Saturday, May 12, 2007—Into the UnknownWe woke the next morning with time enough to pillage the humble fare the Econo Lodge considered a courtesy breakfast, then we checked out and headed for the airport.
The Usual Plethora of Airport Hassles
Dealing with the home o’ the Big Wings never gets any easier, no matter how many times we go through it. Airports actually get “frequent Thornberry miles” in these narratives! ;)
Our first goal was to just find the long-term parking, where we would leave little Tinky and our beloved cooler, now empty. As you might expect, from the foreshadowing above, however, navigating an unfamiliar airport couldn’t just be a straightforward endeavor. Instead, we drove in circles, like mice in a maze, looking for cheese that had faded not only from living memory, but had also fallen into the realm of legend. Such cheese requires a Priory of Sion to safeguard it (get the da Vince Code reference?) At one point, we passed through an automatic gate and entered a large garage area that might be loosely interpreted as long-term parking, since there were cars parked inside it. But the evidence mounted against that theory the more we drove hopelessly around it, so I suggested we do what I always do when in doubt…pull over, find an employee and basically say, “Hello, I’m stupid, can you help me with ___.”
By this point, it was only slightly more than an hour before our flight would be leaving and we hadn’t even gotten inside the building yet. As we became increasingly worried and irritable, we jumped out of the car and ran as fast as we could toward a guy in a uniform who was standing in front of a building entrance, and who looked like he might be “official.” Right as we approached him, a car pulled up to the curve just long enough for him to jump in it and disappear. [Sigh]. So we tried to enter the building through the automatic doors, only to be stopped by a couple of uniformed women who told us that only employees were allowed through that way. Fine. We asked them if they knew where the long-term parking was located. They gave us vague directions, but a concise answer that no, where we had left Tinky was most certainly not the right place; she’d be towed if we flew off while she was still parked there.
Off we huffed. We climbed through Tinky’s windows and tried to leave the pointless parking lot…only to have the automatic gate refuse to open. I suggested that Jennifer punch the speaker button outside the window and ask for some guidance. When she did so, a static-and-boredom-laced female voice answered that we couldn’t get out that way. Duh. We finally managed to beat out of her that we’d have to back the car up 30 feet, hoping all the while that no one came up behind us, turn around and head the opposite direction. Fine. We did that, finally finding an exit gate…where we were billed $2 for a six-minute stay characterized by nothing else but a desire to leave.
Arrrghh!
Anyway, the young female drone running the exit gate gave us some equally floundering directions, but it was enough that we found our way back to the main road we had used originally to get to this hellish airport. To our mutual disgust, we saw what we had completely missed the first time: a glaringly obvious big green road sign that said “Long-Term Parking.” Once again, we’d suffered for nothing because of our own lack of concentrative powers. By mutual agreement, Jennifer and I counted to three, then simultaneously smacked each other’s faces in rebuke. *Snort*
So we traveled the easy route to the correct parking lot, got Tinky situated and our luggage removed. While Jennifer was manhandling the sunshield into Tinky’s windshield, the Parking Lot Space Shuttle, designation #2, rolled up and waited for us to clamber aboard. It was good that it came along, because neither of us had any idea where the main building was from here, or how to get to it. The wiry woman who was driving the shuttle seemed to be built out of pick-up sticks, but she still hauled our heavy luggage aboard. Then she kicked in her solid-rocket fuel boosters and blasted forward at Ludicrous Speed (for those of you who don’t get the pop culture reference, rent the movie Spaceballs, 1987). Jennifer and I were immediately pancaked against the inner bulkhead, our bones and other vital organs compressed to 3/10 of an inch thick by the staggering G-forces. Ew. The driver fired around corners, tore signs off their posts with her wind shear and violated many fundamental laws of physics. Time and space bent at her whim.
But she got us where we needed to be. Jennifer and I checked our main luggage bag, then went through the airport security, where they blew all of our orifices using a gout of wind while we screamed inside a glass cubicle. The guards explained to me as I watched Jennifer get blown that this was a new security technology for detecting explosive chemicals. I’m glad I don’t carry any TNT up my you-know-what!
The plane took off. Our vacation proper had finally begun. Or to phrase it in Latin: ”Guenevera et Geminus sunt otiosi!” [Jennifer and Thomas are on vacation!]
Arrival in Boston
Jennifer watched the landing while I napped. After we relieved ourselves of that “bagonizing” sensation that all air travelers experience as they wait to see if their luggage will come from the maw of the Baggage Claim [bag + agonizing], we set about finding the public transportation system that we intended to use to get to our hotel.
[Sigh]. Alas, despite all of our careful planning online, the rails and transports from the airport were labyrinthine in their complexity and maddening in their layout. Jennifer and I were tired, flattened and ready to just be there, already. So we did something completely unexpected for the Travelin’ Thornberries; we were spontaneous! Yes, we scrapped our planning and decided to experiment with a taxi cab. Fortunately for us, one came along quickly. The driver leapt from his seat and grabbed our luggage. We had to dive-tackle him to stop him long enough to ask about the fare…neither of us were familiar with taxi cab rates, and we didn’t want to have to eat candy-bar dinners for the rest of the trip because the guy took us for a ride while taking us for a ride. But he reassured us that it should only be a little over $20. Naturally, he didn’t take credit cards, so we had to fumble out a nearly extinct medium of exchange that a few of you might remember. It’s called “cash” and it’s made, of all the ridiculous things, out of paper and metal. Wow. Exotic, huh? Anyway, this guy needed to get into the plastic world with all the rest of us. ;)
Once we got into the car, the driver decided to try to end his own life and to take as many innocent people with him as possible. Much like our space shuttle driver back at during those airport hassles hours ago, he gunned the engine and swept through the streets of Boston, knocking pedestrians aside like a barn full of inflated rubber inner tubes, flattening fire hydrants and at one point, going fast enough to run vertically up the glass side of a 36-story building and back down again on the opposite side. Traffic lanes were merely pretty yellow lines of paint to him, something to be appreciated for their aesthetics, but to be attributed no substantive weight of law or consequence. Jennifer and I chewed the top digits off of our fingers in worry. The driver’s reddened, bloodshot eyes stayed focused on the road with feverish intensity, while foam blasted from his mouth with each deep-throated scream that was testimony to his possession by supernatural hyperbolical fiends. Those pedestrians who heeded his maniacal horn-blowing barely escaped his four-wheeled automotive death-drive. The rest perished horribly in a hell of metal, fuel, fire and mangled flesh. We figured out pretty quickly that speed was in his best interest, because we were paying him by the mile. Sitting at red lights or waiting for children to get out of the way before blasting forward costs time and other patrons back at the airport, but don’t wrack up any miles. Thus the mania.
But despite himself, he got his blood-soaked vehicle, with the Thornberries inside, to the door of the Milner Hotel. I suppose that’s really what made the cost in lives worth it. Insofar as monetary restitution, we had to pay six times what we would have paid for the public train, but he got us there in about 25 percent of the time.
NEXT: The Traveling Thornberries enter the Milner Hotel, and also experience some Bostonian culture.
Click for Part III
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