Loser Report

Dogs, Docs, Socks (1 of 3)

This Not Be Your Lucky Day (2 of 2)

Getting lost proved no problem the next afternoon thanks to a spiffy new Detroit Metro flip-chart gate-identification system. 

Concourse flip charts: a great asset for everyone unable to see the "tiny" numbers on the wall.  Warning: they won't work if you always look in the wrong direction as someone you know did while trying to locate a wallet.

Landing at JFK after connecting through Baltimore, I double checked the seat-back pocket, making sure I'd removed all my crap. Padding my pocket to ensure it still contained the wallet, I wove through the crowded concourse, out the airport doors and down the sidewalk to the taxi stand.

"How much should it cost to get to Long Island City?" I asked the guy manning the taxi station.
Giving me that well-known, warm, Big Apple welcoming, he ignored the question, pointed to a yellow cab and walked away from me.  You've got to love New York hospitality.

"I'm going to the Holiday Inn on 29th street in Long Island City," I said to the swarthy cabbie who resembled Apu, the convenience store clerk on the Simpsons cartoon.  "Do you know where that is?"
"Oh yes," he replied in broken English. "Getting you there not be problem."
"How long will it take?"
"Thirty, forty minute, depend on traffic."

Driving into illuminated city darkness, I checked cell-phone messages in the back seat as the driver zipped through a couple neighborhoods -- the NYC version of a short cut -- to reach the highway. Once the taxi rolled onto the interstate, the cabbie started an animated cell-phone conversation.  While unable to understand his native tongue, every few sentences, I caught a word or two.  Here, in fact, were a few of the words that came through loud and clear:
- Osama
- Osama Bin Laden
- Bin Laden

Wondering just what taxi I'd gotten into -- this seemed more like an episode of America's Most Wanted than Cash Cab -- I texted Dr. J.

Me: My taxi driver is speaking in a foreign language and keeps mentioning Bin Laden.  Should I be concerned?

Dr. J.: LMAO! Are you kicking yourself for not studying Arabic at Streetsboro?

Me: Yes and I have no clue if we are going the right way. Alla Akbar!

Dr J: No worries. He's just saying "damn giant Americans! His legs are poking me in the back!"

Stuck in 9:00 pm bumper-to-bumper traffic, we spent fifteen minutes starting and stopping before the cars thinned.  Ending the conversation, the cabbie zoomed into the left lane and KAAA-BLAMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!! right into a pothole the size of Pakistan.  A chasm so deep that it felt like the car frame scrapped the highway as my head bounced off the taxi's roof.

"Look all those cars," the cabbie remarked, pointing to a half dozen vehicles abandoned beside the highway. "They must hit this too."

Ten minutes later as he exited the freeway, we heard the bad news while slowing down for the stoplight.

"The tire be flat," he said over the flub-plop-thump sounds emanating from the rear wheel well.
"How much farther is the hotel?"
"Not far.  No worries, I get you there."

When the screeching rim drowned out the radio, the driver altered the plan.

"Not be able to make it to hotel like this. I get it fixed, then drop you off."
"Ah, ok," I said.  "How long will that take?"
"Not long, garage be right up here.  No charge for trip to garage," he replied putting the meter on hold.

Turning right after a rim grinding left, the yellow cab ventured into Queens’ neighborhoods where the most skilled cage fighter would be concerned about taking a nighttime stroll to the convenience store.  As we disappeared into the bowls of New York, my overactive mind considered the driver's earlier Bin Laden cell-phone chat: what had that actually been about and where were we actually going?  Were we headed to the local Taliban outpost?  The neighborhood seemed like a place where weird things happened; a place where someone could disappear and no one would know about it for weeks if ever.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like I was the prototype human al-Qaeda would like to remove from Planet Earth.  For instance:

1) Dumb, ignorant, ugly American
2) Capitalist pig who promulgated employee ownership
3) Coached youth girls' basketball teams (i.e., stupidly believed in women's rights/equality)
4) Drank alcohol (Kamchatka, among other fine US-distilled products)
5) Ate bacon, sausage and bratwurst
6) Former Methodist (i.e., non-practicing infidel)
7) Loved cage fighting and drew semi nude women and, even worse, men

One thing, however, seemed to work in my favor:  unless it disposed of my too-tall form in another horrific, mind-boggling NYC terrorist assault, al-Qaeda would get almost no propaganda mileage from knocking off an unknown loser like me.

