Let me start by saying that I could have, and probably should have, been arrested once or twice during this adventure. It begins with Tara, Sage and I moving across the country to New Jersey from California for a job promotion. I'll save family travel adventures for another time.
We had barely unpacked anything before I found myself booking my first flight out of Philadelphia airport as a New Jersey citizen. Yes, New Jersey is its own country. I tend to book early flights because I enjoy ruining my day as quickly as possible. It takes the guesswork out of the question "When will the day start to suck?". The answer is.... The very minute close my car door and back out of the driveway. Let's get back to my first New Jersey travel adventure, shall we? I'm all ready for my short trip to Florida. I have an extra outfit in my bag, just in case the person next to me on the flight spills coffee on my lap (this has happened), I have my work bag and training material and I even have a morning snack for the road. I put the Philly airport address in the trusty GPS, and I'm on my way with a TON of extra time just to be safe.
I get about a mile from the house when I discover I forgot my ID, and I turn back and head home. That was a close one! Spoiler alert.... Imagine if one of these times I actually forget my ID and don't realize it until I get to the airport! Being a California boy driving in New Jersey, I immediately found that it was pretty much impossible to turn around and head in any other direction other than straight. Don't get me started on the secret "jug handles" that only the native people know about. Seriously, most of them are covered in foliage like the Bat Cave from Batman. There's a long stretch of road that I ended up being stuck on for a bit, while I sang some creative songs to myself that were made entirely of expletives. Look for the album dropping soon on iTunes titled "Where the #### #### #### can you ###ing #### in ####ing New Jersey!" Most of the tracks are sing-a-longs , and there's some kid friendly songs on the album as well. Anyway, suddenly my time buffer to get to the airport disintegrated, and I was no longer on a leisurely drive.
I'd like to pause here for one moment and let the defense enter into evidence the fact that it was about 4am, and very dark. Let the record also reflect that there may or may not have been snow. And if it pleases the court, EVERY house on our street that I had lived on now for only 1 week at this point looks identical in every regard, right down to the last detail! Okay, that last part is a lie. In any event, it's important that you know that I was very tired and it was very dark.
In a rush, I pull into our driveway and barrel roll out of the car and onto my feet for a dash to the front door. I fumble with my new set of keys for a second, which I was also still familiarizing myself with. I find the winning silver key and thrust it into the knob. The entire knob turns as I turn the key to unlock it. This only means one thing. Tara forgot to lock the front door! Someone could have just walked right into our house! I take one step in through the door and flip on the light, and I'm instantly disorientated and confused. Did we get new furniture within that last 35 minutes? And whose family is in that photo frame to my right? Before I could even say "Oh, shit! I'm a burglar!", this huge bear something-or-other comes charging down the stairs to eat me. I'm an intruder. I'm in the wrong house!
In a panic, I slam the door, fly down the steps of the porch to the driveway and pull a Dukes of Hazard into the Maxima. I throw the car into reverse as the lights flash on in the upstairs bedroom. I peel out of the driveway just as the curtains start rustling. Am I busted? I drive past my real house and head off into the darkness with my headlights off, leaving the scene of the crime. What the hell do I do now? I can't just break into my next door neighbor's house (whom I never met, by the way) and then casually pull in next door to my own house while my neighbor watched from his bedroom window! I'd be the worst criminal EVER! So I decide to wait him out. I park down the street and crouch down in case the police fly down the street looking for heads in a parked white Maxima. This was my strategy. Never mind that the neighbor would eventually see my car parked in the driveway of my own house at some point in the future. I decided that I will need to have my car painted before I come back home from my trip.
My trip?! That's right, I have a plane to catch! I need to find a way to get back into my house to get my ID still. Should I go through the other neighbor's backyard and sneak around to my garage? Sure, why not trespass through my other next door neighbor's backyard like a true pathological criminal? Let's all welcome the Truax family to our formally crime-free neighborhood!
I decided to park up the street from the house a bit, and casually walk up to my front door unsuspiciously-like without a vehicle at 430am. This seemed like a better option than terrorizing more of my new neighbor's. And so I walk into MY house for a change. Tara wakes up and asks me what I forgot. I tell her to make sure she locks the front doors from now on, and I run out the door with ID in hand, and then up the street to my car. I think at some point I text Tara and tell her that I broke into the neighbor's house, and asked her to keep an eye on the guy and see if he acts weird if she sees him outside. Probably the weirdest text message that she got from me that entire morning. She tells me that I need to apologize to him when I get back from my trip. I consider it, but then decide that if the cops don't come by my house looking for me before I get back later that week, I'm in the clear. I'm back on the road again, and I just remembered that I need to get gas in the car on the way. I knew that before my crime spree. But, before all that bs happened, I still had plenty of time. It turns out that when you hide out and wait for the heat to blow over, it's a total time killer. I could probably make it to the airport, but then again, I know there's a gas station right here on the corner, and who knows if there will be more than just that one within 20 miles?
