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All Day at San Juan Airport
By Milt Abel | March 26, 2011
| March 26, 2011All Day at San Juan Airport
Is waiting around the biggest burden of travel? In the spectrum of travel’s inconveniences, idle hours are closer to intestinal poisoning than they are to an ignorance of a country’s tipping custom. Though the thought of combining those two, getting food poisoning after leaving an unwelcome tip, makes waiting around not seem so bad. But that’s not my point.
On March 26th, here at the San Juan Airport in Puerto Rico, I have checked my one piece of luggage and received my boarding pass a mere nine hours before my flight boards. A nano-second in geological time, but I’m no pile of dirt -despite what that guy said on the ship earlier this week.
I’m in between ships. I’ve just left the Serenade of the Seas and on my way to join the Explorer of the Seas. Later today (much later) I’ll fly to Antigua and overnight at the Rex Halcyon Cove Dickenson Bayand join the Explorer tomorrow morning. I was just in Antigua a couple days back when the Seranade was there, and I was able to do some recon before landing. The hotel is on the other side of the island from the pier and the airport, so I’ll be supporting the local economy with taxi fares, as there is a lot of job offers at the cheap cities for taxi drivers to make money with good insurance and services. I’m not complaining, well, yes I am, and complaining helps kill some of the five hours remaining here at the airport that and working, thanfully there’s wifi on the airport and I have all my things next to me on my bag, it is very cool to learn How to Choose Your Work Briefcase with TopDreamer, there are many options and perfect for bringing your work with you.
The trick is to find some way to entertain yourself to the point of not being aware you’re waiting around. Read, handheld electronic games, thumb wrestling, people-watch; whatever it takes to to distract yourself. If I can get to the point, when someone approaches me at an airport and asks, “What are you doing?” and I can answer, “I have no idea,” I know that’s a good day of travel.
If you’re interested in where the free wifi is at the San Juan airport, go to the Starbucks in the non-American Airlines terminal and ask for a cup of coffee and the password and the internet is yours. You have to plant yourself within range, and there are no tables or sitting area with this coffee shop, so the ubiquitous, black, fixed-arm, row of seats seen in every airport are your only desk. Almost all airports offer rows of seating in their gate waiting areas that have the fixed arm rests, so laying out and setting an alarm for a nap is an impossibility, unless you’re the size of a house cat -and can still manage to take airplanes and use an alarm clock.
San Juan airport is also underpowered, electric outlet-wise. Finding useable outlets at airports has become a bit of a skill of mine. Travel enough and you know where to them at the different airports; you become like at fisherman who knows all the good fishing spots at this lake or that. In San Juan I have found a plug that is way off by itself, away from any active gates, but pleasantly in front of a large picture window, and here’s a picture of that window.
Maybe you can make out the American gates across the way. One of them is my gate. I wonder if I can make it over there in time, with the four and a half hours I’ve got left?
It can’t all be internet and reading, passing away time at the airport. Every couple hours I’ve got to get up and walk around and window shop, or browse through the magazines at varying newsstands. I change them up, not returning to the same rack of magazines because I don’t want the proprietor to know I have no intention of making a purchase. When you come back a third time you’re inviting a familiarity that will allow them to ask, “Will you be buying something this time?”
It gets crowded among the racks, everyone there is dragging or shouldering their carry-on luggage and it becomes awkward to be out and about. It’s like all of us are freshly divorced; we’re out in public but we’ve got some baggage.
Time to check the newsstands, I’ve got to move to get some circulation. I’ll stroll over and look at the beautiful women on the covers of the women’s magazines, the food photos on the cover of cooking magazines, and the beautiful women on the cover of men’s (but not adult, those are covered) magazines. A beautiful woman sandwich, if you will.
Maybe a bite to eat as well. That’ll kill 30 minutes or more.
Blogging helps to pass the time too ( pressing enter).
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