Rolling into the well-lit garage, the driver stopped in the middle of the concrete floor as a real, blue overhauls wearing, made-in-the-USA mechanic approached. Surveying the cinder-block room, I failed to find any Taliban operatives lurking behind the tire racks and breathed a sigh of relief.  The mechanic drove the taxi onto a hydraulic lift, removed the destroyed tire with a pneumatic drill and put on a new one without breaking a sweat.  Total elapsed time: less than ten minutes, not NASCAR speed, but still quite impressive.

I didn't see Louie, Latka, Reverend Jim or any hubcaps either

"That's why we come here," the smiling cabbie said.  "They fix it, no problem.  I no stop on highway.  You seen those cars?  If I highway stop, I never get you to hotel."
"How much farther now?" I asked as we turned back onto Queens' mean streets.
"Not far, five minute."

The driver twisted through Long Island City until we finally reached 29th.

"Your hotel be right down street," he said.

Motoring through a two-sided, top-less tunnel of parked cars, we passed vehicles occupying every inch of available curb space, narrowing the three lanes to one.  After going through a stoplight, the one lane got blocked by a NYC garbage truck. The cabbie stopped, a car pulled in behind him and we were stuck again.  How long did it take to escape?  Let me put it this way:  NYC garbage men working third shift don't move with quite the speed of world 100 meter dash champion, Usain Bolt.

After five minutes without moving one inch, the garbage truck rolled forward a hundred feet and stopped at the next pick-up spot.  When it repeated that for the third time, the cabbie put the taxi into park, turned to me and commented.

"This not be your lucky day."

Truer words have never been spoken.

This Not Be Your Lucky Day (1 of 2)

Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly because I may be going in the wrong direction
- Ashley Brilliant

Slowly stepping down the stairs from Workplace Development's beautiful second-floor, Findlay offices, (i.e, suite 200), I found Emily doing homework at the kitchen table.

"Mom took Matthew to piano lessons and she's getting him Arby's," Emily said. "I didn't want that, so she said you need to get me Subway."

Following instructions, I drove to the Shell station Subway, bought a turkey sub and dropped Emily off at the Van Buren soccer complex for practice. Post a half hour on the road to nowhere and shower, I reached into my shorts' pocket to confirm a reservation for tomorrow's trip to New York and found the wallet missing.
"I'll need to call you back," I said to the agent before hanging up the phone.

After searching the bathroom and not finding the wallet, I yanked open multiple drawers, surveyed suite 200 and padded down numerous pants' pockets, finding more nothing. After a second, more methodical search of those and other possible wallet locations -- including combing through the car -- also came up empty, I called the Subway: maybe it fell out there.  No luck: the sandwich artist found nothing; a Shell station employee reported similar results.

After another frustrating, fruitless search -- shifting through the same spots a third time and somehow believing it might lead to a different result was a clear sign of insanity -- I squeezed my forehead, considering the cornucopia of plastic crammed into the wallet.  Not just the driver's license and four different credit cards -- replacing those would be a hassle -- but the HSA, ATM and various debit cards, plus a plethora of frequent idiot cards, including Delta Platinum and Skyclub memberships.  On the upside, I rarely, if ever, carried much cash; I'd lost about ten bucks.

"Have any of you seen my wallet?" I asked the family as it strolled through the front door a half hour later.
"Did you lose it somewhere?" Will asked.
"Yes, but I've searched the entire house and can't find it. All I can figure is it fell out of my pocket at Subway.  This is really bad timing; I'm leaving for New York City tomorrow."
"Well, you can use your passport for airport security, can't you?"
"Yeah, that's true."
"Did you call the Subway to see if anyone found it?" Asked Will.
"Yeah, but they said no one turned anything in."
"Are you sure you looked through everything here?"
"Three times," I sulked.
"Well, maybe you should go to Subway and take a look around. Who knows, you might find it in the parking lot or something."
"I guess that can't hurt before I start canceling cards."

