Dear American Airlines

Dear American Airlines,

I have been flying American Airlines since I was in college (40+ years ago!) and have always been a fan but never more than a recent trip I took (with my American Advantage miles!) from RDU to (get ready) Martha’s Vineyard by way of DCA.  I had received an unexpected and lovely invitation to visit the Vineyard for a few days and then decided to see an old college friend living outside Boston before heading back home.  I was amazed that I could do the trip with my carefully saved miles and could actually fly in to Martha’s Vineyard (saving me the bus and ferry fares to get there). I was thrilled.

The day of travel June 25, there were weather issues elsewhere (loads of rainstorms) and at RDU we were waiting and waiting for our plane to arrive.  I began to get nervous knowing that my connection in DC was a tight one.  I tried to stay positive.

Our plane arrived around the time we were due to take off but still, it was only a forty-minute flight.  I stayed optimistic (not my natural state of affairs).  I kept telling flight attendants I had a tight connection; could they be sure I had the wheelchair assist at the gate?  Between two bad knees (getting shots in July, fingers crossed) and more recently a “collapsed” left foot, a wheelchair saved me pain and further damage to an already-not-great ankle.

We landed at 1:38 pm (about 30 minutes later than expected) but I was relieved, “I’ll make the plane with a scramble,” I thought as the flight to MVY wasn’t due to depart until 2:17.  Still, it was going to be tight.

And then.  And then we didn’t have a gate.  Or we had a gate but the gate was changed. Or we had a gate but then it was cancelled.  Another four minutes before we could head for our gate.  But then another plane was assigned to that gate ahead of us.  The clock kept running, the minutes were slipping away.  2:01pm.  I reluctantly thought, “I need to find out when’s the next flight,” and saw there was NO next flight.  Hmmm.  I looked on the next day, Monday, thinking I might have to stay in Washington DC overnight and take the first flight in the morning but no matter how I searched, NO MATCHES to be found.

Bummer.  I realized maybe American didn’t fly to Martha’s Vineyard during the week…now what?  I asked a flight attendant was anyone else on board headed for that connection?  No.  Only me.  “They’ll never hold the flight for one person,” I said to her mournfully.  I was almost in tears.  So close and yet so far.  I wasn’t sure what was possible to do.  Most of the options were time-consuming and too expensive.

Finally, we headed for a gate.  I’d already texted my host that there was no way I’d make it there that day.  UGH.  We all started to line up to exit.  I got my overhead bag out and braced myself trying not to be too upset and then, and THEN the first-class flight attendant at the door said, “Martha’s Vineyard com’ON, they're holding the plane for you!” and my eyes widened and my face lit up and the passengers ahead of me stepped aside while I scooted to the door where the wheelchair and a gate agent were awaiting me.  Things happened so quickly I never got anyone’s name I just started thanking people as we flew toward gate 34.

“I can’t believe they’re holding the plane…you don’t have another flight today and I couldn’t find one tomorrow…”

“That’s why!” this lovely gate agent said to me, “Don’t worry, they knew that and they’re holding the plane.  You gotta have faith!” and as I whizzed through the door onto the jet bridge and was wheeled down the ramp and quickly made my way onto the plane (with the next two flight attendants welcoming me aboard and congratulating me on making it) I just felt so lucky and so grateful and so thankful that someone, MORE than one someone at American Airlines decided to go out of their way and make my day.

Thank you for such terrific service!

Taken from my window, happily making the flight to my vacation!

Just a Typical Manhattan Marathon Day

Despite it being the New York City Marathon, for me it was a typical day in Manhattan.  Construction everywhere, street closures due to the race, foreigners from all over (this time here for the run) the city was a bustle of energy.

Every bus ride I took — from the beginning of the day to now — someone struck up a conversation with me.  First on the Third Avenue bus headed uptown, a woman commented on how much she liked the detail on my pants...which led to her telling me she really liked my sweater coat...and then asked if my scarf went with the coat (it didn't, it went with my tunic top) and this complete stranger basically was just complimenting me from head to ankle.   Nice start to the day.

