Leaving My Wingman
As the sun comes up in the east and I can feel that graininess in my eyeballs that comes from insufficient sleep, I am comforted in knowing that at the other end of my house on the hilltop, my little baby boy (Thomas) is fast asleep with his fiancé, Jenna. How they got there only several hours ago is a story of holiday travel 2022 that I feel may be worth sharing. It’s not quite John Candy and Steve Martin in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, but it comes close.
Thomas (a.k.a. Tom in his adult life…he is 27 years old now, so I cannot call him my baby boy for too much longer) can be a bit of a social juggler. In all fairness, he has grown up juggling time with Dad and Kim and time with Mom during every school holiday, so he has good reason to assume the juggler’s posture in life. Now that he is engaged to the fair and lovely Jenna, who has her own tightly-knit nuclear family group from Fairfield County, Connecticut (one of the epic suburban locales one can “come from”), he is squarely back in the juggling game. This year, Kim and I are in luck. Not only is Jenna’s family Jewish, and thus a tad less concerned about gatherings around Christmas week, but Tom and Jenna have their son Hank, a boisterous and way too smart pup that they are trying to raise on the streets of Brooklyn. Hank is an asset in this mix because Tom can throw Hank in the direction of his Mom, who lives on Union Square in Manhattan, and have it be a win/win/win. Tom and Jenna are freed up for travel, Mom has holiday company that she dearly loves (being a long-time dog lover and LOVING being a more connected part of Tom’s life by virtue of her dog-sitting surrogate Hank-Mom role), and Hank gets to dig having the run of a 2,500 sf penthouse on Union Square that would put Norma Desmond to shame. So, T&J were able to finally commit to come out to join us for a holiday on the hilltop.
I immediately jumped on Delta’s website and secured them two seats on a direct flight from JFK to SAN for the occasion once they had given me the exact departure and return dates they preferred. They will be with us for the Christmas weekend, then head up into the desert for a few days of R&R alone time and then spend a couple days with us before heading back for what I am sure is some blowout New Years Eve Party back in New York. I have been looking forward to their arrival all week and also a bit apprehensive about the “Storm of the Century” billing being given to the snowstorm that has ravaged the Midwest all the way up into upstate New York. Strangely enough, if you look at a national weather map you see a snow storm line that very closely resembles the flight path of the typical JFK-SAN transcontinental flight. We all know how the news and weather pundits love to play up a holiday travel disaster scenario, but this time the National Weather Service was making that exaggeration easy and not such an exaggeration. The good news was that it looked like NYC was just below the danger zone and might get rain on the day of departure, but likely not snow thanks to a warmer front coming up from the Southeast while the cold arctic air from Canada dipped down into the lower 48.
All week, I kept asking Tom what it was looking like from his end (as though weather.com doesn’t allow me to do that for myself). He kept saying it was all good because the timing seemed to suggest that the worst would be past by departure time. He actually texted me a weather map time projection showing the precipitation trailing off by 6pm on Friday night, when they were scheduled to get on their Delta flight. His biggest concern in the few days leading up to Friday were that I properly put in his and Jenna’s known-travellers numbers so that they would be sure to get TSA-Pre and avoid the long security lines. He also wanted to make sure his frequent flyer number was inputted properly so that he, not I, would get the mileage credit. Once we got all that important stuff sorted out, I reminded him that he needed to actually have an assigned seat, and one preferably next to Jenna. We got all that taken care of on the Delta website, but it is still not clear whether it is easier to do that as the sponsoring payee or as the traveler, and I’m not sure which of us accomplished it, but at least it all got done before flight time. I must have called Tom five times that morning asking if all was OK. One of Tom’s qualities is that he seems to be a very chill guy who handles everything with an Alfred E. Newman “What me worry?” look about him. With the reddish beard and the slight Irish nature, he isn’t a perfect match for Alfred, but the smile isn’t so very far off.
In the afternoon before departure, Tom got a text from Delta saying that the flight would be departing fifteen minutes early. That does happen, but to say the least, such a change is pretty rare. He and Jenna hopped on the JFK express train after dropping Hank off at his penthouse, strategizing that either driving or Ubering would be suboptimal on the Friday before the holiday weekend. The Uber to the train to the tram to JFK all worked well. And as is always the case, it was all about hurry up and then wait, and wait and wait some more. Only this time the temperature at JFK was doing the Day After Tomorrow thing with the temperature falling like a rock. Tom even Snapchated some shots of being able to see his breath inside the terminal. When they finally boarded the plane things still seemed to be all good, but that’s when the wheels fell off. Actually, one hour was spent loading luggage into the hold and then, as the plane started to back out onto the tarmac, they had to stop because an Air France plane had managed to have its engine actually fall off onto the tarmac…for real. Once that got cleared in another 90 minutes, the plane finally took off.
Meanwhile, back in Escondido, we just finished dinner with Kim’s family when I was able to announce that the eagle had finally taken flight. The rest would be easy, right? Not so fast, Abernathy. As I sat in the San Diego Airport cell phone lot (SAN is very serious about picker-uppers NOT hanging around the hoop), I watched on two flight trackers as DL363 started to circle the Salton Sea. What I thought was a traffic control issue turned out to be a fog problem in San Diego. I was in the soup, so I understood the concern. The system suddenly posted a “Flight Diverted” message and I started to feel like we were going to get seriously fucked.
The next hour was spent trying to figure out where and when the flight would light on the ground. Tom was texting me the inside-the-cabin perspective, while I was focused on the two flight trackers. The three options were to just go to LAX and call it a night, loop up to LAX, but fly-by and return to SAN, or land at LAX and then touch-and-go to SAN. Any one of those was a possibility with my limited visibility on reality from the cell phone lot. After starting out towards LAX, it dawned on me that where it takes ten minutes to fly there, it takes two hours to drive. Once Tom was on the ground we talked and agreed that they should Uber down to our hillside as the most efficient solution all-around. That was before realizing that LAX Ubers tend to use Teslas. After two recharging stops, my Ring camera system confirms that they arrived at our house (Kim, Betty and I were fast asleep by then) in the nick of time to use my recharger to get the Uber at least part of the way back home.
I swore I would never leave my wingman, but after a night like last night, I have learned that leaving my wingman is sometimes the better part of valor. T&J are just now waking up and yours truly is thinking a nap might walk for me later on. Merry Christmas.