In other words, there wasn’t much sleep at all. But we cranked our butts out of bed, closed up, wished the kitties well, and were out the door on time. Thanks to packing the night before.
Richmond Airport is small. I’m not used to these tiny little airports—their wheels aren’t as greased as Newark or Atlanta. Things tend to move a little less smoothly. And the TSA agents don’t seem to read their own regulations. I really don’t like TSA agents in the small airports; I hate to say it dude, but the terrorists would hardly hijack a PiperCub from Norfolk to fulfill a suicide mission, so chill out.
If you couldn’t tell, I’m a little miffed about security. I have always carefully read the regulations and know exactly what I can and can’t bring on board the plane, what I have to check and all of that. Right. Well, I’ve had my pocket knife since I was 19. It’s the MacGyver model, with the corkscrew. I bought one for me and one for my friend R. I have carried it through 8 or more European countries and who knows how many Caribbean islands. I had this thing in my purse when I boarded a plane on Dec. 12, 2001 when the security was off the chart.
Mr. Important TSA Agent pulls me aside and starts going through the purse. He pokes down into the purse where the knife resides (coated with purse detrius), “Mm. Hm. Ah. Hmm. Yup.” And he pulls out the knife like it was freakin’ black asp ready to bite. “That’s what I thought it was. You can’t take this on the plane.”
“That’s a 3 inch blade,” I respond. “It falls under the guidelines.”
“No ma’am, this is not allowed,” he nodded superiorly at me.
“I’ve never ever had it questioned before,” I said.
“Then someone wasn’t paying attention,” he said.
I was going to put up a fight, but I stopped. I recalled reading an article in a magazine not so long ago where the gentleman carried a corkscrew with a foil cutter—a knife that was perhaps an inch long and tried to put up a fight about it and failed. Despite the fact that he too had checked the TSA website and fell under the guidelines. What I wanted to scream at him was something about the 12” knitting needles that were now allowed and that he had to be kidding me. Instead I just stared at him.
“Would you like to go put this in your car?”
Well, hell, why would I want to do that? I would ADORE throwing out my 14 year old pocket knife that has never been questioned before. I reached for it and he pulled back teasingly. “No ma’am, you’ll have to step outside the screening area and I’ll hand it back to you.”
Jackass. Fine. I didn’t say another thing. I pulled my shoes back on, and headed for the exit area and he finally gave me my pocket knife back. I marched out the car mumbling swear words that questioned the agent’s parentage, and left the knife in the cup holder.
Then I had to go through security again. Grr.
So, I finally get out to the plane and we board fairly soon after we get out there. It was a pretty quick boarding, and before we knew it we were already out on the runway, ready to take off. I was hoping for a little nap, but the flight wasn’t really long enough. We landed in Atlanta in about an hour and 10 minutes.
And then we got to sit in Jackson Hartsfield Int’l Airport for 3 hours. But it wasn’t really sitting. We were assigned to gate C9. We walked over to C9** and sat down.(1) About an hour later, the speaker overhead pings, and announces that our flight will now be leaving from D5. Crap.
We grab our things and walk back to Terminal D. Now, mind you, Atlanta is the busy airport in the US. Perhaps in the world. There are two planes taking off and two planes landing every two minutes. There are five terminals with 40 gates, plus the main terminal. Going from C9 to D5 meant walk back to 2/3rds of the way down the terminal, going down the escalator, walking through the tunnel, going back up the escalator, and walking back down the terminal to D5. Did I mention that our original plane landed at D4? Yeah.
We sit down, settle in, and about ½ an hour later, the speaker pings again, and now the plane is at D9. We, and the other 100 people waiting for this plane, get up and migrate down to D9. We sit down, and fifteen minutes later we’re told that the plane will be leaving from D5 again. Everyone is getting angry, so this time, they at least offer the explanation that that walkway is not working.
Despite all that the plane was at the gate on time and we were actually able to pull away from the gate on time. Up, up and away, and off to Puerto Rico.
The flight to San Juan was 3 and half hours, and we both managed to grab a few winks before we gave up on that. And at 4:00 AST, we touched down in Luis Munoz Marin International Airport, San Juan, Puerto Rico!
Tom goes out for a cigarette and almost couldn’t get back in because I had his boarding pass. Lesson 1: Never leave an airport without your boarding pass—there was no way I was going to be able to handle 6 pieces of luggage. No, I didn’t over pack, thankyouverymuch. We were able to get a taxi right outside the door. Taxi Turistico, if you ever happen to find yourself in San Juan. Authorized by the Tourism board, guaranteed rates, no negotiation. Best way to go.
Our taxi takes us to one of the hotels just inside Old San Juan on the Condado. If you want to stay in San Juan, you want to stay on the Condado or in Isla Verde. It’s gorgeous and the hotels are fantastic. We stayed in the Normandie Hotel, an art deco hotel designed to look like a cruise ship which was gutted and rebuilt in 2005.
The coolest thing were these fish tanks:
When you got in to the elevators on the first floor, you could see them. There were some cool fish in them, too.
The window in our room was fogged up because it was so humid, but when you opened the window, you had the most wonderful view.
Ft. Geronimo, the end of the fortifications of Old San Juan.
The pool was freezing, the ocean was much warmer. The problem was that the room we were in was apparently had it’s AC programmed by visiting Eskimos. I looked at the thermostat and it was 60 degrees. SIXTY. I don’t even keep my AC at home in the middle of Virginia summer lower than 73. So I cranked the temp up to about 70 and it was still freezing in there.
This was the best way to sleep in there:
We settled in and decided to just go to dinner and relax. We were just too tired from being up for about 24 hours (with a few naps) to try to do anything. Tomorrow was time to get on the ship!
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