Back to Philadelphia

"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley
And leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy,"
Robert Burns

My plan was to leave the car at a parking garage near the airport, return to Philadelphia today by plane, and then fly back to Los Angeles with Elise on Saturday, the 11th.
Here's the story:
Several years ago I received a phone call from a professor at Penn who wanted to know if I had any stories that would fit into his curriculum. It just so happened that I did have two stories that met that criteria, and he liked them so much that he continued to invite me back every year to tell the same two stories to his new class. One of the stories was a wedding story, and a few months ago he asked me if I would tell this story at his daughter's wedding this summer. I explained to him that this would be impossible since I would be traveling from late July through October. A month or two later he called again and said that he would really like me to tell this story at the wedding, and he would pay for my transportation back and forth from wherever I was if I would come and tell this story. I was about to explain that I still couldn't do it because I had no idea where I would be on any given date. The only fixed time in my itinerary was the weekend of September 11, when Elise was to fly out to Los Angeles to finish my trip with me.
He then told me that the wedding was scheduled for September 10, so it seemed that it was possible for me to do it after all and I agreed to do it.

I made all the necessary arrangements to leave LA on Wednesday the 8th, and on Tuesday evening, I set my GPS for the parking garage where I planned to leave my car until my return three days later on the 11th.
Unfortunately the little lady in my GPS evidently had ideas of her own. After a 10 minute ride, she announced, "You have now arrived at your destination."
I looked around. I was not on the street I had requested. I was not near the street I had requested, which according to the clerk at the hotel was about 40 minutes from the hotel, not 10 minutes. I then tried punching in the intersection nearest to the parking garage. The GPS said there was no such intersection. Finally I punched in just one of the two streets of the intersection, and the GPS did take me there. Unfortunately, I still had no idea where the cross street was.
The only good news was that I had left the hotel at 6:30 AM, so I still had hopes of getting to the airport somewhere around 8:00 or at least 9:00 for my 10:00 flight.
Then I got lucky. I found a guy leaning against a pole in a parking lot of some company and asked him if he had any idea how to get from where I was to where I wanted to go. He did. He said, "It's a long way from here, but just follow this street that you're on and you'll get there eventually." Filled with renewed hope , I set off, and sure enough after driving a few miles, I found myself at the parking garage. What a relief! I was at the airport by 8:15.

I thought it would be clear sailing from there, but this was evidently not meant to be my day for clear sailing. My plane was to take me to Milwaukee from where I would make a connection to Philadelphia. At about 9:30, however, they announced that the plane needed a new tire and that it would be leaving an hour later than scheduled. This meant that I - and a lot of other people as well - would not be able to make the connecting flight. As a result there was a long and very slowmoving line at the airline counter as the two flight attendants took people one at a time and found other transportation for them. I was near the end of the line and got into a long conversation with a young Afro-American woman who was also going to Philadelphia. We had plenty of time to talk about anything and everything. The most interesting part, actually, was her explaining about a childrearing system which she was using with her 2-year-old. The basic concept was that instead of giving the child toys that did things, one should give their child materials with which the child could do things, and the adults should pretty much practice a certain amount of benign neglect to allow the child to figure out what to do with the materials. This would encourage the child's creativity and self-reliance.
While we stood there, the plane was delayed another 45 minutes until the new tire arrived and they could put it on, not that this mattered to us, since we had already missed any chance of making the scheduled connection in Milwaukee.

By the time we finally got to the front of the line, the airline attendant said that they would put both of us on a US Air plane that was flying direct to Philadelphia at 1:15, just a couple hours from then. HURRAH! That was a good deal! And by the time we walked to a different terminal and stopped for lunch, there was hardly any waiting time before we boarded the plane. At lunch my new friend, who had had her water bottle for which she had paid four dollars confiscated when she went through security, went to Starbucks and requested that they replace the bottle. Evidently they weren't too responsive, because although I was standing somewhat away from the counter, I saw her break down in tears. When she rejoined me - with her new bottle of water -I asked her if the tears were an act, but she said, "No, but the lady wasn't very nice when I first asked her and so I just lost it. Sometimes that happens when I get upset. I lose it, but then I get it back."

On the plane coming back I sat beside a lady who was reading a Kindle, the computerized library from Amazon. I asked her about it and she enthusiastically explained all of the various things it would do - or at least all of the ones she knew about. As if bookstores aren't having enough trouble competing with online booksellers, now there's the Kindle, which does indeed seem to be the future of reading, at least for heavy readers and people who like to read while traveling.

I made a good connection with the train at the Philadelphia airport to 30th street station but then had a long wait for the train to W. Mt. Airy. I got home around 11:20, tired but happy to see Elise and to sleep in my own bed.