Coming up empty handed on the Subway recon mission, I slumped through our front door, disappointed with my own carelessness.  At the end of the day, like with so many problems, no one could be blamed for this mess except me.

"Did you get my message?" Will asked.
"No, I forgot to take the phone. Why?"
"Because Emily found your wallet."
"She did?  Are you kidding me?  Where was it?"
"In your shorts hanging over the bathroom towel rack.  Emily said you wore them when you dropped her off at soccer," Will said. "I thought you checked everywhere."
"Ah, well, I ...."
"Geez, dad," Emily interjected. "How can you travel all over the world, but lose your wallet driving to Subway?'

How indeed.

****
Tomorrow:  this be your lucky day

Degradation (3 of 3)

With the thermometer at a chilly forty degrees Saturday morning, I yanked the ratty Kent State sweatshirt over a LOSER t-shirt, motored six miles to Arcadia high school and huffed the orange emergency inhaler in the parking lot.  Today's 5k goal: cross the finish in under 22:30. Despite this week's travel degradation, potential breathing issues and the alarming DNA connection with all things slug-like, indoor success -- I'd ran four miles in under twenty-nine minutes during the week -- made the goal seem achievable.

Sucking in copious amounts of cold air, size fourteens pounded Arcadia pavement, jogging through a series of turns and crossing mile one at the 7:18 mark.  Right on pace, but already starting to suck wind.  Working to maintain a decent stride, the huffs and puffs started taking over as I slogged past the two-mile point at 15:07. Running close to an eight minute second mile put 22:30 out of reach without a Mercury-like finish.  Abandoning the goal, I glanced at the stopwatch and aimed to cross the line in under 23 minutes.  A minute later, those hopes faded as the giant sucking sound of shrinking lung space grew.

During the event's eighteenth minute, people started passing me.  Not the normal handful who cruised by my hapless form during the last mile of every event, but a dozen different runners of all shapes and sizes.  At the 19:20 mark, the plague of pulmonary problems caused the lung capacity to degrade to hamster-like levels without the fuzz ball's wheel-spinning power (even worse, Dr. S's tests showed I'm allergic to long-toothed rodents too).

At minute twenty, I grabbed the top of my head with one hand, hoping to expand the constricted chest and somehow keep clumping. Striding by, a woman urged my struggling form to keep moving, telling me the finish was just ahead.  It certainly was, but not quite as she envisioned.  Just ahead proved too far and for the first time in my loser existence, I stopped.  That's right, my slug-like shape quit clumping and started walking.  The ugly reality of this morning's personal slime trail: if I kept running, the lack of oxygen might have caused a face plant into the mushy ditch beside the road.

Lacing fingers overhead, I trudged forward for a minute, wondering how the lungs had degraded to this sorry state.  Sucking in deep breaths, I felt genuine sympathy for all the blokes I've passed over the last five years as they walked the last mile of numerous races.  Up until today's gasping epiphany, I'd assumed walking runners burned themselves out; their failure to finish came from a lack of conditioning. Never, not once, had I considered that their legs might be in fantastic shape and their willpower stronger than mine, but another part of their very human form had betrayed them.

After a minute of walking, I decided to try and run the rest of Arcadia's torture trail. After another minute, huffs and puffs caused me to stop in front of a guy taking care of his lawn.

"You can do it," he said, pointing finger extending an index of inspiration toward the school.  "The finish is just around that corner."
"I can't breathe," I gasped with both hands, once again, clasped overhead.
"I can't run either.  My back gives me all kinds of problems."

