(Sending from an Internet cafe that was one difficult puppy to find. Thank heaven that on this one day we have a guide who’s showing us the sights and keeping us from stumbling into the wrong places — which in this city do abound.)

—–

After a chill, miserable night in the Miami airport, I was finally on my way to Parts Unknown on Friday morning.

The first sign of things finally going well in a very un-American way was when the airline (based in my destination country) handed out free breakfasts. No $10 meal charge. Sure, the mealettes were composed of the same general approximation of food that all air travelers know and hate. But they were accompanied by — gasp! — actual metal utensils. You know, the kind with sharp points and edges.

You’ll be very relieved to know that not a single passenger picked up his butter knife and tried to hijack the plane (although I can well understand Kent McManigal’s point in a comments section a few days ago that, if sufficiently poked, prodded, inconvenienced, and officially assaulted in an airport, he could “kill with tweezers.”)

I reached the ground safely, and even before I was out of the jetway felt the embrace of warm tropical air. Home!

My second sign of things un-American came when I handed my customs declaration form to the agent at the counter next to the xray machine. On the line asking if I was importing any “fruits, trees, snails, spores” or whatever it said, I had scrupulously confessed to having an apple and a bags of dried fruit in my bag. Figured it was better to ‘fess right up and have my precious dried apricots taken away than it would be to have them discovered as contraband in a random luggage search. But the bored agent took my form, turned it face-down on the stack without looking at it and waved me toward the airport door.

—–

Now, it’s just after dawn on my second day and I’m writing from my $8 hostel room. It’s 7:00 and the air is already sticky, though comfortably cool.

The window next to the bed opens out onto a courtyard of crumbling brick, tin roofs, rusted iron railings, rubble, and ferns that grow from cracks in the walls. Makeshift electrical wiring crisscrosses the open space, as it does in nearly every ally and street in the neighborhood.

Lorri and I are spending our first few days in the old-town area of the city. For $8 a night apiece, we weren’t expecting much and as you can imagine, we’re getting what we expected. Our room is very … er, basic. The bathroom’s down the hall. You bring your own soap. The shower is one temperature — cold (but not so cold, here in the tropics, that it makes you want to jump and shout). And I’ll have to cut this entry short because there isn’t even an electrical outlet in the room. But it’s clean and safe and it’s leaving us enough money to spend our money on tourist geegaws and fantastic food, instead.

Old town is the strangest mix of horrifying slum and gentrification. To get into the district, you pass through barrio of a degree that’s hard for an American brain to adapt to. The buildings were once beautiful, in a sort of Frenchish, Spanishish, Portugesish colonial style. But now they’re falling down around their residents (who are mostly swarming in the narrow streets).

Once through that scary place, the main part of the district is … well, just like that. But next to those buildings will be their restored cousins, resplendant with balconies, cornices, french doors, and signs advertising them for sale or rent at big-city prices. We’ve already met one young restauranteur from New York who rents his New Orleans-style apartment for $1700 a month. And that’s only about two blocks from our humble hostel.

One block will be swarming with American and European tourists. On the next, nobody but natives. On these streets, I’m forever expecting somebody to panhandle us. But it hasn’t happened.

The closest thing to that comes in the touristy streets and plazas, where craftspeople lay out their wares. Tiny ladies of an Indian tribe, in full regalia, constitute the largest subgroup of these folks. And once they make eye contact, they will not let you go. “T’ree dollah!” they insist (though they may otherwise speak not a word of English. Or “Cinco dollah!” if they think you might be Spanish or Italian.

Lorri and I explain that we’re not going to buy any of their wares today because we’re going to travel to their part of the country shortly and will buy there. To a woman, they utterly ignore that, though we do our best to explain in bits of what we hope is common language. “Six dolloras!” they continue to implore. “You buy.”

Sometimes, we do buy. What the heck. We’re tourists after all.

I have to cut this short now because I don’t know when I’ll next see an electrical plug. But I’m having a ball here already. Ask me later whether it’s great enough here to make up for those repulsive U.S. airport experiences. Sigh. I don’t look forward to the second round of them on the way back. But I’m loving this.

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After being stranded all night in the airport, I was among the first in line when the ticket counter opened this morning. Got a confirmed seat number, so I guess my stand-by status is safely removed.

