On the last day of my visit to New York last year, I was pondering how to get to the airport: taxi or subway?¹ I had dinner with friends the night before, and they assured me the subway was great. One of them even checked out the MTA website to make sure the line was running normally. It was.
So the next morning I headed out to the subway station and… the train to JFK had left one minute before I got there. So I twiddled my fingers for half an hour waiting for the next one. It trundled along and… somehow, I still don’t know how,² I missed my stop. Unfortunately, the next stop after JFK is about ten minutes away across Jamaica Bay. So I stewed for ten minutes. My only lucky break came when we finally got to the next station: a train heading in the other direction was only a minute away. So I got on the train and stewed for another ten minutes, by which time my schedule was starting to get kind of tight. Finally I got off, took the airport shuttle to the terminal, and then walked ten miles to the check-in area, time running out the entire way.³ Eventually I got there, but not before I tripped and fell down an escalator because I was in a real rush by then.
A harrowing story, no? But there was one bright spot: I managed to be so late that I saw the sun rising over the airport on the way back across Jamaica Bay. So here is today’s photo memorializing that crappy morning: a plane landing just after sunrise at JFK airport.
¹I suppose most people would just take a taxi and not give it another thought. After all, it’s not as if money was an issue. But I really like subways.
²My best guess is that I got caught up in taking a picture of something and wasn’t paying attention.
³OK, not really. But damn, it sure seemed like ten miles.
