Exit Strategy

I didn't get the chance to post this right away when it happened, then I simply forgot about it since then. I'm post-dating this update so it falls properly into the chronology. So although it's about 3 weeks late, here's the story of my eventful voyage from Sydney to Sint Maarten.

Knowing I could find the cheapest ride to the airport via shuttle, I searched the internet for the cheapest ones. Twelve Australian dollars was the total for a shuttle called JetBus that would pick me up at the door and take me directly to the airport – much better than the 40+ dollars for the cost of a taxi. Accounting for an hour to make the 45-minute drive to the airport, two hours before the flight left, and another 30 minutes in case traffic was very bad, I told the shuttle to arrive 3 hours and 15 minutes before my flight was planning to take off. Twenty minutes after they were supposed to pick me up I rang the company to politely ask what the story was and to see when I would be picked up. After being on hold for no more than a minute, the man on the other end said the driver was 15 minutes away and coming to pick me up now. 30 minutes later, I call them back and sternly asked where my ride was. He paged the driver and told me the street he was on and said he would be there in about 5 but no more than 10 minutes later. At this point Steve saw me getting a bit uneasy and demanded we play cards. 15 minutes later I hear a car honking at me across the street. I threw my bags in the car and after saying thank you and goodbye to Steve, stepped in the back seat for a very awkward car ride.

As he was an hour late, I really didn't feel like speaking to him at all and kept every conversation to a minimum. I told him where I needed to go, what airline I was going on, answered a couple of his questions in about 3 words or less, and left it at that. I didn't really care about anything else he was saying and frankly as a customer I didn't want to hear it. Throughout the trip, he openly admitted that he wasn't going to take this job but had a friend coming in on a flight and thus decided to take it so he could meet his friend at the airport and make some money along the way. In light of the heavy traffic, the driver said that he would take the back roads. This was fine by me until he admitted that he was doing a bit of guess work. He felt comfortable guessing from his 11 years of taxi driving experience in Sydney... which ended 16 years ago. It would have also been fine had he been using GPS or a map. It might have even been alright if he wasn't cursing the other drivers on the road and making U-turns. I might have even gotten out of the car somewhat satisfied if he'd looked for the airline entrance for more than a few seconds before telling me that “that's good enough, it shouldn't be too far from here.” Because I accounted for so much extra time, I checked in and made it to my gate with a few minutes left over to watch some olympic curling before boarding.

I managed to have an open seat beside me on the way to Honolulu and was therefore able to sleep on the way there. I already wrote about getting in touch with people in St Maarten and eating sushi with Meg and Conor but I didn't mention that the airlines had lost my guitar. When I got onto the plane that evening bound for Charlotte, it was the same story – another empty seat beside me which is always conducive to sleep. By the time I made it to Charlotte the next morning, the temperature was 31F and about 90% of the people in the airport were wearing heavy winter coats and gloves as opposed to my shorts and (thank goodness!) thin sweatshirt. Anytime a door would open to the outside I would bundle up tight and rub the exposed skin on my legs to keep warm. It wasn't until the plane took off that I was finally at ease again about the weather, knowing that I was on my way to sunny blue skies.

At baggage claim, I filled out a form for my missing guitar giving them all the information I had in order to get in touch with me. The crew house I ended up in had an ample amount of beds so I grabbed a bite to eat and settled in for what I thought was only going to be a short time before finding an apartment.