Text 6213, 77 rader
Skriven 2013-10-28 15:44:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: NYC public trans 385
============================
We had late checkout at the hotel but decided to use
only half of it, as the room, though not unattractive,
was no oasis either, and there was no particular reason
to stay, and there was free, though bad, wine to be had
at the airport.

We figured to go the cheap way, as we had plenty of
time, but as noted Lex was closed. A quick check of
the MTA site gave the information that the detoured
buses would make all stops on 2nd, so we trotted off
there only to find that the 103 drivers didn't seem to
have gotten the memo and were whizzing by in the middle
lane. The 101 drivers were stopping, though, and so I
figured that it would work to take a bus that did stop
and transfer downtown to the proper one. So I flagged
down the next bus I could find, at a stop light; it
was a 102, and he didn't want to stop, but he relented,
as the light was red anyway. We rode down to about 14th,
when he kicked us off saying that there was a 103 right
behind him, which there was; we took this one to the
last stop and walked from there to the new World Trade
Center, still under construction - very impressive -
and then down into the bowels of the PATH station. The
PATH train got us to Newark Penn Station in half an hour
for $2.50, where we had the choice of the Amtrak train
for an extra $15 or so the New Jersey Transit train for
an extra $12.75 or the city bus for 1.50 (70c for Lilli,
but we only had quarters so 75c). With that cost
difference and only about 10 min of time difference,
the choice was clear.

This bus runs every 15 or 20 minutes and is local in the
city, so you get to see all that Newark has to offer;
then it stops four times at the airport (each of the
terminals, then at the offices), and then parts unknown.
Even stopping at almost every stop and dealing with lost
and/or confused passengers, the trip takes only 20, and
so we were at the airport with an hour and half of
swilling time before my flight. Lilli had no problem
using her American Airlines boarding pass with PreCheck
at the United checkpoint. I of course was just waved
right through. (My luck, though, will not hold for my
next flight, where despite being on the airline that
sponsored me originally and in first class, my PreCheck
has been turned off. My plan then is to enter security
through the wrong pier, which doesn't have PreCheck
anyway, so I can have a Fuddrucker's burger, making a
virtue of necessity, instead of the Five Guys, which
has fed me the last dozen times in the right pier.)

A quick stroll to the club, and soon Lilli had her Canyon
Road Merlot and I my Wild Turkey 80 on the rocks in front
of us. We had time for three; I had just two, the second
with a Bud Light chaser; I remarked to the air that that
was not much different from a water chaser, and the air
laughed.

At long last it was time for me to go - I checked one last
time on my upgrade, which didn't come through - I was 8th
on the list for one seat. Upgrades to and from the hubs
are hard to come by, and my flight was from a hub to a
hub, which scotches my chances pretty much at all, despite
my exalted status on the airline.

I got a subsequent e-mail from Lilli that she had made the
mistake of taking the shuttle bus to A, after I'd warned
her not to. The problem is that it's very slow, and its
sole advantage is that it deposits you behind security at
A - but at A1 rather than A3, and there are three separate
securities, and she was then behind the wrong one. So she
had to go outside security and then back in, enduring a
situation chaotic in the way that only Newark can be, and
almost missing her flight. Her mobile boarding pass didn't
suffer from having been used once before, though.
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