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Madrid, April 20, 2009
By Milt Abel | April 26, 2009
| April 26, 2009Madrid, April 20, 2009
I’m camped across from the boarding gate in terminal 2 for my flight to Lisbon from Madrid. It’s 9:15 in the morning and I’ve already been traveling for eighteen hours; Portland to NYC, then NYC to Madrid, hopefully I’ll fly to Lisbon in the next hour, then in a couple hours more I’ll be flying to the Azores. Five airports, three languages -four if you count New York as foreign (and most do), and my luggage is supposedly going to be waiting for me when I get off the plane in Ponta Delgada. We shall see.
This trip is not for the novice traveller. I’m joining the Holland America Prinsendam late this afternoon in the Azores, supposedly, and the amount of transfers, and inter-terminal airport shuttles, and ticketing and re-ticketing, would leave the less seasoned traveller rolled off in a ditch to keep the path clear for those of us that can make it. Just the inter-terminal shuttle in Madrid is a long enough trip to make you think you’ve been the victim of a prank. I thought Houston’s airport was spread out, and JFK’s terminals, which I had just previously passed through, are no tightly packed cluster of cabanas themselves, but the bus trip between terminal 4 and terminal 3 in Madrid must have been at least five to seven miles in length, passing through rolling hills and other varied terrain not usually associated with airports. I began fantasizing about jumping off the bus before I ended up in yet another country. And whether I would announce any explanation to those I left behind in that bus who continued across the outback, or tundra, of savanna, with their blind faith that they would eventually, eventually, reach the next terminal.
I did arrive at terminal 2 and I did catch my flight to Lisbon, but it was in Lisbon where I was almost derailed, or more accurately, de-itineraried. When I fly for the cruise lines everything is supposedly taken care of, at least tickets are supposed to be paid and shuttles and taxis arranged; this last leg of my multi-legged, multi-carrier, itinerary was gimpy. In the Lisbon airport, when I arrived at the terminal (yes, there was another inter-terminal bus ride. My third of the day) and checked in at the Sata (no, I had never heard of that airline before either) I was informed there was no ticket for me. A reservation, yes. A ticket, no. I’d have to buy a ticket. I weighed the options; my luggage was checked through to Ponta Delgada in the Azores, the ship was in the Azores for only this afternoon, then four days at sea. If I didn’t catch the ship at today’s dock I would have to reroute to Hamilton Bermuda and spend four days hovering in hotels and more airports. I bought the ticket knowing I would get reimbursed but regretting having to put anything on my credit card and having to deal with the extra paperwork.
Surprise of surprises my luggage was among the first twenty pieces to crawl out from under the car wash-like strips that drag over emerging bags along the conveyer belt. My luggage made it, and I almost didn’t.
The trip had started out rocky when my next seat neighbor on the flight from Portland to New York was an immense woman with a John Madden physique. She took the middle seat next to me, and more. She was courteous enough in our exchanges of passing drink cups or getting up and down for bathroom exits, but her size was a constant intrusive rudeness. Her barrel-like torso, and heavy arms, could not shrink back across to what real estate her ticket had paid for; she was three to five inches on my property the entire five-hour flight. When you have only twenty and some inches to start with, four inches is a lot. Even leaning forward to move my broadest point, my shoulders, to the area in front of her arms and shoulders only meant her elbow was rubbing against the side of my waist. She wore a windbreaker with a slick fabric and the gentle motion of the plane caused a zinging sound with every rub against my gut that was as annoying a sound as if I was listening to a raven peck at my coffin lid. My only comfort was there was someone on the plane bigger than her, and he wasn’t sat next to me. I got off in New York with a sore back and neck; the back from constantly leaning away for five hours; the neck from carrying the heavy scowl I sported for just as long.
Topics: comedy, cruise ship, humor, travel | 1 Comment »
February 12th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Loved reading this post, do you also have some sort of newsletter?