Escape From New York

Where is Snake Plissken when you need him?

This year's annual NYC trip started off well enough, with an uneventful plane ride, a really good dinner at The Capital Grille, and an amazing show (everyone HAS to see Once).  The shopping trip to Woodbury Common was fairly successful, and I had a good time in the city with my friends and their kids, despite the oppressive heat and humidity.

As I was on my way to Laguardia on the bus, for a split second the radio caught my attention.  I was just barely able to hear the DJ say that Laguardia was closed.

Say what??

I pulled out my iPad and used the on board WiFi to do a quick search.  Sure enough, just minutes earlier, a Southwest Airlines plane was landing at the airport when its front landing gear collapsed and it slid nose-first across the runway.  Buried deep in a paragraph, it said that the airport was closed.  I looked around at my other fellow passengers and asked if anyone else had heard that the airport was closed.  Most of them just looked at me, but one of them said that the planes were just delayed.  I checked the departure schedule and although most of the flights to Toronto were cancelled, my particular flight was still listed as "Scheduled".

I got to the airport and went to the kiosk.  It allowed me to print my boarding pass, so I figured everything was okay.  There were, however, an unusually large number of people lined up at every airline desk.  I tried to get to the gate but it was completely blocked by security.  They told me to talk to my airline.  I went back to the desks, and this time when I checked the schedule, it showed that all flights that evening were cancelled.

Sigh.

I got in the line and waited.  I eventually got to the desk and they put me on the first flight out the next morning at 6:25 am.  Now I had to figure out what to do until the morning.  My friends were still in town for one more night, so I tried calling one of my friends.  She didn't answer.  I tried another friend.  He didn't answer (that's weird).  I tried a third friend.  No answer (hmm...).  I tried my fourth friend.  She didn't answer either.  I thought, maybe my phone is messed up.  So I tried all of them again.  None of them answered.  At this point, I was getting a little sad and thinking that they didn't want to talk to me.  I sent a blanket text to them, then went to look for an outlet since my phone was on the verge of dying.

There was no way that there would be availability in any of the hotels nearby, nor did I have the time to figure out which ones didn't have bed bugs, so I tried calling the hotel I had been staying at to see if they could help me out.  They would be able to give me the "discounted" rate, but I really didn't want to spend an extra $300 for a few hours.  As I sat dejected at the window of the arrivals area with my phone plugged in, watching film crews capture images of the people getting off the planes that had been circling the airport for the past couple of hours, my phone rang.  My friend apologized profusely, but she had left her phone in the hotel room when they went for dinner, my other friend had forgotten his phone, the third didn't recognize my number and therefore didn't pick up, and the fourth didn't want to be rude at dinner and ignored the call.

Now for the next dilemma: I was running out of cash.  In an effort to be frugal, I decided to take the bus back into the city.  An hour and a half later, I made it to the Port Authority Bus Terminal.  And it was raining.  I walked back to the hotel, texting my friends to say that I didn't think it was a good idea for me to just waltz in by myself (they were already trying to keep a low profile since they had 6 people (four adults and two kids) in the room when it was only supposed to be two adults and one kid, so maybe it would be better if one or two of them came outside and we all walked in together as a group.  My friend met me outside and asked if I wanted to eat something (it was around 10:30 pm at that point).  It was probably a good idea since I hadn't eaten anything since lunch, but it was probably a better idea if I went to bed since I had to wake up at 4:00 to go to the airport.  He took my luggage up to the room while I weighed my options.  He came back out with an ice cream bar (they had gone to the store after dinner).  I ate my ice cream dinner while we walked around Times Square and I told my sob story.  We went back up to the room and my friends had set up a window bench with one of their duvets and a couple of pillows.  They had also reserved a towel for me, which was nice.  I was able to wash New York off of me before spending the next 4 or so hours not really sleeping.  This occurred for 3 reasons: 1) one of my friends has apnea, so his "sleeping sounds" were not only loud, but sporadic; 2) they were tearing up the road directly in front of the hotel all night; and 3) the window bench was about a foot and a half wide and too short, so I spent most of the night just trying not to fall off.  I know it may have made more sense to sleep on the floor, but there was limited space and I didn't want anyone tripping over me if they needed to rush to the washroom in the middle of the night.

When my alarm went off at 4:00, I was ready to go home.  I snuck around as quietly as I could, then left the hotel as nonchalantly as possible (the guys at the front desk just bid me farewell and didn't ask me any questions, thankfully).  Since the street was closed, I walked in the rain to Times Square to try and find a cab.  It was pretty deserted, even for Times Square, and I was getting a little worried.  Eventually a cab driver saw me and I ran over.  I got to the airport to find that they had cancelled my flight.  I was rebooked on the 10:30 flight, with standby for the 8:45 flight.  I got a little bit of sleep at the deserted airport (who knew?) but at 7:00 or so I checked the board and surprise, the 8:45 flight was cancelled.

Sigh.

They upgraded the 10:30 plane to a 767 so they could fit more people on it, and when we took off from the runway there was a little cheer in the cabin.

