Triskaidekafication

16 June 2017 /
We go to America once a year, which adds up to a lot of trips. For the most part—despite the occasional hiccup—we have been lucky.
We have been lucky with the flights. But this time, both going and returning, our flights were missed, cancelled, delayed and just not very comfortable (in a first-world complaint sort of way).
Long story short: Missed connection in Newark, next flight cancelled, next flight delayed, and delayed, and delayed.
This would not have been so bad if we had not been in Newark’s United terminal, which handles short flights and therefore has all the amenities, comfort and grandeur of a bus station.
We finally took off at 11:30 PM after 12 hours in the airport.
(We did, however, take off in a thunderstorm, which made for a lively flight.)
Overall, we were lucky. Others didn’t even make it out that day. And I just saw on FaceBonk that my niece has been in Newark since Tuesday trying to get to Italy.

What the departures board looked like while we were waiting


(First World Problem: On the return trip, the in-flight entertainment was on a loop. There were a number of channels you could select, each one showing a movie. The movies all started, apparently, when the plane did, so when I went to look for some diversion, all the movies were already on. There was no indication of what the movies were or how long they had been playing. When the movies ended, they repeated, but since all the movies were not the same length, you could only watch one, partial, movie, then switch to another, partial, movie. I know this is a really small thing, but c’mon, that’s 1970s technology.)

My final three words on this: “United,” “Never” and “Again.”
Moving on.
We have been lucky with the hire car. Never a scratch. This year: three.
We have been lucky with timing. This year, my son, his wife and the G-kids moved house while we were there. (They were supposed to have moved last month but, you know, closings.)
We have been lucky with the weather. This year, it rained every day, except the last day, which was, oddly enough, the 14th day.
This, you see, was our 13thtrip. I didn’t know it at the time, I just went along in a fog thinking, “Why is everything going wrong?” I’m not triskaidekaphobic or anything, but when I got home and realized what number this trip was, it all made sense.
We’re back now, and I’ll write up our adventures soon. Until then, watch out for that pesky number…you know the one.

We went to visit our favorite cafe, but it was closed. So we went to a different one.
Pretentious, confusing and expensive, and this was our order number.
I\’m not superstitious or anything, I\’m just sayin\’

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