Almost took a big hit on this one…
Here’s the story. We’re flying standby. The flight was supposed to leave from NY. Somehow, it is now leaving from DC. Our overnight plans for NY have now changed to an overnight drive to somewhere close(r) to the airport in DC.
First stop is a seedy New Jersey gas station that has Red Bull and a Taco Bell next door (where we take turns taking a piss out of sight while Diaz pays for the order). Thank you iPhones for sending us all over beautiful NJ.
Next is a seemingly endless trip through about a dozen tolls as Fredo calls his family to see if it’s ok that we roll in at like 4am. We were gonna hit up the Afro Blue peeps but just got way too tired to make it all the way to DC (plus cramming 7 dudes into Mariah’s and Integriti’s apartment just felt like an imposition….even for us). So we found the lovely home of the Austins tucked away in a Delaware neighborhood where we all shared beds and woke up the next morning to take care of Malaria pills and Visa pictures.
This apparently takes forever. So much so that our flight to Dubai is now in serious jeopardy. Traffic blows, we’re all hungry and tired, and broke, and we still have to return the rental car.
So with all of the gravitas I can muster from the front seat of our rented suburban, I call upon Jordan (who, by the way, is awaiting a passport that will arrive the next morning via FedEx overnight…long story and I’ll highly recommend the 15 minute rundown from him some time). Mr. Jordan Pharoah (or Pharaoh, or Garrett-Williams….whatever your birth certificate ended up saying), your task at hand is as follows:
gas up and return the rental car.
Wow…writing that seems a little less…uh…complicated than it felt :).
Complete with a series of directions, maps, collected cash, and a rushed goodbye, we could only hope that in ~40 hours, we would see a triumphant Jordan in Dubai.
Stay tuned…
Oh, we did make the flight, and with some help from a new friend, we got to sit in Business Class!!! Ridiculous experience in itself, but we decided to take advantage of the free drinks, get hammered, and parry the advances of the “forward” flight attendant to Chris….who did nothing about it :). Next time, maybe.
Now, to connect in Dubai…