With no air to reply, I turned trudging steps into a semi trot and struggled across the finish at the 25:37 mark: my worst 5k of all time.  Pure stupidity -- my greatest asset (and not just in, as you well know, jogging) -- failed to propel the beleaguered, breath-less body the required 3.1 miles.  Hitting the emergency inhaler as I drove out of Arcadia's parking lot, I realized that the pure stupidity of more effort -- which has conquered almost every physical challenge I've faced during my loser existence -- alas, would not fix this problem. Additional outdoor running, in fact, might create more challenges, rather than resolve them.

"How'd it go?" Will asked, sipping coffee on the porch as I shut the car door and walked toward our house.
"Not good.  I couldn't even finish the race."
"You didn't finish?"
"No, I had to walk part of the last mile.  I couldn't run a full 5k."
"What was your time?"
"25:37, my worst ever."
"Your worst ever?" Will said. "I'd kill to be under thirty minutes and you walk part of the race and still finish way ahead of me."
"Well, today almost killed me; I'm not sure I can run outside anymore."
"It's just the weather," she replied. "When it gets warmer, you'll be fine."
"I don't know about that," I said. "This just might be the end of mr loser."

****
Up next:  "This Not Be Your Lucky Day"

Happy 2012!

 

Degradation (2 of 3)

That afternoon, I remembered to board a flight to Boston, landed late at Logan Airport, turned the ignition key of another compact and drove through a rainstorm to the Hotel Indigo, a place famous for its steaks.  Due to another Delta-sponsored delay, I, of course, arrived too late for dinner. The next day's session went well and, after some confusion locating an actual interstate, I zoomed toward Logan as the time remaining until the departure disappeared too quickly for comfort.

With fifty minutes until takeoff, the kiosk spit out a boarding pass.

"Do you need some help?" The Delta agent asked.
"The kiosk says I need to see someone at the gate for my seat assignment. I don't get it: I had a first-class seat yesterday.  Did you guys switch planes?"
"I don't know," he replied. "But that's probably it.  Have a nice flight."

Weaving through security, I listened to a Delta rep call for Mr. Jones and Mr. Bad-Dew as I approached the departure gate.

"I'm Bad-Dew," I said, sidling up beside Jones at the counter. "Do you have my seat?"
"That's what I called you for," the Delta rep replied. "I'm sorry to inform both of you that you are no longer in first class."
"Huh?"
"Due to a computer error, we double booked the first-class seats," she said. "We've relocated you to the bulk head row in coach."
"What are you talking about?" Jones said. "I received my upgrade with an assigned seat five days ago and, now, a half hour before takeoff it disappears? Why give me an upgrade if you're just going to take it away?"
"I'm sorry Mr. Jones and apologize," the gate agent said. "To compensate you for the inconvenience, Delta is willing to issue you a travel voucher."
"Will we be able to actually use it?" I asked having journeyed into the labyrinth of voucher travel restrictions too many times.
"Yes, there are no restrictions on it." The agent said.

Right, I thought. But, already tired of arguing, I kept my mouth shut. The gate agent couldn't do anything about voucher restrictions anyway.

"I'd like to know why I got degraded when other people didn't," Jones asked. "Can you explain that to me?  Why didn't you degrade them?"
"I don't know, sir."
"All right, fine.  I'll take the voucher and the bulkhead aisle seat," Jones said.
"Tell you what," I interjected. "I'll flip you for the aisle seat."
"No, you take it," Jones said, "you've got me by at least six inches."

Due to excessive height, I sat in the bulkhead aisle seat and swapped "exciting" Delta travel tales with Jones.  Amazingly, today had been the first time in both Jones and Bad-Dew's glorious travel experience that their platinum elite wings had been clipped back to coach via a Delta degradation.  Sharing the story via text with Delta Diamond Man, Joe K., I received this message in reply.

"You are now a downgraded, preferred customer. You need to ask what the next step is when you get downgraded from coach. Maybe there's a hole in the plane like coach on Southwest."

"Is either one of you Martin?" Asked the flight attendant as the plane prepared for take off.  "I've got a first class seat open and he's next on the list."
"I'm Martin," I said.
"Ok," she replied, "you can move into 3A, Mr. Martin."
"I'm joking," I confessed.  "I'm not Martin."
"What's your name?"
"Bad-Dew."
"Hmm," she said. "I don't see that name on my upgrade list. Are you sure you're even supposed to on this flight?"