Zipped through TSA at 5:00 a.m., this time without a bit of patting, pawing, swabbing, or questioning, despite having a Deadly Comb in my carry-on. (They still have posters up here showing tweezers, nail clippers, and certain types of combs as “dangerous weapons”; I’m actually not sure my all-plastic comb counts among the forbidden. I thought much of that silliness had been done away with a while back. Deadly Assault Tweezers? Who knew?)

The frigid night on the terminal floor and some of the world’s most uncomfortable benches didn’t do bunches of good for my health. I feel as if I’m coming down with something. But a few hours’ sleep and an infusion of hot, sweet tea might resolve that. Fingers crossed …

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(This is another one I wrote before the trip and scheduled for posting. Didn’t think I’d have ‘Net access today, but since I’m still sitting around in airports, I do. For the moment. Oh, the adventures …)

—–

If all has gone well, I’ve already winged my way over an ocean. If all hasn’t gone well, I may be handcuffed in some windowless airport nook pleading, “But really, I didn’t know that tube of sun-block was four ounces. I swear I thought it said three!”

Or worse, trying to prove, “No, really, I’m not that Claire Wolfe! Honest!”

But who knows? I’m actually composing this post five days ago and bringing it to you now through the magic of delayed sheduling.

So although my trip will have begun by the time you read this, all I can talk about right now is pre-trip discoveries. For starters, passports.

I want to show you something. This is the inside cover design of my passport, gotten four years ago before the fedgov started RFID chipping them:

Now look at the passport design of my traveling companion, Lorri, an RFID-chipped model gotten just two months ago:

Wow, that’s some raptor, eh? My subtle, symbolic eagle has turned into the real thing — and all beak, to boot. You wouldn’t want to mess with that predator!

Which is, of course, the point. And though I haven’t seen the rest of Lorri’s little blue book, I gather there’s more like that inside.

I rather like what this astute woman has to say about the new peck-your-eyes-out bird:

When I travel, I try to be the Complex American — a citizen of the fascinating, nuanced, multicultural, messy and basically decent place I know this country to be. But I feel like this passport blows my cover. It’s like suddenly, against my will, I’m wearing ugly khaki shorts and talking way too loud.

Maybe you already knew about that design change. I didn’t, though it’s a couple of years old now.

Did you also know that certain members of the government class carry passports of a different color than ours to distinguish those bearers from hoi palloi like us? Or that certain members of the government class get free passports? (Info courtesy of Wikipedia.

Passports, while not exactly an invention of the devil, have been used by governments through modern history to control the movements of citizens, as well as non-citizens. (More Wikipedia — although unfortunately this is a very incomplete history and doesn’t even begin to tell how modern control states, from 18th-century France onward, have used passports against their own people.)

But I’m thinking this time it’s likely that I showed my passport and got right on my way. If so, I’ll be posting more soon as my travels progress. Might be a few days between blog entries sometimes, but I’ll be with you.

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I knew I hated to travel, even aside from (and even before) the TSA made things worse.

I am stranded in the Miami airport. I arrived here with — so I thought — plenty of time to board my connecting flight to Parts Unknown. But no … the online company that ticketed me set me up with “only” an hour and 45 minutes between my arrival and my scheduled departure. Turns out that I must check in two hours before the flight or no go. I had tried to check in for the international flight both online yesterday and at my origination airport this morning and was told I couldn’t.

(Yes, I knew about the recommendation to arrive at the airport very early for international flights. That’s why I was at the first airport three hours before departure this morning. Nobody — certainly not the company that ticketed me, either of the two airlines, or any of their reps who looked at my etickets — ever mentioned that I should have three or four hours between connecting flights if they’re not on the same airline.)

So anyhow, I spent an hour rushing back and forth between U.S. carrier A and foreign carrier B — who are located in far corners of the terminal — with each of them passing the problem off on the other until finally a helpful woman at A put me in touch with a supervisor at B, who helped me with a new, strictly stand-by, booking for tomorrow morning.

I couldn’t really blame them for passing the buck. Neither airline was at fault. Both ended up being helpful.

But then things got even crappier.

Foreign carrier B. gave me a certificate for a Marriott Courtyard hotel. I would have to pay (“merely” 80 bucks), but he checked room availabilities and sent me out to wait for a shuttle. In the next half hour I flagged down three Marriot Courtyard shuttles — only to have the driver of each tell me (in one case extremely rudely) that his vehicle didn’t go to that Marriot Courtyard. There are apparently seven different Marriot Courtyards whose shuttles fly by here.