I pull in to the gas station, and get out of the car. Gas is way cheaper here than in California, although this particular gas station always seemed a little sketch. Right on cue, this homeless guy approaches me as I walk towards my gas tank. I look around and notice, there's absolutely NO ONE else in existence at this time. No cars on the road, no lights on in the convenience store part of the gas station, no one else getting gas, nothing. And it's dark. It's not even five in the morning. It's "Hills Have Eyes" type of deserted. I've never been a murder victim before. So this guy walks towards me on a collision course. He is definitely going to ask me for something. Keep it together, Mike, they can smell fear. He is now standing a foot away from me, and slowly inching closer as I reach casually for the gas nozzle. He says something to me that I don't understand, so I say, "Hi". He says, "Hi" back, then stares at me uncomfortably. It was the kind of uncomfortable that a guy experiences while in the men's restroom when someone chooses to use the urinal adjacent to the one that you are using, even though the restroom is otherwise unoccupied, and there are like 3 dozen available urinals that they passed up just so they could choose the one next to you. Like that, but add more of a sense of danger.
So I ask him what he needs, and he says without hesitation, "Money". I knew it! I tell him that I don't have any money, and he looks at me with bewilderment. So I explain that I don't have any cash on me, just a credit card. I assume that this is enough to send the gentleman on his way, but he continues to stand next to me in my personal space. I go to swipe my credit card at the pump, thinking that I'll just get a few gallons of gas to get me to civilization, when he grabs my credit card and says, "Give it to me!".
It's going down! I'm getting mugged at my first time at a gas station since moving here! The crime in this neighborhood is unreal.
At this point I should let you know something that I did not know at the time, and it's kind of important. It is illegal in New Jersey to pump your own gas. I can' tell you the pucker factor of the situation up to, and ending with, this kind gentleman pumping gas for me. He was indeed a graveyard shift gas attendant, and I had broken yet another law in less than an hour. He asks me to go sit in my car, so I do. As I'm sitting, I google gas stations in New Jersey to understand better what just happened. Next I text a sleeping Tara, "FYI, you can't pump your own gas here. Also, I almost got in a fist fight with a homeless gas attendant. And if anyone comes by looking for me, you haven't seen me in weeks." I can only imagine Tara reading that message and wondering how moving across country had changed me as a person. She must have felt as though she never really knew me. I'm dangerous.
So after this short stop to commit more drive-thru criminal activity, I was again on my way to the Philadelphia Airport. There you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. As I neared the off ramp to the airport, I found myself traversing the 95 freeway craters which looked as though this stretch of freeway was previously used for military tank training. I was impressed with my defensive driving skills until hitting a pothole the size of Rhode Island. As the car bottomed out, my only thought was for the safety of other drivers on the road. If I were to get a flat tire less than a mile from the airport, there's no question that my quick downward spiral into crime would have escalated to a carjacking.
Alas, no flat tire, so on I go towards the bright lights of the airport parking. Here's a quick driving tip when coming to the Philly airport, I've found that if you want to get where you're going, you need to do the complete opposite of what the signs are telling you to do. That's a free tip from me to you. Enjoy.
What last minute drive to the airport would be complete without a desperate, and hopelessly futile attempt to find parking? What is great about the parking structure, is that there's a digital readout on a sign facing the Main Street, and it tells you how many spots are left. I say that it's great, except for that one time that you are running late, and find out that there aren't REALLY 2,500 open parking spaces in parking lot "C", because as I found out, they were resetting the computer for parking lot "C", and 2,500 is just the total number of spots. What about parking lot "F", you say? Only losers park there. I found out that if you drive past parking lot "F", you are immediately ejected onto the freeway heading faster than you'd want to be going in the wrong direction. They say that if you drive past parking lot "F" unintentionally..... You got "F"d.
