Remember when I used to blog about travel? 9:10 p.m., San Jose, California.

See the subject? Remember when I used to blog about travel and trips?

Remember the angst I used to have? Remember the snarkiness? Remember the general fear, hatred, loathing for other people? That true Sartrian hell?

Guess who's tap, tap, tapping on my cellar door?
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I'm here in Mineta International Airport. I'm waiting for JetBlue flight 174, with non-stop service to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

And I ask not for your pity. Your sorrow. I ask not that you feel my pain. I just ask that you listen. Or in this particular medium, I just want you to read. I've got something to say (type) and I've got a while.

There is a 16, maybe 17-year old unwed teenage mother with a kid who looks like she just had Gerbers new Red Bull stewed carrots.

There is an ugly bizarro Maggie Gyllenhall (is that redundant?)

There's a 23-something, newly minted former co-ed who is telling whoever the shampoo she's talking to about all the shoe designers she likes, all while talking way too loud through an earpiece when she could just take the shampooing phone and put it to her shampooing ear and go to a less crowded shampooing place near the shampooing gate and talk about John shampooing Varvatos and Jimmy Choo and Reebok or whatever. Shampoo.

I sit in seat 3C. Crack baby is likely to be in 4C, screaming and kicking and tweeking the whole shampooing flight. Jake's fake ugly twin will likely be across the aisle. Sarah Jessica Punter will likely be in the middle. And I'll see what I can manage with $7 cocktails in the main cabin.

Oh, did I mention why I'm flying to JFK instead of BOS or PVD? Yeah, I got a game tomorrow night. 7 p.m.

So sleep will be at a premium on this 6.5 hour leg. Drinking is not an option. Awake is not an option. But guess what? I'm shampooing clear out of options.

Again, I ask not for your pity. I just want you to read.
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This is a 48-yard field goal near the end of a Super Bowl. Ken Walter to hold. Lonie Paxton to snap from the far hash mark. I hope Gil is screaming "it's good" when we land.

When I land at Kennedy, I'll wait for my bags. And then I'll wait for the NY Airport Service bus to the Port Authority on 42nd Street. Then I'll wait for NJ Transit bus 167 to Teaneck. Then I'll go to the airport, change, shower, and head to shootaround.

It's what I do. And unfortunately over the last decade or so, it's what I've become.

But over the last six days, who I am and what I've become has become terribly irrelevant. I've become another person. (trust me, that's a good, much welcomed, long overdue sort of thing).

So we'll chat later when I land.

Until then, qss.  ¶ 12:10 AM