The original.
The authentic.
The odyssey begins.
***
I wrote the above last night as I was packing up for my flight today. I had plenty of time in my Lyft to check on delays because my driver got lost twice picking up me and another passenger. Then he complained we were both going to LAX because it was a mess down there. He seemed to want us to find another way there; the other guy, a physician heading to Miami for a job interview at Cedars Sinai on the beach, told him this was the only way he could get there. Our driver then said it was just going to take a long time but he didn’t care; just if we wanted to make our flights we should think about other options.
My fellow passenger and I exchanged looks and silently agreed to partner up in a weird “this isn’t how Lyft/Uber works” way, a la the incomprehensibly inaccurate “rules” of the movie Stuber.
And so we drove off, Sebastian the Physician grooving to his native Argentinian beats via his AirPods and me texting status updates to my family so they could track my last known locations if I never made it to LAX.
A new concern developed when I read a headline while on this detoured shared ride through confusion. It was this one:
I’m flying Luftahansa today… Wednesday… but my connection is through Frankfurt on Thursday. As of right now, that flight still is showing as “On Time.” One has to hope the cancellation gods took pity on me.
We finally made it to LAX, seeing the newly installed ride-share pickup land of lost time, notorious for wait times in excess of an hour to get a ride from that queue. It hasn’t helped the traffic around the antiquated horseshoe that is the one-way street to the various terminals. The driver took an early turn to cut the horseshoe, bypassing the bottom of the horseshoe which is where my international terminal was, to get to Terminal 6. I told him he could just drop me off there and I’d walk the rest of the way.
The check in desk for my flight was a soul crushingly snaking mob. So I opted to just carry my bag on… besides, if I do get stranded in Frankfurt, best to have my bags with me at all times, yes?
Tom Bradley International Terminal thankfully features TSA PreCheck… which meant it took me longer to walk from Terminal 6 to Tom Bradley than it did to clear security.
I had no idea this Odyssey would parallel Odysseus’s trails and tribulations on his way back to Greece.
***
Quick sidenote: The nice woman at TSA Pre did a double take when she looked down at my passport. She looked back at me and said I looked just like that guy… Jeff Goldberg? She meant Jeff Goldblum apparently and I laughed it off, saying that I get that a lot. Though I really don’t.
And I love Jeff Goldblum, don’t get me wrong.
I’m just not sure if it’s a compliment or a critique of how old I’m looking these days.