When the Travel Gods Conspire to Kill You
They tried everything and I took it like a champ
Depending on your appetite for adventure, I may not be your preferred sightseeing partner. I’ve always had weird globe-trotting luck but it was a 2011 trip to New York City that convinced me travel gods exist and they hate me.
From the outset, it looked like any other business trip — a Delta flight on Tuesday and then check-in at a Hilton. There would be four days of an industry conference with welcome bags, lanyards, and tchotchkes. The only thing slightly out of the ordinary was my plan to stay in the city through the weekend with a woman I had recently begun dating.
During the descent into JFK, our pilot made an announcement we were being rerouted to Connecticut. At first, the pilots provided no details about why but later they explained a tremor had been detected at the airport. The standard procedure for seismic activity required our landing somewhere else until officials confirmed everything was safe. The earthquake was a minor inconvenience but didn’t seem like a big deal. What I failed to consider during my blasé dismissal of our delay was how easily the coach cabin goes Lord of the Flies under pressure.
Once we landed in Connecticut, I texted my boss an update and began looking over a presentation. Passenger discontent audibly increased for two hours despite perky updates from the pilot and free booze and extra cookies from the flight attendants. Just shy of hour three, we were zipping down the tarmac headed to New York once again. It was right after takeoff people completely lost their shit.
An argument between two passengers erupted over a reclined seat. I am firmly opposed to anyone reclining their seat on a flight so I sympathized with the man requesting the seat be returned to an upright position. But their conversation on friendly flying etiquette rapidly degenerated into violence. The two men stood and went chest-to-chest, forcing an attendant to negotiate a ceasefire. As the attendants quelled this confrontation, a more violent one exploded behind me.
During our layover, some people changed seats. This fight began because one man was enraged at another for moving into his row, which he previously had to himself. I didn’t see what happened but I heard a woman scream and then heard a scrambling of activity. Passengers separated the two ruffians while choice expletives flew around the cabin.
Our flight continued but we were further delayed upon landing while waiting for the police to board the plane and escort the pugilists out. I made it to my client dinner on time with an amusing anecdote, blithely unaware of the fuckery to come.
During a coffee break on the second day of the conference, news broke that Hurricane Irene might creep up the coast and make a landing in the city. The odds were slight but meteorologists were monitoring the storm. I shrugged it off, thinking we were not in imminent danger. Mother Nature thought differently.
By Friday morning, the tropical storm was imminent and airlines canceled flights into and out of New York en masse. The city announced public transportation would begin shutting down on Saturday. We gave up all hope of loud hotel sex and decided to find a train out of the city the next morning.
On Saturday, Penn Station was a madhouse, teeming with desperate people bolting for higher ground. The desperation was exacerbated by most trains either being full or canceled. My date suggested we take one of the few available trains to Delaware and stay with her parents. We had only been dating for a few weeks and I was ambivalent about an impromptu visit to her childhood home but we had few options. It seemed any port in a storm would do. We fled New York less than 24 hours before the storm arrived but the travel gods had far worse plans in store for me.
The situation became dire on the train ride from New York to Delaware. Due to a suspect hotdog from the previous day, my bowels declared war on both me and my dignity twenty minutes into our ninety-minute journey. The horrible things I did to that tiny train bathroom bordered on war crimes. While I was facing down the constant threat of atomic diarrhea, my date mentioned her father had spent some time on my Twitter and was not a fan. To be clear, it wasn’t my personal account but one I had created for a character I was writing in a screenplay. I thought it would be an interesting way to get inside the head of this character, who was a narcissistic misogynist without any sort of redeemable moral traits whatsoever. Even though she explained the nature of the account to her father, he refused to separate the modifier from the modified. Twitter was proof I was not the man he wanted for his little girl. I was fleeing a hurricane and heading into hostile territory with an ass primed for detonation.
We arrived at her childhood home a little after one on Saturday and after a chilly reception from her parents, I was shown to her brother’s childhood bedroom. As soon as I set my bags down, I asked for the bathroom and was told the upstairs one wasn’t working but I could use the downstairs toilet next to the kitchen. The horrible things I did to that tiny bathroom did not endear me to the family. After my intestines used any orifice they could find to empty my body of everything except my organs, I joined everyone for wine in the living room.
Dad had not bothered shaking my hand when we arrived and although he was having drinks with us in the living room, he positioned himself in the corner with a book. He and I wouldn’t speak more than ten words for the next twenty-four hours. Mom was nicer but quiet and after my date told the story of our escape from New York, the conversation petered out into an awkward silence. I was too busy wondering what effect the wine would have on my freshly vacated digestive system to notice mom picking up a puppet.
Mom was writing a children’s play for the local theater and planned to use puppets. These were full-on Sesame Street-style puppets with moveable arms and little puppet clothes. The puppet began asking me questions about my childhood in Texas.
There are weird moments in life when you find yourself in a stranger’s home being interrogated by a puppet with red shaggy hair while you worry you might shit yourself and stain your host’s new sofa. I looked at mom and began telling her about Texas when she interrupted me.
“Ronnie wants to know why you’re looking at me when he asked the question.”
I paused for a moment to consider whether it was too late to return to New York and take my chances with the hurricane.
With my buttcheeks firmly clenched and refilling my wine glass at a worrisome clip, I spent almost thirty minutes telling a puppet about my life. My date smiled at me but not the ‘I know this is some crazy shit, right’ kind of smile you might anticipate. She smiled like a person accustomed to extended conversations with puppets.
Toward the end of my interrogation, Ronnie suggested we order a pizza and mom thought it was a good idea. She went to make a phone call and I excused myself. My small intestine found something it had inexplicably missed earlier and passed it on for expulsion. I would come to know that toilet far more intimately than I would ever know my date.
After the pizza, we tuned into the news to see what was happening back in New York. We were surprised to see Wilmington, DE was under a tornado watch. Correction. They were surprised. I had narrowly avoided an earthquake and a riot, fled a hurricane, and survived the third degree from a fucking puppet so there wasn’t anything that surprised me.
The only good news that evening was my date would spend the night in her own bedroom so I wouldn’t have to wake her when I made a mad rush to the bathroom three more times before dawn. I was lying in the brother’s bed after my final potty run when I heard a crash from outside. I also heard the wind hitting the windows. I knew a tornado lurked beyond the walls, huffing and puffing and trying to get in. I didn’t care at that point. I was ready for death.
The tornado turned out to be nothing more than a very angry little twister causing minimal damage. The weather the next morning was beautiful and the sky was clear and clean, much like my duodenum. My insides had expelled whatever nastiness was inside of me. It was a bright new day and I felt like a new man.
My date decided to spend a few extra days with her family but she drove me to the station so I could catch a train to Baltimore where I could then fly back to Los Angeles. We hugged at the station. Something about our misadventures and her familiarity with puppets made it clear we didn’t need to spend any more time together. I was happy to be traveling home alone.
I had a brief call with my boss who told me to upgrade my ticket to first-class for my return. He thought I had been through enough. I made it from the train station to the airport, upgraded my ticket, and checked my bags without a hitch. I had time for a martini before my flight.
After takeoff, I enjoyed a whiskey and a quick read on my Kindle, then stretched out in my seat for a nap. I nodded off for a few minutes before the fasten seatbelts indicator interrupted my sleep. I opened my eyes and spotted a flight attendant hastily making her way through the plane. A few moments later the pilot made an announcement.
“Hello folks, sorry for the interruption. We’re going to have to make an unexpected landing in St Louis. Sorry about that. We’ll provide more details soon.”
I could hear the grumblings begin all around me but I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.
Nothing surprised me anymore.