinach entrée and my personal favorite – complimentary Heinekens. Thankfully, the St. Louis Fan Club was running out of steam and most of them had dozed off.
The first movie had to do with mutant teenagers with superpowers and super-hormones. Being a substitute teacher in Bushwick had made me quite familiar with this situation. For some reason I am also quite entertained by statistics that keep flashing between movies – outside temperature: -57 F, Time to our destination: 3:52, current speed: 350 mph. Then there’s the little map of the Atlantic Ocean with a red line drawn on it that starts at New York City goes to your present location – now we’re south of Iceland, now we’re flying over Ireland. After that was Meet the Parents 2 and then some black and white movie with Sophia Loren having an affair with some strange man and Nazi flags everywhere – it was in Italian so I couldn’t really follow the story line. I was also reading a Terry Pratchett novel and before I knew it they were serving breakfast. I looked out the window and the Italian Alps were poking up through the clouds below. I don’t think I slept more than an hour during the entire flight. I guess I get too excited about traveling to sleep. If only I could that excited about the rest of my life!
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