So this blog is unlike any of my other blogs in that it is completely unprovoked by an academic charge… I am not attempting to prove something, I’m merely about to rant for a few pages about my last few days in Miami. So, if you’re expecting something incredibly enlightening, you may want to skip this one, however, if you would like to be entertained, read on…..

So, Monday morning I woke up in Brooklyn, and after taking a hot shower, I kissed a sleepy Mafoo goodbye, and dragged my suitcases down to the curb at 6:45 am to be greeted by my cab ride. I’m usually a fan of being friendly and cordial, and for the first fifteen minutes talked with my driver, his name was Joe…. That got old real fast… I couldn’t tell if I was just cranky, and in desperate need for coffee, or if I was just being a bitch, but I really wanted him to be quiet! I tried to casually answer e-mails on my blackberry, and even make a phone call to my mother (who’s always awake by 6 AM) but nothing seemed to sway this gentleman from his long-winded tirade.

He dropped me off at the Delta domestic portion of the inner bowels of our lovely JFK airport amidst throngs of freezing cold passengers… It seemed that the lines inside the airport to check in were ridiculously long, and if we just waited through the cold, curbside check in would be the way to go…. Your bags checked in, and ticket in hand, you could proceed to security and be done with it. I, on my way to Miami, and thinking that I would be going from a warm cab to the airport, was only wearing a t-shirt and my fleece… I knew that I could stow the fleece in my carry-on when I got on the plane, and that I had a 2 downbeat, and my flight got in at 12:30, any surprises and I would be late, and therefore docked in pay…so I waited, and twenty minutes later dug through my suitcase to find my hat and gloves, twenty minutes from that the ONE man that Delta had assigned to work the curbside check in…. WENT ON BREAK! At this point, the line of pavement pounders had weaved itself into a pretty caterpillar shape… well, as you can imagine, mass mayhem was just around the corner.

The air was still, to say we waited with baited breath is not quite the affect…at first everyone was calm and still, and then slowly, murmurings from the crowd…. The caterpillar shaped line suddenly became a mob of formless people as the realization that somehow with the Delta employee gone, we were somewhat without order… One man stepped in front of another man and the other man yelled and pushed, and security had to be called over to break them up. At that point, I decided to break free of the caterpillar and do a self-check in and risk the confiscation of my explosive eye cream and shampoo…

As you can imagine, the inside of the airport was even crazier than the outside. It was 7:55, and my flight took off at 8:40. Things were not looking good for me. I checked myself in with a swipe of my credit card, and humped it over to security, where I witnessed a woman with a cardigan set and Coach briefcase attempting to appeal to other passenger’s good senses. Her flight left at 9, and she was asking if she could get ahead of them in the security line. Well, as you can imagine that morning, people weren’t feeling too compassionate. She approached me, although I was somewhat further back in the line. At this point, I had accepted the fact that there was a very good chance that I would miss my flight, and I couldn’t do a damn things about it, so when she asked me if she could cut, I let her. I could have been angry and ripped her apart for being so obnoxious when it was obvious to everyone that we all had somewhere to be, and the situation was just a little bit out of our control….

Anyways, I got through security (exploding moisturizers and all), and with fifteen minutes left until take off, I ran from gate 1 to gate 29 and made my flight. Because of the mayhem with check in Delta delayed our take off twenty minutes…. I nestled into my window seat next to a friendly NY couple (they were Yankee fans) and popped my noise-reducing headphones on, and looked over my music for my rehearsal.

Now, I had thought that I had left myself plenty of time in the morning. If you can check yourself in the night before and print out your ticket, and carry your luggage on board, you save yourself oodles of time that you can spend having a decent cup of overpriced coffee and reading the paper…. Or if you’re a workaholic like myself, looking over music or sending e-mails, coordinating calendar, etc…. This morning left me sprinting towards my gate past not one, not two, but three Starbucks!! And oh, sweet Jesus, it smelled SOOO good, and I knew the watered down “hot and brown” they would serve me on the plane would suck, but I needed to make my flight!!!

So 45 minutes into the flight when the frazzled stewardesses were being pushed to their utter limits, I heard one summon one of the other stewardesses to the back of the plane where I overheard hushed and excited conversation… it seems that they had run out of coffee… these poor women found themselves mile high in the sky with a cabin full of cold cranky New Yorkers…. The time folks… 9:30 am….. and there was no coffee….

I landed safely, met my friend Paul at baggage, who was mourning the loss of his luggage. Paul flew into Fort Lauderdale, but it seems his luggage flew into Miami.. via Boston, Washington, Charlotte, Philly, Miami and finally Fort Lauderdale. On any other day, Paul would have rejoiced that the airline had offered to credit him the mileage that his luggage was collecting in the sky, but he was a gay man who had just had his Kiehl’s eye cream and Crew hair product removed from his suitcase, and at this point he just wasn’t having it anymore…We found lunch (and coffee) and settled in for six hours of rehearsal. But the story doesn’t end there folks…. It’s just the beginning….