Leaving for the Airport

February 27, 1994

Aboard American Airlines flight 59 ...

6 AM is a miserable time to wake up on a Sunday morning, but I had no choice: I'm on an 8 AM flight to San Francisco, and I figured it would take a while to shower, dress, and stagger off to the airport. To my surprise, it was a crisp, clear day outside, and I had the feeling that winter might be coming to an end here in NYC. I called a car service last night to take me to the airport, and the driver was waiting for me at the front door when I emerged ten minutes early, in my typical fashion. The driver looked like Raymond Burr in his later years, with thick jowls and hooded eyes and a big paunch; my early arrival took him by surprise, and he grumbled that even though he had had his first cup of coffee, he hadn't had his morning cigarette. This apparently put him in a foul mood, and he didn't speak to me for most of the journey; I wish I were always so lucky.

There is no traffic in Manhattan at this hour, especialy on a Sunday morning; it's one of the few advantages of an early flight. We zoomed cross-town on silent side-streets, bounced over the pot-holes on the FDR Drive, sped across the Triboro Bridge and onto the Grand Central Parkway. There was not even a breath of wind along the way, and the candy-cane smoke-stack of the ConEd plant in Queens belched forth frothy clouds that hung in mid-air, tinged a soft shade of purple and pink by the rising sun. Somewhere on the Van Wyck Expressway, just a couple miles before the airport, a police car hurtled past us, siren wailing and lights flashing furiously; but the two cops inside were smiling and laughing, each holding a steaming cup of coffee. The limo driver had instinctively tensed as they approached, but he relaxed as they went by; they weren't after us, and were probably just in a rush to meet their friends for breakfast.

The entrance to the airport is when a road warrior typically has a slight tinge of panic as he wonders whether he remembered his plane ticket, and whether he left anything behind. I pulled out my Road Warrior's checklist and reminded myself that I had gone through it last night and ticked everything off; nothing was left behind. It used to be easy to travel: pack a suitcase with a few shirts and socks, grab your briefcase and go. But now I have a checklist with some 27 items on it, most of which consists of the computers and associated electronic junk that I have to carry along on these trips. Since this is a domestic trip, I don't have to carry the bag of foreign AC adaptors or the bag of foreign (RJ11-to-country-X) phone adaptors that allow me to hook my modem into the phone line; I could have left the acoustic coupler behind, since most U.S. hotels now have a "data port" for plugging the computer into their phone system, but I was feeling paranoid, so I brought that bag along too (along with the screwdriver for disassembling the hotel phone and the alligator clips for attaching directly to the copper cable of the phone line). I've got my new Macintosh Duo 270c laptop computer with three spare batteries and the AC adaptor, together with an E-Machines adaptor that will let me display my speech to an audience of 600 people in San Francisco tomorrow. And since I've never used this combination of equipment before, I've also got a backup Powerbook 180 and its AC adaptor and a different display-adaptor, plus an Appletalk connector in case I have to hook the two computers together in order to move files back and forth. And since I'm going to be in a convention center where access to phones is nearly impossible, I decided to bring along my AT&T EO pen-based mobile computer because of its attached cellular phone (as the plane took off this morning, I skimmed through a couple of computer-industry trade magazines and found that AT&T has just discontinued the EO computer and laid off the staff in that division; arghh!). And I also brought ... well, I won't bore you with the rest of the list. Suffice it to say that every trip seems to involve a different combination of equipment (and a minor assortment of clothing), which requires a different combination of briefcases, computer bags, rollaboard suitcases, and garment bags. On one of my last trips, I stacked all of this junk on the bathroom scale; it weighs 100 pounds.

Anyway, I convinced myself that everything was in order, and I jumped out of the car at the American terminal at JFK. Aside from a vast throng of people who were headed for Puerto Rico with their collection of children, cats, dogs, and battered cardboard boxes containing their most valuable possessions, the terminal was pretty empty. I had one of those free-upgrade coupons that got me a first-class seat, and found that that was virtually empty, too: there are 15 seats here in the front, and only four are occupied; from what I can see, the back of the plane is almost empty, too. As a result, the flight attendants are smiling and relaxed; one of them brought me a glass of orange juice, a cup of coffee and a New York Times. Nobody is sitting beside me, so I can spread my stuff out all over the place and look forward to six hours of peace and quiet.

We pulled away from the gate right on schedule and taxied from one end of the airport to the other -- a distance of five miles, according to the announcement from the exasperated pilot, who must have been worrying that we would be using up all of our gas before we even took off. Along the way, we passed by a huge 747 that had just landed and was taxiing to the gate, shrouded in steam and billowing clouds of snow particles; the sun was behind it, lighting the plane and its shroud in golden sparkles. When we finally took off, we rose up over Jamaica Bay, whose cold muddy waters are ringed with sheets of ice. There is a thick cover of dirty snow on the ground as we cross over New Jersey, but I know the weather will be mild when we land in San Francisco in a few hours, and the view of the bay and the Golden Gate bridge from my room at the Fairmont Hotel will be stunning, and the scenery will be gorgeous in a couple of days when I drive down to Monterey to visit a computer colleague at the Naval Postgraduate School. Best of all, I know that it will be March when I return to NYC on Friday, and March heralds the beginning of spring.

I have to admit it: there are times when this traveling life ain't so bad. I miss my family the moment I walk out the door, and I know that most trips are going to be an endless succession of minor hassles and aggravations -- but there are moments when it's almost civilized. Like now, for instance: the flight attendant is bringing breakfast, which consists of a fresh fruit, lemon bread and pumpkin bread, yogurt, and a choice of omelettes, french toast, or granola cereal. Guess I better go eat breakfast ...