(April 6 & 7, 2012)
I had been rehearsing for Damn Yankees! for two months, and it was high time for a vacation. Recently we’ve had a large number of friends move to Los Angeles, and we hadn’t been to LA in six years, so we figured it was a good time to hit up the West Coast.
We were getting nervous during the planning stage because the time we were going was Passover/Easter/Spring Break, which meant flights were escalating in price. Not cool for people who like to travel on a budget. Then luck befell us, and Virgin America had a fabulous sale. Awesome! We’ve always wanted to travel Virgin—their commercials are fun, you can order food directly to your seat through your personal TV, and they have pink and purple mood lighting. What?! Crazy talk. And we wanted it.
Our plan was to be there just shy of a week, staying with our friend Sal, one of the NYC escapees, who lives in North Hollywood. Our hope was to visit as many of our friends as possible whilst still having a banging time hitting up all the fun spots in LA.
I had been so overwhelmed with rehearsals that this was the first trip in a long time where I didn’t plan a thing. I threw caution to the wind and figured we would find things to do once we got there. Miriam found a good car rental through Budget, and, instead of renting a GPS (for almost the same price we paid for the car, mind you), we opted to finally (!!) upgrade to the much-coveted iPhone and download a free GPS app. A much better idea!
I grabbed the maps and my DK Top 10 Los Angeles guide book (seriously my favorite guide books—I get them for every city I travel to) from six years ago and just crossed my fingers that everything was relatively the same.
We had an 8pm departure out of JFK on Friday, so we sauntered there after I finished work. “Sauntered” because we were already checked in, weren’t checking any bags, and would have two hours to get through security once we arrived at the airport.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: For some reason Virgin America flies out of the international terminal at JFK. Almost all international flights out of JFK seem to leave at the same time. The international terminal is currently under construction, so all passengers have to go through one tiny security gate. If you have an evening flight out of the international terminal at JFK, be prepared for a loooooooong wait.
The gates/security are a level below the departures/check-in area, so while we were making our way to an elevator, I noticed from the check-in balcony a peculiarly long line way off in the distance. I shrugged it off, and Miriam and I talked of grabbing a bite to eat before going through security. Upon getting to the bottom level, we decided we’d skip dinner and just head to the gate. That’s when we truly noticed the security line. It stretched for as far as we could see and then some. As we started walking towards the back of the line (and walking…and walking…and walking), our jaws started to drop. This wait was going to be interminable.
A half hour had crept by slowly, as had our place in line, and we started playing a fun game of watching unaware passengers happily walk past us on their way to the gate and betting on whether or not we’d see them walking past us again—this time to the back of the line. We very rarely lost that game. And those passengers were no longer happily walking past us…
By the time we finally made it into the roped off section of the security line, which meant the end was (kind of) in sight, we had only a half-hour until our flight was leaving. We were trying not to panic but the actual security part looked like utter chaos—there were a number of security agents checking passports and asking questions of every passenger, and then all these security lines converged into three security belts…which, in actuality, was a giant mob of frustrated people—and the belief we would actually make it through in time was dwindling.
Then a Virgin employee came through the line and pulled all of us on the looming LA flight to the “front” of the line—or as close as she could get us, which was about five people from where we were—and then, after the agents had checked our IDs and ushered us to the security scan part, she took every one of us and put us in the longest security line possible. All of us shook our heads at her stupidity, but at least we were all there together so they wouldn’t be leaving without us.
Luckily, our flight was right by the gate, and they were just beginning the boarding process as we arrived, so we climbed on board, happy to be able to sit down and relax. The ambiance was very cool. The purple lighting had a calming effect, which was beneficial to those who had just been through that horrendous security line (aka all of us), we all had personal televisions, and there were plugs at our seats (albeit tucked underneath the seats and hard to find) for all our electronics.
Miriam and I immediately perused the food menu located on our televisions, and a bunch of the food sounded really yummy, but we decided to hold off on ordering anything.
Once we took off there wasn’t a whole lot to watch that we didn’t have to pay for, and since it was such a late flight I decided to try to sleep some.
Here’s where I noticed another problem with Virgin. The aisles are so narrow that every time anybody—flight attendants included—walked passed my aisle seat, they hit me. Every. Time. Needless to say, sleeping was not so easy. It was a pretty active plane. Lots of free beverages and small bladders going around. Ugh.
Anyway, we landed at LAX a little after midnight (3am for our Eastern Standard Time brains…so we were exhausted), and then we waited a half-hour for the shuttle to take us to the rental car place. Talk about exasperating, especially when the other rental car places had shuttles continually passing by us. I guess that’s what you get for taking the cheapest rates… There were other New Yorkers waiting for the same shuttle, too, which turned into an interesting and entertaining time. Never keep a New Yorker waiting—one particular family did not hold back when the shuttle finally arrived.
We then had another half-hour wait for our rental car, since they only had two people working the counter that late at night, but eventually we got our cute little compact car, threw our stuff in the trunk, fired up the GPS, and went on our way.
We made it to our friend Sal’s place in North Hollywood and found him happily working on his computer in his living room. He gave us a quick tour of his place and informed us that we were to take his bed and he would sleep on the couch for the week. What?! We fought that one, but we lost the battle. Such a sweetie, that Sal.
He also introduced us to his prides and joys: Bubbles, Bop, and Fizz, his beloved fish.
By this point we three were exhausted and practically falling asleep on our feet, so off we went to bed. We had brunch plans in the morning, after all, and needed our beauty rest!
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