Your last parking option (after taking a leisurely circle around the airport on the freeway) is the forgotten land of the "economy parking". I found out that this wasteland is significantly further than it looks. Definitely further than my arch enemy, parking lot "F". But when you are out of options, and your plane is boarding in less than 30 minutes, you will park at economy parking, and you will like it. In economy parking you will see abandoned vehicles, because people either can't find them, or decided to give up getting back to them. Eventually they will naturally decompose, or be sold for scrap. See, the problem with economy parking, is that it's nowhere near Terminal B, which is where I needed to be in less than 5 minutes.
I'm not much of a runner, and I'm even less of one with luggage. I could see the airport off in the distance like a mirage in the desert. And so I run....I run so far away. "Where the #### is this place?!" I scream, exactly 45 seconds into my run. "And why do they have to name these terminals in alphabetical order?!" So I get my cardio in for the month. I didn't think I could still run a six minute mile, especially as a Sherpa. I make it to the security gate covered in sweat from my impromptu half-marathon. I can't be certain, but I'm guessing the TSA guy inspecting my license thought it a little suspicious that I'm dripping with sweat while an airport police officer and his dog are standing just four feet away from me. And so I'm handed a red bin and told to go wait in the "special" screening line. I suppose if I were to say, "Time is running out!", it would have been taken the wrong way at that moment.
I wait in the special line with the rest of the special people. They open my bag, pat me down, and wipe me all over with little wipe thingies. I have been sterilized. I no longer pose a threat to myself or others. Little did they know about my morning, or who I was. I was a wanted fugitive in my neighborhood and boarding a plane to who knows where? Florida, that's right. That's where my syndicate is based. I successfully navigated the airport security part of my travel. That part is always the wildcard. You can plan for a lot of things, but you can't predict that piece of your trip, so don't even try. But there was no elderly lady with 13 sweaters to take off and run through the X-ray machine in front of me on this trip. No, I'm through security, my plane was about to start boarding in 5 minutes, and I was in the clear. Everything that led up to this moment was just a fading memory now. For me at least. As far as Tara was concerned, she was at home and branded an accessory to burglary, and would spend the next two days peeking out the window through the blinds and avoiding people.
As I jog to my gate, I see a closed door with a plane that was pulling out away from the ramp. Must be a flight delay. My plane is obviously about to pull in once this riffraff plane moves out of the way. Then, I hear arguing. It sucks when you miss your plane, but it happens. People need to just accept it. There's no need to embarrass yourself by yelling at the ticketing folks about it. Wait, what? That was my plane to Florida that just left! "What kind of f###ery is this?!" I yell. "It is supposed to be BOARDING now, not LEAVING now!"
"That's what we've been telling them!" Yelled back other yelling passengers that were yelling. So there was yelling going on. Altogether, 30 passengers, including myself, were left stranded and yelling at the airport, and forced to watch our plane slowly back away from the gate like some sadistic torture. A man had his arms outstretched and forehead against the glass window overlooking the Tarmac. One lonely tear glided down the glass. Then there was a sharp voice that said, "Listen up, people! Your plane is gone, and we can't bring it back." This was followed promptly by an airlines representative pointing to her right, towards a long ass line of people waiting to complain, and yell. Some decided to forego to wait, and simply yelled in place to themselves, which prompted others to do the same, like lone wolves howling in the night. I navigated my way around these yelling statues, and took my place in the line of passengers whose frustration levels had gone nuclear. The heat from the anger in this line radiated throughout the rest of the terminal. A young boy dragging his teddy bear behind him cautiously approached the line holding a marshmallow on a long stick.
As it turns out, our plane pulled away from the gate 25 minutes early. To this day, it is an unsolved conspiracy. It didn't make any news headlines, and you won't find any information about it on the Internet. You won't hear any presidential candidates debating about it, and you'll never hear people whisper about it at parties. You won’t see anyone wearing a trendy rubber “remember flight 1710” bracelet, or see any new tv shows on the Discovery Channel about the phenomena of airplanes taking off without passenger. But for the 30 of us, 31 of us... if you count me, we will never have answers. Some people say that the entire Phillies baseball team was hurried onto the plane in our place, so they could make their game against the Florida Marlins. Others will speculate something, something, something.... aliens. Some will argue that ice cream sprinkles are really called "Jimmies", and those people are the wrongest of all. I'll never know what happened that morning of March the somethingeth, two-thousand and whatever, but for the 50 of us that were left behind at gate C31, 60 of us if you count stand-by, we will always remember that day as the first time I pulled off a home invasion. Weird that I said it like that. First time?