My mother-in-law (MIL) and I transferred to the Clinton-Yorkville bus headed from 57th Street to York Avenue and then to 86th St circumventing the marathon which was taking over First Avenue due to runners. On that ride I was showing my MIL photos of the great house numbers I'd taken when the guy in the seat behind us chimed in over her shoulder and said, "If you like doorways and entrances and it sounds as if you do and I do too I want to show you this photo of a doorway on the west side with the carved head of Medusa,” and while he swiped through his phone photos trying to locate the image he stopped along the way to show me other images he thought I’d like and I in turn then began finding and sharing photos of doorways and floors I’d taken in Berlin and Rome and here in Manhattan.  He had some incredible stormy sky images of the skyline and the Triboro Bridge just before Hurricane Sandy hit and they were forced to evacuate their apartment.  As I started to get off at my stop, the man reached out his hand, “You have a good eye and good composition — my name is Larry.”

Later that day as I made the reverse trip I sat next to a woman who clearly had a German accent.  As we started chatting, she told me was from Stuttgart but had lived in New York for forty years.  The more she revealed the more we had in common: I used to work a block from where she lived in what is known as Yorkville — an area full of Germans, Hungarians, Poles and Czechs.  We commiserated about the closing of all the great German restaurants — The Ideal Cafe which my husband loved, the Bremen House, Cafe Heidelberg, and sadly Elk Candy with its windowful of brightly colored marzipans and chocolates.  I told her of our travels to Berlin and all things German.  

The bus was packed.  People were being jostled close together.  Standing in front of where we were sitting was an over-sized man with one hand hanging on to the overhead pole and carrying what seemed to be a heavy overstuffed laptop bag in the other. I looked up and asked, “If you want to put that bag down, I can put it between my feet.”

He looked surprised but immediately plunked it down and I moved my feet to prop it in place. “It’s my breathing machine,” he told us. “Without it my throat closes up, so in order to keep breathing, I need this thing when I’m sleeping.”

My Stuttgart seatmate and I looked at each other. “Well, we certainly won’t let you forget it when you get off the bus!” and we laughed as he relaxed into the ride.  When his stop came up, we three smiled, wished one other a good day, and said goodbye.

As our big burly guy filed off more people piled on.

The M31 on a much less busy day!

A woman in a lovely citrus green sweater and scarf stood in his spot. She looked my age but seemed to be laboring.  "Do you want my seat?" I asked her.

"Oh no, I'm not on long.  It's just my asthma.  It's so claustrophobic in here I have to get off this bus!"

"Geez, the guy that just left had a breathing machine...how far do you have to go?"

"Oh I work at the Neil Simon Theater, ushering for Big Fish." she told us.

"Sit down," I said getting up from my seat,"I'm getting off at Lex and you're going all the way to Broadway." and she sat while I stood and now we three began to talk about the craziness of traffic in the city during the marathon — how you couldn't cross First Avenue for hours and hours and how maybe next year she just wouldn't work on Marathon Day...

"Well I'm not from here, so likely I won't be around next year at this time" and as I mentioned my hometown she said, "OH that's where my favorite southern author is from — Michael Malone — have you read him?" she asked expectantly, hoping I shared her love of his writing.

"Well, I haven't read him but I have met him and I actually worked with his brother for many years.  Tell me your name and I'll email David to pass on to Michael and let him know he's got this terrific fan in Manhattan."

"WOULD YOU?" she asked with this sparkling excitement, "I'm Linda!"

"Sure," I said, "write down your email for me, but quick, this is my stop!" 

As she scribbled and I scrambled, we all smiled goodbye as I exited the M31.  In my hometown I don’t get to have these chance encounters — these wonderful collisions with the unlikeliest of people, people who don’t look like me, don’t live lives like me, but — with the simplest connection on public transportation we find something in common — a shared sense of fashion, a love of architectural details, travels in Berlin, six degrees of separation, or just the moment of being stuffed on a bus stuck in traffic on the day of the 2013 New York City Marathon.

A Ferry To Free

There is nothing, nothing, nothing like a ride on a ferry.  An open to the winds and the sky, exhilarating ride on a steady and substantial ferry boat — made for short-or-long term hauls, getting you from one shore to another. 

