I’m supposed to be writing this drop from my mother’s basement right now instead of my labcabincalifornia, but I PU~’d on some major league shit. I lost so badly that I have insured myself some great wins this summer.
Here’s whut had happened…
When I left my apartment on Wednesday afternoon I was under pressure to get to Philadelphia before 7pm. My flight to Atlanta was leaving the city of brotherly love [ll] at 7:30pm. I scored the most ridiculous fare for a roundtrip ticket but that meant I had to fly in and out of Philadelphia International Airport. Since I was going to be in Philly next week for the Roots picnic it all made sense (no Common Sense) to use Philly as the jump off and return point.
Since the Roots makes the jump on the daily I overestimated my ability to get in to Philadelphia with the quickness. The Roots make these trips in caravans. I was making the trip using my old school route of taking NJ Transit to the SEPTA trains. Before I could leave NYC though I had a trunk full of packages that I had to mail off. Some of these folks have been waiting for my snail mail for weeks already. If I didn’t get these joints out now it would be another two weeks of them sitting in my car trunk or maybe longer depending on my cash flow.
After I left the post office I got on the highway and motored to Chocolate Snowflake’s rest on Eastern Parkway. The traffic was pretty smooth and I landed a nifty parking spot with a day to spare on the alternate side of the street regulations. The big problem was that that it was now 4pm and the NJ Transit train to Trenton that I needed to be on in order to make my flight was leaving Penn Station at 4:01pm. I realized right there that I had failed so I just sat in the car in stock silence, pissed off by my every heartbeat.
I called Dukes up and told her that I was missing my flight. Dukes was sad that I wasn’t coming but she understood and she kind of played it off too by telling me to plan my visit for early July when her sister and her husband (yeah, my aunt and uncle) would be leaving and she would be alone again. The truth party people is that because I am the Black Peter Pan I fly by the seat of my pants. The $200 cash in my pocket (minus the $43 I spent at the post office) was the last of my money at the moment. I have a few dollars in my checking acoount, but I have no access to those bucks because I lost my ATM card the other day and it takes bootlegg ass WaMu 7 business days to mail you a new card.
Are you getting the picture? I’m obviously not built to be traveling right now. I am looking at my situation right now as some kind of providence or divine intervention. I’m ready to go back to Freeport and self-medicate with some Nathan’s cheese fries and a Dutch Master. Even if I made the flight to Atlanta I was scrambling to have one of my peeps snatch me up at the airport and drop me off at Duke’s crib. My homie MarcusSpekt was going to oblige me even though we both know that takes him a ways from his rest. I don’t like to feel like I’m not pulling my weight, and since I weigh over 300lbs. that means I need to come correct or stay the fux home.
God bless C.S.’s heart. When I told her I was going back to Freeport she went into SuperWoman internets surfer mode to try to find me another flight or some other kind of way at getting back on my feet. When I am depressed or upset she is the one that suffers disproportionately because she is the only one that gives a fux about me all the time. I was resisting her help though and she could tell that all I wanted to do was go back home and remove myself from the radar. C.S. is a smart girl too and she knows me almost as well as anyone who has ever tried to figure me out. She chided me for quitting when the going got tough. And told me that at worst I needed to make sure that Delta didn’t cancel my ticket completely.
I called the Delta Airlines customer service line and I reached Pakistan or Iraq or wherever they have their call center based. I gave the representative my flight info and told her that I needed my flight changed to the following morning since I was going to miss the plane departing at 7:30pm this evening. The Delta rep then informed me that my flight had been delayed twice. First to 8:30pm and then to 10:50pm. Holy shit! Could this be redemption? Chocolate Snowflake was right. I need to start believing in myself more often. I called C.S. and told her the news then I spirited myself to Penn Station to make my move to Philly. C.S. checked the Amtrak schedule and told me there was a train leaving Penn at 8pm and arriving at the 30th Street Station at 9:30pm that would allow me to make my flight. Atlanta here I come.
At the Amtrak window I learned that the $45 ticket advertised on the web had to be reserved with a confirmation number. Without that number my ticket was $64 instead. After I bought the ticket I went to Au Bon Pain to get myself soup and a sandwich since I hadn’t eaten all day. I really wanted Nathan’s but that would have required me leaving Penn Station and possibly missing this train. As it was I boarded the packed train with two minutes left to spare. I sat in the front car where there were some empty seats. It turns out that the reason the front car was empty was because Amtrak has some shit called business class so either I shlep all my shit to the back or I pay the step-up charges. Fuck it I pays.
Good thing for me too that I ponied up the extra scrilla because something in that Au Bon Pain food gave me the wickedest bubble. You already know that I’m like the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls in that I have no problem winning away from home. I did a little remedial wipe down before I took off my shirt to settle in. You should always do a little wipe off even if everything looks glossy. You don’t want to get the Swine flu on your ass from one of these dudes that pissed all over the toilet seat. Hindudes and white are good for that shit. Like putting all kinds of paper products in the toilets and urinals. What kind of retard puts paper towels in a urinal? The bubble took the solid play from my game and made it mushy. I think I spotted some corn. That would have been from Chipotle burrito the day prior. At least my intestinal clock is on time. FTW.
The train arrives in Philadelphia at 9:45 and I hop in a cab on the 29th Street side of the train station. My cabbie was the dude too and he whipped me to the airport like he was on some shit. I wasn’t mad at him either so I put a little $6 on my $30 tab. The Delta check-in desk was vacated when I walked through the doors. There was a brother mopping the floor and that was all. I walked outside of the terminal and looked around for someone I thought I could ask a question. I was the only one there. I still had 30-something minutes to catch my plane though so I was going to find someone to help me get to the gate. The woman at the information desk in Terminal A told me to walk to Terminal C since Terminal A was closed.
*sidebar: Philadelphia has some of the ugliest white people I have ever seen. Not everyone is as ugly as this lady, but just in general there are mad fugly white in Philly. What the fuck is the deal over there?*
The TSA girl at the security desk wearing the bootlegg BeYonce bulletproof weave informed me that all Delta flights leave from Terminal A only so I would need to walk my ass back to Terminal A if I was flying on Delta. As I walked back to Terminal A, I urinated on the empty security booth outside of Terminal B. When I got back into Terminal A I checked the arrivals – departure board for the information on my flight. Not a blip. As I stood at the empty counter I decided to call Delta’s customer service line again for my information. After what was literally an eternity some mid-western Becky picked up my call. I gave her my info and asked her where I would catch my plane. She placed me on hold for another eternity and returned telling me that my flight had left on time. She was obviously lying, but she held all the cards in this game and I was betting against the house. I sat down and cursed my very heartbeat.
I could have been in the comfort of my home feeling this shitty. Actually no, I could have been in the comfort of my home, on the internets, high, drunk, making Nathan’s cheese fries farts in my Herman Miller Aeron chair. Instead I’m here in Philadelphia without a pot to piss in, well, I could always piss on the empty security booth, but you get my point. So here it is 11pm and I have to go back home or sleep on this bench like the bum that I am. On this night I opted for the former. I hope I can get back to NYC with the $33 left in my pocket. SEPTA to Trenton was $10, NJ Transit to Penn Station was $12.50 and the Long Island Railroad to Freeport was $7 cash. I got back into my apartment at 4am too tired to smoke or drink a damn thing. My day was such a major PU~ that I am excited for the rest of the summer.
Like I’ve told you before, I lose in order to win.
