My Horrible Journey to Florida

I was trying to be cheerful, and my trip started well. The car showed up on time to take me to the airport. My flight was 2:35, and I had the car come at 1:00. My plan was to get to LGA at 1:15, check in, go through security, have lunch, go to the bathroom and leisurely get to the gate.  That plan stopped upon arrival at 1:15. I used curbside check in and all was well. Then the guy showed me my boarding pass and explained how my gate was not in this terminal, but in a different terminal that Delta has just opened.

What? Of course, Delta has my email, my phone, and my cellphone so you think they might have told me. I would have gone to that terminal. This is the second day of the new terminal. They had "shuttles" to take people except there were so many people and so few vans and no one really knew what they were doing. Have you ever been in a situation where employees were trying to be helpful but they couldn't really do anything? So as I'm waiting, a series of Delta workers would come up to me breathlessly asking if I needed help and then I'd tell them I am supposed to go to the other terminal and they'd tell me to stand where I was and they'd go buzzing off to the next person.

My mistake was that I should have just gotten in a cab -- it would have been five bucks and there were dozens of cabs dropping people off and I could have just grabbed one. But no.

So finally they tell us that it's easier to make the trip "inside" -- no, really, it's way better than the van/shuttle.

Mistake #2: Believing that.

I go inside, realize I'm supposed to go through security where in my line they are training -- ok, so we're no longer supposed to use derogatory terms, but I'll say -- "a rather slow TSA employee" on how to look at the x-ray machine. The line was stopped while Bozo TSA guy got schooled. "And what's that?" as he points to the screen... la, la, la, la... all the time in the effing world to train this guy. Really? At a busy time at effing La Guardia is the best time to train him?

So I follow the cheerful signs until I get to this area where there are what I call the hamster lines -- you know as you go through the maze of roped off lines... get in line, fuming, pissed off... And they'd let about 15 people at a time through this outside door... and finally, I got outside and we're on the equivalent of the second floor -- it couldn't have been something as simple as a flight of stairs... no, these were ramps but because we're the second floor, it must have been six back and forth ramps... finally get to the bottom and wait again... and by now I'm getting nervous.

The shuttle shows up -- and we're literally out in the area by the gates where the airplanes park -- and I'm the only one sitting in the bus and they don't want to leave... so I speak up, saying I'm afraid I'm going to miss my flight and so the guy reluctantly leaves... and I'm dreading the six ramps up on the other side, but the other side -- in Delta's other terminal -- has an elevator. Wow, thank god for small mercies.

Of course my gate is the farthest away, and when I get there, they are already boarding. No lunch. No bathroom. So I get on and then we sit. It's so windy that there is one runway open for landing and takeoff at LGA. There are 24 airplanes in front of us to take off. Yeah, you might say we sat there for a while.

Finally, in the air and I get my first food of the day at 4:30 pm -- a bag of sun chips. I am not happy.

We arrive, and now we're the second furthest gate away so conditions are improving, but by now I really have to go to the toilet, and I see there's a "family/disabled" restroom and I head for that, justifying the use by saying I'm temporarily disabled as I'm about to wet my pants. I open the door and this woman follows me in. It's an open restroom --like in a gas station --  no stalls and I just look at her like "what the f are you doing?" and she starts stammering that she thought it was a "multiple" -- that's what she called it.

Then it's off to baggage claim, and yes, my bag was the last out -- just as I was about to give up... it comes out on the belt on its own. Just me and my bag.

I am sweating and tired and hungry and I went to sit down just to gather my strength and I tell myself (wrongly) that from now on I'm in control. I'll get my rental car, go get something to eat, check into the hotel and things will look up from here.

Not really.

At Tampa, you go outside of baggage claim, then across the street for the rental cars and I don't see Dollar. I will no longer do "off airport" rental cars no matter how cheap -- so I enter the rental car terminal looking for Dollar.Oh, there it is, at the opposite end of the building that I'm at. What a long haul.

But at least I found it.

I then make a mistake of asking the guy to put in my Dollar club number and he doesn't know how. At this point I tell him to just forget it... I just want to get out of there... but no, he was determined... called the manager who eventually came out who said you have to cancel the order, put the number in and start over... I said NO, NO, NO it's Ok... but too late. So she is pecking away I swear for 10 minutes. I'm standing there starving, sweating (in a coat), exhausted... finally I get the cheerful "turn left, turn right, go to the garage to the Dollar Kiosk"

Really?

Plod, plod, plod... finally make it to the Dollar Kiosk in the garage... and I'm in space 118. I'm standing by space 90. She hands me the keys and I ask her how far away space 118 is because as a savvy traveler, I know that the spaces might not actually go 90, 91, 92 up to 118. She points to the row and says vaguely "it's in the middle."

It wasn't in the middle, it was at the end... but hey, I tell myself, I'm in my rental car... my suitcase is in and I'm gonna get dinner, take off my coat, turn on the air conditioner, find some music...

Oh wait, I forgot the detail -- the guy asked me if I wanted a Taurus or an Integra... I told him to decide and he said he likes the Integra. I knew from Mary that this was like her car where you just have to have the key fob in the car, no turning the key in the ignition. So I felt ahead of the game.

I press the button, no noise just like Mary's car -- everything lights up in a good way -- and I put my foot on the brake while simultaneously putting the gear shift into Reverse.

Hmmm... the car doesn't move. I do it again, and again. I check the emergency brake. I try gingerly to put it into Drive, to see if I can go forward but I don't want to press too hard on the accelerator for fear I'll ram into the three parked cars I'm facing.

Oh, I forgot to mention I also struggled with the seat belt. I pulled it out as far as it could go and it reached the center of my chest. No, this is impossible... couldn't be this short. I end up tugging it and retracting, tugging and retracting and all of a sudden about a yard of seatbelt comes out so I'm strapped in and ready.

If I could only back out of this effing parking space. I'm feeling stupid and old and incompetent and I don't want to be the doddering old lady who doesn't know how these new fangled things work. I decide to read the owner's manual, but when I lean forward, the seatbelt stops me so after all that effort, I have to undo my seatbelt, I get the owner's manual but still can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

No one in sight to help me. About 15 minutes have passed. I'm also afraid that if Dollar sees I can't drive this car, they will take it away from me.

I decide to just take a deep breath and start over. I turn the car off. I sit there a minute. I turn the car on, following the owner's manual, detail by detail, which then tells me to step on the brake first. There is a note that if you don't step on the brake first, the car won't really go into gear. So I step on the brake. Then I step on the brake again and put it in reverse and step on the accelerator and hallelujah, the car moves backward. No stopping me now.

From then on, all was OK. Only thing open was a 24 hour McDonalds -- when I ordered my food at the drive thru, she asked me if I wanted to try McDonald's chocolate chip cookies.

Why yes, in fact, I do!

Then, because the cookies were new, she couldn't figure out how to key it in, but then she did... she was about 20 years old and kept calling me Sweetheart. Her closing words as I drove away were "Enjoy them cookies" -- it made me laugh, but she was right. I did enjoy them cookies.

Tomorrow will be a better day.