Don't they look incredibly happy?  That's what a ferry ride can do!

When my children were little we took a very long ferry ride — 2 ½ hours I think —from the tip of Long Island’s northern shore to the crook of Connecticut. It was a massive ferry — could have passed for a small cruise ship (in those days) — and I remember how it was to see our kids run to and fro on the deck of that boat as we sailed from one family visit to another. They were so happy! You could see the joy in their faces and I knew what they felt.

While I love water — being on it or around it — I am fearful of it.  It is my worst nightmare (mine and Natalie Wood’s) to die in the water not knowing what is swarming beneath.  Still traveling on water is a feeling that exhilarates me.

My sense is that my first ferry rides were on the Staten Island Ferry in the mid-70s when the fare was 50¢.  We would ride the Staten Island Ferry from Battery Park in lower Manhattan over to Staten Island and then back again— we never even got off!  It was a cheap escape.  

Ferries became a regular part of my summer weekend commute in 1981 (luckily) to Saltaire Fire Island.  For my friend Carol and me, there was always, always the scramble to be released from the yoke of work in Manhattan to get out of the city and to the beach.  This was no easy feat. Manhattanites rarely had cars so multiple means of machinations had to be transited just to get to the ferry. A cab to Grand Central, or a sprint to the subway; a run to the Long Island Railroad and a hop on the train; a jump off the train and if there was time a ten-minute walk to the dock or (if time was tight) yet-another cab speeding to catch the departing ferry at Bay Shore.  It was breath-robbing, sweat-and-anxiety-producing along with schlepping (this is a Yiddish word that means carrying many,many things) — your clothes, your groceries, your entertainment, your reading, and/or your work for the weekend.  It was what we lived for all week long.

www.fireislandferries.com

Once on the ferry — the passengers board, get their seats, settle their belongings as the boat backs away from the dock and the ferry chugs away on open water.  The wind tosses your hair this way and that, you grab for a sweater or sweatshirt and soon, all your cares are dissolving like pop rocks in water.  The stress, the disappointments, the tensions just seem to leave your body and blow away into the breeze.  That summer going to Fire Island was a wonderfully rejuvenating way to begin a weekend and escape from all that constantly worried me.

There is something so enormously freeing about riding the ferry as it rolls up and down across the waves in a rhythmic sailing on top of the glistening crests.  I feel everything stream away and free me. It is a calming, soothing, peaceful relief — a tremendous feeling.  

People who commute to work by ferry say it is an amazing way to start your day.  Today along with a bunch of commuters, I am headed from Brooklyn to lower Manhattan and then out to Rockaway Queens.  I’m on the top deck with the wind assaulting my hair and despite the relentless glare of the sun my body is getting a little chilled so I grab for my light jacket. It is a long ride over an hour and I am feeling free and glorious — a rush of emotions that recapture other times, other places but the same joy — a joy that should be more prevalent in my life.  

The ferry pivots toward the landing, the Brooklyn Bridge
and the masts of a sailing ship in the distance

Heading toward Manhattan from Brooklyn

                                         

                                      As we swing toward Pier 1...

we see the imposing towers on Wall Street

As the ferry chugs away, the Manhattan skyline shrinks in the distance

Far, far off in the distance, the Statue of Liberty looks deceivingly small in this shot

Ahhhh...the magnificent Verrazano-Narrows Bridge lies ahead 

And all for the grand price of $2.00!  Thank you, Metropolitan Transit Authority and SeaStreak Ferries for taking me back to FREE — lucky for me, New York City’s battling candidates were too conscious of their upcoming elections to end this limited-run, subsidized service that came about as a result of Hurricane Sandy.  Guess politicians can be good for something.

A Short Walk Through Chelsea

From two of my favorite thrift shops on West 17th (Angel Street and Housing Works) 
I need to hustle to the Linda Gross Theatre on West 20th or miss the matinee.  
Here's what I see along the way...

  

 GEEZ what happened here?  OUCH ! 

Don't even think about sitting on this corbel...

Wonder what the perky "B" stands for?

I saw no subway here but I loved this old sidewalk sign.

 

Aaahhh...it's what I love about New York. A feast for the eyes — door to door to door.