Definitely On La-Guard-ia

Last Saturday, I had the pleasure (sarcasm) of going into the City to help my brother move into his new apartment.  I’m never been a fan of New York, but I hadn’t been there in over a year, so I figured I’d give it the benefit of the doubt.  Anyhow, it took me 20 minutes on the train from New Haven to realize this was going to be a bad idea.

To make a long story short, we ended up getting to Grand Central on time.  Stepping off the train, it took me less than two seconds to realize that this was one year too soon that I came back to New York.  I definitely don’t consider myself a City kind of guy, especially since this Saturday was going to be my first time riding the subway.  I should have known what I was in!

Purchasing the ticket was no problem at all – - but that’s about the only part of my subway experience that went well.  I purchased four rides for $8.00, thinking that I can save some time when I come to visit my brother again.  Anyhow, I watched the other people slide their subway card in the slot and go through the turnstile with no problem.  Then it got to me.

I slid my card through and tried to walk through the turnstile.  It wouldn’t move.  I slid it again.  Still wouldn’t move.  At this point, my brother is getting furious as I’m holding up traffic.  I told him, “Jeff, I watched the screen.  I saw it accept my card!”  It took my brother all of one second to realize that I was swiping the card right- – but walking through the wrong turnstile.  DUMB!  Anyhow, I try again at a different entrance.  Now it can’t read my card.  I try again.  Presto!  I’m through!  So let’s get this straight, it took me four times to get into the entrance of the subway.  If you don’t believe I’m cut out for the City after reading that, wait to you hear what happens next.

As we’re waiting in line for the 4 to take to 85^th Street, I see this huge alien-looking thing fly out of god knows where and land on my friend’s shoulder.  This thing (in the words of Mark Santore) was the Shaq of cockroaches.  Anyhow, Mark, my friend, thought it was a moth so he causally pushed it off of his shoulder.  Only, it landed on his pants leg.  When Mark saw the size of this thing, he turned white as a ghost.  It was priceless…but I was sooooooo happy that it was not my shoulder Shaq decided to land on.

About five minutes later, the 4 train arrives.  Of course there are no available seats.  (Oh, if you’re wondering – yes, I made it through the sliding doors the first time!)  I was forced to stand.  I saw people holding onto the railing, but I didn’t want to touch that dirty, dirty thing.  “Do you know how many people cough, sneeze and pick their nose with those hands and then touch those railings?”, I thought.  Jeff warned me that I better hold on.  Trying to describe that moment of when I had to reach out and touch that railing was worse than hearing nails against a chalkboard.  You’ll be happy to know that I braved it out and survived!

Flash forward to today.  I’m very happy to say that up until today, I have never flown out of New York.  It has always been Bradley.  I like Bradley because it’s not that crowded, it’s easy to navigate through, and if I have a question, I can get an answer in English.

I should have known that when our driver, Matt, picked up my luggage and it ripped, it would be a foreshadowing of what LaGuardia was going to be like.  After walking into the airport, it took me a good two minutes to get my bearings.  I printed our boarding passes last night, so I knew I didn’t have to check in again.  However, since we had to check our bags, I knew I needed the luggage tags in order to check them.  Kyle (my cousin) and I got into this long line because it looked like that was what everyone else was doing and I thought that’s where we would get the tags.  I saw a self check-in thing by the luggage line, so I decided to check in again, thinking that maybe the self-check in machine could print the tags out.  Well, the self-check in machine didn’t print our tags – - but it did let me know that each checked baggage would cost $25.00!

At this point I was so frustrated.  I couldn’t ask anybody a question because everybody around me spoke Spanish.  I sucked it up and paid the $50.00 fee, but I told Kyle that I didn’t think our current line was the right line to be in. We got out of line, went to a different line, but I thought it was for international flights, so we went back to the line we just left.

At this point, I still wasn’t sure if we were in the right line.  Every airport I’ve ever been to has never been this confusing including Cancun.  In fact, more people spoke English in Cancun than at LaGuardia.  Not that there is anything wrong with speaking Spanish, but when you can’t find anybody to help you that speaks English, that is a problem.

It ended up being the correct line we needed to be in.  We got through security and found our gate with no problem.  However, I felt like I just completed Pan’s Labyrinth and had such a stress-related headache.  There wasn’t even a bar or restaurant in this hellhole of an airport (at least in our terminal).  Kyle was forced to fill himself up with a Cinnamon-bun and pretzel nuggets.  I went with a fruit cup.

As we got on the plane, I don’t know what I was more excited for – to go to North Carolina to watch Oxford, or to leave LaGuardia!  As we were getting ready to takeoff, Kyle leans over to me and says, “We’re not flying home to this place, right?”  Sorry Kyle, but yes – unfortunately we are.

Well, this blog has taken up our whole one hour and fifteen minute flight to Raleigh.  The next update will be sometime tonight (hopefully if we visit Duke or North Carolina) or tomorrow, after the Oxford All-Stars win!

Till tonight or tomorrow, show NC what 203 is all about Oxford!

-Matt-