Day: November 15, 2018

I’m sure you know the old joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall. That’s right “Practice, Practice, Practice”. Well Patrice practices a lot and it’s going to pay off because Sunday she, and her choir pals, will be performing at Carnegie Hall. When she asked if I wanted to go it seemed like a good idea at the time. Our daughter Erica was going to be in town during this time and it would give us a little getaway with our youngest child. Yes it seemed like a very good idea at the time. Today I’m not so sure.

First let me tell you about our trip to the airport. Going to LAX is never easy. I’ve tried all ways of getting there and none of them seem to work very well. With the exception of having our daughter Lindsay take us. But Lindsay now has a job and a Thursday morning ride from her was not possible. On our last trip I was told by a taxi driver about a new app (Ride Yellow) which is supposed to help the cab companies compete with Uber and Lyft. I downloaded the app and decided to give it a try. We arranged for the taxi to arrive at 6 AM and a few minutes prior to that I received a call that the cab was at our home. I was already impressed since when you arrange for Uber or Lyft they give you a 10 or 15 minute arrival window. Our house is hard to find so the inexperience driver frequently arrives 10 to 15 minutes late. With the driver being early, Patrice and Erica were not ready so I went outside to bring some of our luggage to the cab. I found the driver outside his car screaming at someone on the phone. We live in a very densely populated area near the beach where most people like to be asleep at 6AM. So I approached the driver asking him to be quiet. He told me he had to call another driver because his car had a flat tire.

After lots of screaming from our driver, and threats from neighbors saying they would call the police, we were on our way with our new driver. We were headed to LAX in plenty of time and things seemed to be going according to our plans. At least that is what I thought.

Our plane was listed as “On Time” and we boarded without any hiccups. Oops, I almost forgot, as you might recall Patrice frequently gets singled out for closer screening. This time she (and Erica) passed through without a problem but apparently I triggered the random screening buzzer. After a quick massage of my buttocks (“Something is lighting up by your buttocks sir, so I need to perform a closer exam”) we were ready to board. Once on the plane we started to relax and watch the free “Onboard Entertainment” (All you need is the American Airlines App to stream movies and television shows for free). Everything seemed just fine until we were notified by our pilot that, due to weather conditions in New York our departure would be delayed 45 minutes. About 45 minutes later we were finally airborne and enjoyed the flight except for a few short interludes of turbulence. When we approached New York we got more bad news, our flight was in a holding pattern until the staff at JFK could snow plow the runway. Immediately every airplane disaster movie I’d ever seen flashed through my brain. This final stage of the flight went fine (if you don’t count my soiled underwear) and we exited the plane.

After claiming our luggage we got on line for a cab ride into the city. It always surprises me how few cabs seem to be available for transport into Manhattan from JFK. This certainly isn’t Las Vegas where a 5 minute wait at McCarran International Airport is unheard of.

Waiting for the cab was made worse by the weather. It is incredibly cold here and as I mentioned it has been snowing

I asked our driver how long it would take to get into the city. He said he didn’t know and proceeded to pull out his phone and start to search. Snow, wet highway, lots of cars and a driver doing a Google search on his phone? Can you think of a better recipe for disaster? I offered to look for him. I showed him the suggested route and he nodded. I took that as a good sign.

Unfortunately I was wrong. Google estimated a 1 hour and 29 minutes trip to the hotel. In reality the trip took us 3 hours. The road conditions were awful. Gridlock was the rule. It was a brutal trip and only made worse by my being hungry. My kids know, “Daddy’s hungry” is not something they or anyone else wants to hear. We checked in to the hotel and rushed to dinner at the Topaz Noodle Bar (129 W 56th St, New York, NY 10019) which was very close to the hotel. The food was excellent but take that under advisement since like I said I was very hungry. We had dumplings and pad thai. All was very good.

Sorry no food pictures. I was just too hungry. No more writing either. I was up early and need some sleep.