On the flight to Vermont, the head cold spawned by the bad night's sleep in Ft. Lauderdale continued expanding, growing into a full-blown sinus headache. Swallowing aspirin and swilling cold medicine, I ambled through the Burlington airport's freezing parking garage, hopped in the rental and drove snow-covered roads toward Grand Isle, VT. When I booked this project, the client told me the best way to reach their facility was flying into Burlington and then taking the ferry from Grand Isle across Lake Champlain to Plattsburgh, NY.
Avoiding the possibility of GPS recalculations, I followed printed MapQuest directions to the ferry dock without incident.
"How much?" I asked the skull-cap wearing booth attendant.
"It's nine fifty one way or eighteen for a round trip."
"Ok, let me get a roundtrip," I said, pulling out my credit card.
"Sorry, no credit cards, cash or check only."
Looking in the wallet -- a place where cash is often in very short supply -- I found, praise quantitative easing, fifteen big ones. Plunking down the moola for a one-way voyage, I wondered where I would secure the necessary funds to travel back across the lake in two days. The ferry arrived a few minutes later; shivering dock hands waved all the vehicles aboard, including a couple semis with trailers. Tucked into a tight spot on the side of the boat -- port? starboard? leeward? who the hell knows? -- I turned off the lights and engine and looked out the window into complete and total darkness.
A minute into the voyage, weather generated waves caused the craft to bob and weave like a drunken boxer. Things grew progressively worse; my stomach gurgled. Desperation for the awesome power of Sprite rose as the twelve-minute ferry ride became yet another trip into the travel twilight zone. I'd been on ferries before, but never inside a car, never at night and never during winter. Trapped with nothing but my own thoughts -- always a horrifying place -- I envisioned what would happen if the ferry started sinking (e.g., I'd roll down the car window, pull my soaked form from the steel tomb and then, of course, experience a hideous death courtesy of hypothermia, drowning or both). Steam-breath fogged the windows and claustrophobia grew as the craft slammed through wave after wave and spray sloshed over the vessel's sides.
We docked in NY without incident and wheels spun across pavement as I left the ferry of fear. Never, not once in my existence, had I been happier to be stuck in a rental car in the middle of nowhere. The next day, we held sessions in upstate New York and traveled across the border into Quebec for another. Following sensi-Wally's advice, I kept my big mouth shut at the border and handed over the passport. It took approximately sixty seconds to make it through the incredible security between the US and Canada.
Begging off dinner with the company representative, I consumed an over-the-counter drug cocktail and crashed in the hotel room without exercising. The hotel solved my monetary problem by adding twenty bucks to my room charge and handing me a crisp twenty dollar bill the next morning: enough to cover the return ferry voyage and a couple cases of Sprite. With Lake Champlain much calmer and the skies much sunnier, the return trip proved almost pleasant, if not for that nagging vision of drowning still floating around my addled psyche and the pain of a throbbing skull.
The return flight and drive home proved absolute head-throbbing misery -- ramming an ice pick through my cranium seemed the only way to relieve the constant pain. Dr. R. settled the manner the next day: sinus infection. The proscribed treatment required a double daily dose of anti-biotics for the next two weeks. Luckily, with Christmas and New Year's on the immediate horizon, I didn't need to fly (i.e., change the pressure inside my head) until January's first week. Take it from me, when you get a sinus infection, avoid airplane travel even if that means missing the unmitigated thrill of scaring yourself silly bouncing across Lake Champaign through a pitch-black night in a rocking and rolling ferry boat.
Swallowing a hefty pill, I strolled out to the mailbox the next day and found an envelope from Delta containing this
Ah, the glamorous life.
***
Up next, lots more stupidity to share
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