But the one for my Marriot Courtyard never did.

So I went in and explained the situation to U.S. carrier A, who gave me a certificate — same terms, I pay, but they guarantee room availability, to a Howard Johnson’s. Even cheaper. “Merely” 70 bucks. Oh good. (I would be staying in a $8.00 per night hostel if I’d actually made it to my destination.) And shuttles arrive every 15 minutes or so.

Nearly an hour later, a Howard Johnson’s shuttle finally pulled up. I checked. Yes. Right Howard Johnson’s. Whew. Relief at last. I’ll be able to get comfortable, get a meal, and try to make some calls away from the deafening airport roar.

We rolled 200 yards or so. Then the driver pulled over, made a call on his cellphone — and there we continued to sit 15 minutes later while he talked. Not moving. And with loud rap music blasting out of two speakers on either side of me.

I got out. Walked back to the terminal. And here I am. The air conditioning is arctic and I’m colder than I’ve been in my little trailer in the high desert. Back there, there are blankets, sleeping bags, and heaters. Here, only a cotton and silk tropical wardrobe. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $70 and put up with another hour of waiting for a shuttle just to have a few hours in a bed. (Especially knowing I’d be spending most of that time wide awake wondering if a shuttle will actually get me here by 5:00 tomorrow morning.)

To top it all off, this damned, wretched, unfriendly airport doesn’t even have free wifi. Nor does any business within it. Oh, but if I stay at the one hotel that’s actually within the terminal — for a “mere” $175 a night, I can get wifi there.

Yeah. Exactly. Like I’m gonna do that.

Instead I paid 10 bucks for a month of wifi from a private company. It seems to work, though the airport system it’s riding on cuts me off every half hour.

The good news is that there are now only 9-1/2 more hours of sitting here freezing my arse off before I can check in, and only another 2-1/2 after that before I’ll know whether I’ll actually be on that flight. Oh, and only one more TSA probing before I get where I’m going. And the “security” lines here are something beyond nightmares. Far worse than the airport I started at.

Did I mention I hated traveling?

Thanks for bearing with me through this rant.

I can say only one thing in my own favor. Apparently, several other American travelers were booked on these exact same flights. As I stood waiting at U.S. carrier A on my first stop there, one of those was screaming her lungs out at the poor airline rep — who was in no way at fault for anything. There was a time, years ago, when I would have made that kind of ass of myself over a situation like this. But now … so far, at least, I’m keeping cool (in more ways than one). And I’m glad not to be that sort of ugly traveler.

But OMG, if somebody gives me a bad time about anything around 3:00 this a.m. after I’ve been sitting here on the floor, leaned against this pillar all night, I really can’t be held responsible for how I respond.

All I really want is to go home — to my dogs, to the relative warmth of my icy highlands, to places where TSA agents never go. I wish, I wish, I wish, I had never left. I can’t imagine any tropical paradise making up for this kind of travel.

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I knew I hated to travel, even aside from (and even before) the TSA made things worse.

I am stranded in the Miami airport. I arrived here with — so I thought — plenty of time to board my connecting flight to Parts Unknown. But no … the online company that ticketed me set me up with “only” an hour and 45 minutes between my arrival and my scheduled departure. Turns out that I must check in two hours before the flight or no go.

(Yes, I knew about the recommendation to arrive early at the airport very early for international flights. That’s why I was at the first airport three hours before departure this morning. Nobody — and certainly not the company that ticketed me — ever mentioned that I should have three or four hours between connecting flights.)

So anyhow, I spent an hour rushing back and forth between U.S. carrier A and foreign carrier B — who are located in far corners of the terminal — with each of them passing the problem off on the other until finally a helpful woman at A put me in touch with a supervisor at B, who helped me with a new, strictly stand-by booking for tomorrow morning.

I couldn’t really blame them for passing the buck. Neither airline was at fault. Both ended up being helpful.

But then things got even crappier.

Foreign carrier B. gave me a certificate for a Marriott Courtyard hotel. I would have to pay (“merely” 80 bucks), but he checked room availabilities and sent me out to wait for a shuttle. In the next half hour I flagged down three Marriot Courtyard shuttles — only to have the driver of each tell me (in one case extremely rudely) that his vehicle didn’t go to that Marriot Courtyard. There are apparently seven different Marriot Courtyards whose shuttles fly by here.

