HOME STRETCH FOR THE WIN

When travelers get to their home stretch all they want is everything to work.

Get to the airport on time, make the plane on time, and hope your ride is on time when you land.

Whether it’s two months, six weeks, or three days, coordinating transportation is chancy.

What you really want to happen is end the trip when it’s over, not deal with an extra day.

I’m stunned when it all comes together, like how does it all work seamlessly?

From all of the video on social media, like twitter, every flight has a passenger who freaks out in some unique way.

You can tell it must be unique by how many likes.

They won’t sit down and place their seat in a forward upright locking position with their tray folded and small bags under the seat in front of them.

Maybe they’re off their meds, had a few too many in the airport bar, or something else like maladjusted.

Go ahead and take maladjusted off the panel because if you make it on the plane after checking your bag, getting a boarding pass, and going through security, you’ve had plenty of chances to snap.

Your bag was overweight so you need to pay more or open it up and dump a few things. Snap.

You decline a printed boarding pass because you’ve got it on your smart phone. But you didn’t check the battery. Snap.

For some reason your TSA pre-check didn’t show up and you have to take the long route, take your shoes off, empty everything out of your pockets, then panic when you can’t find your wallet and phone and keys later.

Snap.

 

Human Supply Chain

Consider yourself lucky if you get out and back with no interruptions.

Lucky like 80% of travelers on particular airlines.

From nerdwallet.com:

 

If timeliness is a priority, consider booking Delta or its regional counterpart, SkyWest Airlines. Both arrived on time 83% of the time.

Skip JetBlue or Frontier, both of which only landed on schedule about 67% of the time.

 

Alaska, the preferred airline around here, is on time around 80%.

That’s the plane I was looking for last night in the PDX International cell phone parking lot, the 8:26 from Santa Barbara.

I’m sitting there watching planes fly by. Alaska, Alaska, Alaska, Alaska.

One of them’s got to be the right one.

The right one? That’s the one my wife and one of her lifelong friends is arriving on. (Hey LA Diamond)

My phone is charging, sports talk radio is on, and all I’m hoping for is a text about landing to match the one four hours earlier about arriving at the Santa Barbara airport.

It’s exciting to be a cog in the machine, the last link in the home stretch, and being on time like a big boy.

 

Before The Home Stretch

Remember the movie ‘Return of the Secaucus Seven?’

 

Seven baby boomers with ties to the antiwar movement of the ’60s get together for a weekend.

 

It was the inspiration for ‘The Big Chill.’

 

This compassionate “comedy of values” probes the growing pains of seven college housemates from the 1960s who have drifted apart.

 

For the last four days a group of women from high school and earlier gathered for their yearly meeting.

They catch up with each other, eat and drink, and plan for their next meeting.

Their resolve to stay together is inspiring in so many ways.

The glue between them is sharing a time and place growing up that flies under the radar when most people think of Los Angles.

Their town was in LA County, but not part of the city. It was a census designated place, which is another way of saying ‘unincorporated.’

The five women in the group grew up LA renegades.

None of them live in LA.

I think that’s one of their bonds: they all knew they’d grow up and live somewhere else.

Like the two movies they are all baby boomers; unlike the two movies they aren’t college friends who met where everyone was new and the bonds were desperate attempts to explain themselves to new people.

These are women who know each others’ mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters.

They are a community unto themselves where no one needs to explain anything they don’t already know.

Their bond is provided by shared life experiences and true affection for one another.

It has lasted with the addition of husbands and kids and dogs.

As a husband, and a writer writing about interesting things, or things that interest me, they are a stand-alone topic.

If I’m stumped for a blog post I think of the ladies and things start rolling, just like them.

Rolling along through highs and lows, happy and sad, they look as far from any home stretch as I imagine.

They do things, see things, and it’s like they’ve never lost a step.

My bonus points: I anticipated the time they’d get out on the Arrivals curb with their bags.

While I waited in the pick-up line I got the text and found them on my first pass.

That was my home stretch celebration.