Touche, Delta, touche.

"The next name on my list is Jones," she continued, not missing a beat. "Don't even try to tell me you're Jones."
"I'm Jones," the real Jones replied.

Jones garnered the upgrade and kept the voucher while Bad-Dew remained degraded.  Another person in the rear of the plane -- Martin? -- ambled past the bulkhead and plopped into the remaining first-class seat.  A Delta employee took Jones's vacated seat beside me; I pulled out the sketchpad as we prepared to finally leave Boston. Until, of course, the captain's voice interrupted the late departure.

"Ah, folks, this is the captain speaking. I'm sorry to inform you we're going to be delayed for a few more minutes. It seems that when ground personnel refueled the jet, they put too much fuel on the plane, about 1,000 gallons too much, and we're overweight.  So we need to wait until they can come back around and take some of it off."

Twenty-five minutes later, minor fuel variance taken care of, the Captain's voice reappeared.

"Folks, you may be wondering why we're still sitting here.  Well, I don't know how to tell you this, but when the ground crew took off the extra fuel, they removed too much.  So now we're under fueled and need to wait here until they can return again and put some fuel back into the plane."

Things like this might be funny if they didn't continue causing what passes for my life to degrade and disappear.

Disappearing time led to disappearing graphite; leaving more than two hours behind schedule enabled me to make significant sketch progress.  Seeing my scrawling ways, the flight attendant who "refused" to upgrade Bad-Dew became a fan and brought the first-class attendant over to appraise the latest 30,000 foot hack job.
"I asked him to draw me.  I think it's pretty close," she chuckled while striking a pose.  "How about you?"
 
Landing in Detroit after 10:30 pm meant that Delta, once again, hit 100 percent for the week: four late departures and four late arrivals.

****
Tomorrow:  degradtion, Arcadia style

Degradation (1 of 3)

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
-- Bertrand Russell

Arriving late at Albany airport Monday night, I hustled to the rental-car counter. At smaller airports, things often close after 11:00 pm.

"You made it," the rep said as I handed over the license and credit card. "I've got you reserved in a compact, do you want to upgrade to an SUV?"
"Why would I do that?"  I replied. If the vehicle had four rubber wheels and one for steering, that worked just fine -- why spend more money?
"Well you're kind of, ah, tall and they're forecasting snow tomorrow.  It's only $25 to upgrade."
"Just give me what I rented, I'll be all right."

Giving myself ninety minutes to travel twenty-five miles, I felt all right the next morning until driving directly into the yawning maw of a vicious, spitting snow monster.  The closer I got to the company's facility -- a ski resort -- the more the monster roared.  Today's session, in fact, had been rescheduled twice due to inclement weather and, given the conditions, probably should have gone for a postponement hat trick.

Knuckles squeezing the steering wheel went from flesh colored to red to white as the compact car -- a dumb decision -- slid along "roads" that would have caused the most grizzled West Virginia ice trucker to break out in a cold sweat.  During an eternal half hour spinning across the winding, white, two lane, often degrading into one, state highway, the speedometer barely broke twenty, which seemed to be nineteen miles per hour too many.

Managing to somehow arrive at the facility ten minutes before the session with clean undergarments, I found the company's VP, Brad, on the lodge's second floor.

"We should have canceled," he said looking out the gigantic windows into the blizzard.  "Out of the three dates, today is the worst of all of them."

The weather cleared up, but that evening's return flight still delayed.  An overnight stay near Detroit Metro airport led to another form of degradation at breakfast the next morning.

"Where'd you come in from yesterday?" Dave asked as we sat in the Hilton Garden Inn restaurant.
"Ah," I replied searching the memory banks and finding a complete white out. "You know what, that's a really good question."
"Can't remember where you were yesterday, huh?" He replied with a laugh. "Well, I hate to say it, but I've been there, too."

****
Tomorrow:  degradation Delta style