I had my "lunch" of apple juice and a bag of pretzels.  About 15 minutes from home, the flight attendant asked on the PA if there was a doctor or nurse on board, because there was a medical emergency.

Sigh.

When we landed, they asked everyone to remain seated to allow the paramedics on board.  To my pleasant surprise, everyone stayed in their seats.  An older gentleman at the very back of the plane (of course) appeared to be having a heart attack or something similar.  The paramedics had to wheel a special chair device through the aisle, strap the man to it, and then back out to get off the plane.  We were allowed to get up after they had passed through. The sad part in my opinion was that they had to stabilize him on the gurney right outside the gate, so as we exited we all trouped past him, lying with the oxygen mask on and leads attached to his chest, his family looking distraught.  Was there no way of moving him slightly away from the gate?  I don't know.

Since the flight was packed, they had gate-checked my carry-on, which was going to arrive at the baggage carousel.  I went through customs with no problems, but as I was heading to the escalator, an older woman who was immediately in front of me tripped over a bag and fell on her shoulder.

Sigh.

It was one of those slow-motion moments, and she looked like she was in agony.  I hoped the sound I had heard was from the suitcase and not from her.  Everyone swarmed around her, including a couple of customs officers.  I stood helplessly for a minute, then decided I didn't need to be there and slowly walked around her and went down the escalator.  I picked up my bag and headed for the exit.  As I showed my card to the customs officer, he said, "Could you please take your bag and go to the next room?"

Sigh.

I have NEVER been asked to go through secondary before.  Ever.  Luckily it wasn't busy so I went to the first available officer.  He snapped on the gloves and went through the entire contents of my bag, checking the liner and everything.  He asked me if the amount I declared was my best guess.  I said yes, because I didn't know what the current exchange rate was.  He said that by his calculation, the amount on the card and the value on my purchases didn't match.  I froze for a second and said, "This is my first time here.  Do I declare the value of the goods or the amount that I paid?  Because I have all the receipts." I then whipped out a handful of receipts that I had at the ready.  "Oh, okay," he said, and proceeded to go through all the receipts with me and matched it with my purchases.  I even pulled out a shirt that he had missed in his sorting process.  In the end, he found that my best guess was pretty close, he thanked me for being honest, and he was impressed that I had saved over $300.  I would have been within the allowable limit either way, but the last thing I want is for customs to think that I was a liar.  I do NOT want to be blacklisted and pulled over every time I crossed the border.

I made it home and was able to take a 2-hour power nap.  Then I got dressed and drove to Stratford.  I had tickets to Waiting for Godot that evening.  It turned out to be a good thing, because I had really wanted to see this play for some time, and with everything that's happened in the past 24 hours, I needed some existential perspective.

"Nobody ringing my telephone now, oh how I miss such a beautiful sound"

Back On The Grid

Four and a half hours after everything shut down, the lights came back. The mobile news feeds had indicated that 80% of Mississauga were without power. The news channel is saying it's about 100,000 homes. Comparatively, about 300,000 people in Toronto are powerless, including my parents.  It looks like part of the city aren't going to get power back until tomorrow morning.

It was fascinating watching the power come back one grid at a time. The buildings just to the south got their juice back first. It was a little sad to see the lights on just two blocks down the street from me, but I knew that it wouldn't be a long dark night.

The average rainfall for the month of July fell in one hour.  There's flooding everywhere.  I guess we'll see what happens tomorrow.

"If the rain comes they run and hide their heads"

It's All About Timing

Right now, I'm sitting comfortably on my sofa, drinking my lemon-flavoured sparkling water, listening to the cars honking outside my window. If I had been ten minutes later getting home, I could have been one of the honking cars.

The clouds were pitch black when I came out of the home improvement store. I thought to myself, forget about going to the supermarket to buy milk, I better get the heck out of here. Halfway home, I looked in my rear view mirror and blinked as I saw a curtain of rain behind me. Then it reached my car. It was the kind of rain where having an umbrella was a complete waste of time; you were going to get soaked from the water spraying upwards from the ground and sideways from the wind. I haven't been in the middle of a deluge like that for quite some time. It reminded me of the black rain warning I experienced just over a month ago in Hong Kong. I carefully dodged the spontaneous lakes on the street that would likely swallow my poor little car and eventually made it home safely.

I got off the elevator and opened my door. The first thing I did was turn on the news. I did a quick double take when I saw the reporter standing in a sunny intersection but soon realized that she was reporting from the tragic train derailment site in Quebec. Then the power went off.

I went out on my balcony and saw that my building was not the only one with no lights. In fact, I couldn't see any building with power in any direction. Traffic was already slow from the rain and was now a chaotic mess as aggravated drivers decided to forgo the four-way stop rule at the blacked out intersections. I grabbed a drink quickly from my fridge and sat down. I called my parents to check on them and learned that they also had no power. Today is their wedding anniversary, but a known scheduling conflict had forced us several weeks ago to plan their dinner for tomorrow.

Trying my best not to feel smug right now.

"Want you to see everything, want you to see all of the lights"