I'm a writer, publishing both as SJ Rozan and, with Carlos Dews, as Sam Cabot. (I'm Sam, he's Cabot.) Here you can find links to my almost-daily blog posts, including the Saturday haiku I've been doing for years. BUT the blog itself has moved to my website. If you go on over there you can subscribe and you'll never miss a post. (Miss a post! A scary thought!) Also, I'll be teaching a writing workshop in Italy this summer -- come join us!
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Home again, again
My, I do get around, don't I?
But I'm back. Have much to fill you in on about Assisi, and then much more about Mongolia now that I'm home where the wifi isn't from the 14th century like the town, so I can upload the photos. The Assisi photos will be coming too, of course. But I just have to tell you the story of my miraculous flight home.
Some of you may remember my blog last year around this time, wherein I expressed my endless lack of affection for Rome's Terminal Five, where all passengers flying direct to the US (and only those) have to check in. Terminal Three, where normal people go, is very nice, small but with a couple of good restaurants and some lovely shops. Terminal Five, not so, and you can't leave it until you're checked in. So if you happen to leave Assisi on the 6:30 a.m. van (not my idea, it's when the van left) and get to the airport at 9 a.m. for a 2 p.m. flight, you're stuck in that dump for 2 1/2 hours until the Continental crew comes back from coffee.
Except if there's a miracle.
When I got there, the Continental crew wasn't there but Continental does now have a customer service desk.
So, I stroll over and ask the gentleman behind it if I can check in for flight 43.
No, no, says he, much too early.
My heart sinks. As I thought: I was going to have to hang around that dump for hours, with no coffee etc.
But no! Casually, he says, Do you want to take flight 41?
Flight 41, that leaves at 10 a.m.? says I, my heart soaring. Can you get me on it?
9:50, says he, and for a $50 fee, yes I can.
Pushing my luck: An aisle seat?
Poke buttons, make phone call, poke more buttons, fist pump: Yes! And, says he, hurry.
Who wouldn't pay $50 to get out of that terminal? Which, considering when I finally got out of that terminal, would have been down to $35 because I'd have bought lunch as soon as they let me in Terminal Three, so that plus a little cappuccino would for sure have been $15, would it not? So I fork over my bucks, hurry onto the shuttle bus, race through the real terminal, down the escalator, onto the plane. Where I found out why the fist pump. Not only did he find me an aisle seat, but the window one next to it was empty! So I stretched out, read with my feet up, lounged all sprawled out, curled up to sleep. And landed in Newark four hours earlier than I expected to.
Ah, luck, sometimes it really is on your side.
But I'm back. Have much to fill you in on about Assisi, and then much more about Mongolia now that I'm home where the wifi isn't from the 14th century like the town, so I can upload the photos. The Assisi photos will be coming too, of course. But I just have to tell you the story of my miraculous flight home.
Some of you may remember my blog last year around this time, wherein I expressed my endless lack of affection for Rome's Terminal Five, where all passengers flying direct to the US (and only those) have to check in. Terminal Three, where normal people go, is very nice, small but with a couple of good restaurants and some lovely shops. Terminal Five, not so, and you can't leave it until you're checked in. So if you happen to leave Assisi on the 6:30 a.m. van (not my idea, it's when the van left) and get to the airport at 9 a.m. for a 2 p.m. flight, you're stuck in that dump for 2 1/2 hours until the Continental crew comes back from coffee.
Except if there's a miracle.
When I got there, the Continental crew wasn't there but Continental does now have a customer service desk.
So, I stroll over and ask the gentleman behind it if I can check in for flight 43.
No, no, says he, much too early.
My heart sinks. As I thought: I was going to have to hang around that dump for hours, with no coffee etc.
But no! Casually, he says, Do you want to take flight 41?
Flight 41, that leaves at 10 a.m.? says I, my heart soaring. Can you get me on it?
9:50, says he, and for a $50 fee, yes I can.
Pushing my luck: An aisle seat?
Poke buttons, make phone call, poke more buttons, fist pump: Yes! And, says he, hurry.
Who wouldn't pay $50 to get out of that terminal? Which, considering when I finally got out of that terminal, would have been down to $35 because I'd have bought lunch as soon as they let me in Terminal Three, so that plus a little cappuccino would for sure have been $15, would it not? So I fork over my bucks, hurry onto the shuttle bus, race through the real terminal, down the escalator, onto the plane. Where I found out why the fist pump. Not only did he find me an aisle seat, but the window one next to it was empty! So I stretched out, read with my feet up, lounged all sprawled out, curled up to sleep. And landed in Newark four hours earlier than I expected to.
Ah, luck, sometimes it really is on your side.
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