This was my sister’s plea to me while I was away on my business trip to Texas.  Run home.  Run like the wind.

That was after I told her about the sign prohibiting weapons in the bar/lounge.  (Why do people need to be reminded that weapons don’t belong in a bar/lounge.

Renting a car in a city of freeways invites problems, especially for me, someone born and bred on the Island of Manhattan, amd driving in the Big Country.  But it is ok to have lapses of judgment on the little things.  I just hate having to ask people to call taxis for me everywhere.  I thought I would feel more in control having a car.  Also, I had a few different meetings scheduled during my trip. 

I had a GPS gizmo.  I kept typing in LBJ Freeway which, by the way, is the largest vehicular artery into Dallas, and the GPS gizmo didn’t recognize it.  Everyone calls it LBJ Freeway, so it never occurred to me to type in Lyndon Baines Johnson Freeway.  Doesn’t GPS recognize “JFK Airport”?  So I was driving blind, knowing only that LBJ Freeway is 635 and I wanted to go east.  Dallas is sprawling so I was driving for what felt like hours and seemed not any closer to anything looking like a business district.  I did make it finally, with my brother’s help in the last few minutes, so I could meet him for lunch.  GPS worked after that. 

It was a good trip and I saw friends and family and did a little business.  But, I missed my family and was ready to come home. 

I tried to get an earlier flight, which was already delayed 3 hours.  Sometimes I was No. 2 on standby and sometimes I was kicked to No. 10.  No one could tell me why.  The attendants wouldn’t let a husband and wife fly together, but they bumped me as I was about to get on the plane because a 20-something woman needed to connect in NY for a flight to VT for a wedding weekend that started the next day (with wedding probably on Sunday).  No one asked if it was ok with me. I would have said, “sure” but I would have insisted on priority standby status in return. So, of course, the airline staff knew better than to ask me or make eye contact with me. That enraged me but I kept it in check, since I don’t break FAA or TSA rules because Homeland Security still makes me think of Dick Cheney and so it freaks me out. And I dropped to 22 on standby for the next oversubscribed plane that was also delayed.

So I just went to the counter of the NEXT flight and met a perky customer assistant who told me there were 20 unsold seats on the flight.  I knew that all the people ahead of me on the new standby list would fill those seats, so I paid a transfer fee and got a seat with a seat assignment and everything.  Then all the angry people who didn’t get on the second flight came storming through the airport to get on my flight.  Cost of transfer ticket: $50; the smug feeling that you’ve outsmarted the hoards: priceless.

All of this so, as a result of delays, I could leave LATER than my original departure. But I think my scheduled flight was canceled because after awhile, LaGuardia shuts down. The thoughts of being trapped in the Republic another night and staying at an airport hotel were more than I could handle.

My earlier smugness had a karmatic boomerang effect.  The man across the aisle on the plane was really loud and was the kind of guy who acts as if all the world’s his stage and every comment is for his benefit and requires his response. Then he had two gin and tonics. The perfunctory handing out of the ear phones was cause for a lively (no, actually, deadly, deadly boring and exasperating) exchange between this guy and the flight attendant. I put my ear plugs in just to close out the noise.

All in 9 hours either in an airport or on a plane.

So while I wanted to run, run like the wind, I schlepped in a glorified cargo pit. G-d, I love this City, even the gross cab air freshener.