But the one for my Marriot Courtyard never did.

So I went in and explained the situation to U.S. carrier A, who gave me a certificate — same terms, I pay, but they guarantee room availability, to a Howard Johnson’s. Even cheaper. Merely 70 bucks. Oh good. And shuttles arrive every 15 minutes or so.

Nearly an hour later, a Howard Johnson’s shuttle finally pulled up. I checked. Yes. Right Howard Johnson’s.

Less than 200 yards later, the driver pulled over, made a call on his cellphone — and there we continued to sit 15 minutes later. Not moving. And with loud rap music blasting out of two speakers on either side of me.

I got out. Walked back to the terminal. And here I am. The air conditioning is blasting and I’m colder than I’ve been in my little trailer in the high desert. Back there, there are blankets, sleeping bags, and heaters. Here, only a cotton and silk tropical wardrobe. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $70 and put up with another hour of waiting for a shuttle just to have a few hours in a bed.

To top it all off, this damned, wretched, unfriendly airport doesn’t even have free wifi. Nor does any business within it. Oh, but if I stay at the one hotel that’s actually within the terminal — for a “mere” $175 a night, I can get wifi there.

Yeah. Exactly. Like I’m gonna do that.

Instead I paid 10 bucks for a month of wifi from a private company. It seems to work, though the airport system it’s riding on cuts me off every half hour.

The good news is that there are now only 11-1/2 hours of sitting here freezing my arse off before I can check in, and only another 2-1/2 after that before I’ll know whether I’ll actually be on that flight. Oh, and only one more TSA probing before I get where I’m going. And the “security” lines here are something beyond worst nightmares.

Did I mention that there were reasons I hated traveling?

Thanks for bearing with me through this rant.

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Lessee … he calls it “the ultimate bubble.” Then a couple of weeks later, George Soros doubles his gold holdings. What’s that about, I wonder?

—–

Writing to you from today’s first airport, where I managed to get through “security” with nothing worse than a pat-down search and a hand swabbing. And why did they choose me for a pat-down? Because the baggy Thai-style pants I was wearing had large (obviously empty) pockets. The hand swabbing, apparently, is now part of the routine.

I changed from pants to skirt as soon as I got through Checkpoint Charlie. Don’t want to have to go through that again when I pick up the international flight on another airline later today. It’s not clear to me whether I’ll have to go through security all over again for that. Probably will, since I’ll have to switch terminals between arrival and departure. Lovely.

Every time I see a TSA screener — even the ID checkers wear the blue gloves these days — I think “two by two, hands of blue …”

If you’ve seen “Firefly,” you know what a happy thought that isn’t …

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Whew. All that philosophizing I’ve done in the last week has worn me out. I need a vacation!

Oh … wait. I’m already taking one. In fact, I’m leaving this afternoon for the Big City, then heading to Parts Unknown — Furrin’ Parts, even! — early tomorrow. Won’t be back for nearly a month.

But I’ll be in touch. Sometimes, I’ll be in the wilds — those deep, dark places where they don’t even have modems, let alone wifi. But thanks to the magic of delayed post-scheduling, when I do land in (relative) civilization, I should be able to throw several posts into the pot and keep ‘em coming.

Don’t look for something every day. But don’t wander too far off, either. I like having you around and I’ll do my darnedest to earn my keep. :-)

No post tomorrow, for instance. But one is already waiting to leap out from behind the curtain on Friday.

While I’m gone, webmaster Oliver will approve the comments and keep the comment spammers (that scurvy lot) away.

Have I covered everything? Did I bring my passport? Did I remember to pack my underwear? Will the dogs pine away while I’m gone? Will the TSA think my water purifier is a weapon of mass destruction? Will the water purifier and all those darned shots actually work???

These questions, and more, shall be answered in due time. (Though I’ll probably keep the answer to the underwear question to myself.)

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I expect a lot of people will have already seen this piece from the amazing Will Grigg today. But I just had to have it here for posterity.

“The most liberating word” is NO.

(And would that the Rs really were “the party of no,” as the Ds have taken to calling them. Then we might have a shot at political freedom. Instead, the responsibility of “no” falls to us.)

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