Travel Day

WTF?

Traveling sucks.

Day starts...my beautiful half-Italian-Illinois-bred boyfriend bids me farewell...I make it out of my door at 11:40AM to catch a train to Ronkonkoma that leaves at 12:15PM. It's fucking raining! And I'm weighed down with a suitcase, a purse (with my laptop, polaroid, and other heavy shit), a keyboard (my trusty Korg R3) and a guitar, cursing myself for either a) not being a dude and being able to carry everything my(big-strong)self... b) for not being able to pack light...or c) for not being smart enough to invent a way to teleport myself to Houston in one piece...thus avoiding everything that is to follow these first dreary steps out the door...
I'm being dramatic.
I know.
It's fun.
Thank God I only have to walk a block down the street to catch a cab on 2nd Ave...but even by then, I'm soaked and so is my stuff and I'm praying my instruments don't kill me later for putting them through this...
Of course, traffic SUCKS. Because it's mid-day and it's raining and it's 2nd Avenue! Curse construction and the Queensboro Bridge and all the double-parked delivery trucks and the cabs stopping in the middle of the street to pick up a fare and bikers going the wrong friggin' way. You know who you are...shame on you...
I have to do some breathing excersizes in the cab to keep my heart from beating up my other vital organs. Because I know I'm going to make it. And I do. Just in time to get right on the train. Who wants to wait with the anxious bunch in front of the track-announcement board and then run with the bulls when the track number pops up anyway? I got to stroll right in without a hitch. Except for hitting several people in the head on my way to a seat. Sorry folks...my keyboard was PISSED after the rain incident. I couldn't control her.
I like trains. They calm me. The sound of the tracks or something. Therapy. I'm in a better mood now.
I reach Ronkonkoma...two elevators and a skip and I'm in a cab with an interesting driver named Chris, who has had much more of a life than his current modest role lets on. From what I gather, Chris spent 5 years in the "Upper" part of my Upper East Side neighborhood (at 87th and Lex), living off a wealthy woman who enjoyed his above-average, perhaps professional, abilities in the sac. To which I say..."we're all just trading gifts in this world after all"...
I made it to Islip! The airport! Hooray! And as soon as I do...boy does the rain come down!! Like a squall...a torrent...EPIC! I fear for a moment that my flight may be delayed, but to my surprise and delight, it is not. So I relax and make friends with a woman named Georgie, who loves hearing my stories (I didn't know I had them!) and asks me to follow her onto the plane. Unfortunately, she's in group B...and I'm a C...so it's not meant to be for us to continue our brief but satisfying discourse. Satisfying in that, I realized I have more adventures under my belt than I give myself credit for...and I'm certainly on my way to racking up some more...
I'm all peaches and happy exhaustion when I reach Baltimore (it isn't Southwest without a lay-over!) until an hour before my flight to Houston, when....OF COURSE! "Passengers on flight 0938275684892438901 service to Houston, your flight has been delayed...FOREVER!"

Not really.

But three hours.

Which means I've been in this airport for a total of five.

Which means have time to write this nonsense down. And bitch about how much I HATE flying these days. I've done it enough in the past 6 months to know that the experience has gone WAY down-hill since those few blissful years in the '90's when airplanes seemed so magical, and your friends and family could meet you at the gate, and you didn't have to get naked to go through security, and they didn't charge you for your bag of peanuts.
But, dwelling on the past is no way to live. So I'll just go curse at the lady behind the desk. She seems like she can take it...