Matt and I got up at 3:45 a.m. to drive the 80-odd miles from Binghamton to Syracuse to return a rental car and hop a plane to a plane to Oakland, CA. There was so much fog on 81 North that I was white-knuckled by the time I pulled into the rental car return at the airport. Anyone who has driven on a highway in dense fog at night with nothing but tractor-trailers on the road knows what I’m talking about. Only after I pried my fingers off the steering wheel did I feel a sense of happiness about the two of us remaining alive. We schlepped our bags to the United check-in and tried to, well, check in. Turns out our flight from Chicago to Oakland was cancelled and they took the liberty of putting us on another flight that would trap us at the airport for over four hours. “Nay.” said I. “Get us to San Francisco instead!” They did, and it was on a 747, to boot. Oh, the joy of those large planes with their multiple lavatories and wide aisles! I became nostalgic for the days when there were lots of large planes in service on US routes, and one would encounter them often. United also upgraded us from Economy to Economy Plus, giving us 5 glorious extra inches of legroom. Things were looking up, indeed. How we got those dozen ears of sweet corn from Pennsylvania through security twice I’ll never know.
