Liberty, fear, et al
I made it to Newark. This is what Newark looks like:
But instead of flying straight on into Amsterdam as I was supposed to, I slept on a cold couch at Josh’s in New Jersey for four hours before he and I took a Zipcar to Philadelphia, about an hour and a half south on I-95, where we had an 8:30 AM appointment at one of the 14 locations in the United States where passports can be renewed with same-day turnaround.
I did all of this without my toothbrush, which I forgot to pack.
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At the train from the airport:
Sabitathica (upon seeing a woman who works for the NJ transit authority): I... Excuse me, can I ask you a question?
Transit Authority Woman: Mmm hmm.
Sabitathica (showing her my ticket): Am I... am I in the right place?
TAW: Mmm hmm.
Sabitathica: Oh, okay, good. But which track do I -
TAW: "A"
Sabitathica: (pause) Track A?
TAW: Mmm hmm.
Sabitathica: But it doesn't say that on my ticket. How do you know that?
TAW: Because you're going to Hoboken. Hoboken's track A.
Sabitathica: Oh. Okay... But I mean, how did you know that? Is that written down somewhere or is that just something you... it's something you just have to know, isn't it?
TAW: Yeah.
Sabitathica: Yeah.
But I was helped along the way by several kind people, notably Mike, an English lecturer at Princeton. We fell into conversation, exchanged cards, and will be in touch.
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Josh and I arrived in Philadelphia early, sat in a cafe for a half-hour, and then began the process of renewing our passports. We filled out forms, presented our IDs, and were told to return in two hours.
With those two hours,
1) I bought a toothbrush:
2) we saw the Liberty Bell:
and 3) we were given free tickets to see Independence Hall by a security guard.
~~~~~~~
Inside the Independence Hall gates, we joined a queue waiting to enter a small building.
Josh: What’s this line? What are all these people doing?
Sabitathica: It’s the line for the Independence Hall tour. We’re going to walk through it… It’s like a tour of a Haunted House, only instead of fear, it’s history:
Which brings me to what I see so far as being the real theme of this expedition: Liberty. Liberty and Independence. And fear. Three themes. Liberty, Independence, and fear. And beautiful Dutch women. Four themes.
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Passports in hand, we arrived back in Hoboken at 11:15. We picked up our ish at Josh’s, returned the car and took a train to an airbus to Continental’s International check-in counter.
The woman manning (?) the counter told us the only way we were getting on a plane was to pay another $250 each. (This truly did happen. And she had a very good reason for saying it. But her good reasoning is a little complicated and I’m not going to explain it all, at least not here).
There was a moment when things looked particularly grim:
Sabitathica (to the agent at the check-in counter): I know this is a little out of the ordinary. But the woman who told me we could do this, the one who arranged it and approved it, she's a customer service supervisor for Continental. She told me she would put a note in our files that you or whoever was checking us in would be able to see. Can you look and see if she did that?
Check-in Counter Agent: I know how to do my job, sir...
And then my phone rang. It was L, her flair for colorful cellphone timing in complete effect.
This allowed the Continental agent to overhear my end of our conversation. As hoped, something shifted in the Continental agent’s approach to the situation after that and she comped us the $500.
We had thirty minutes to eat before we boarded the plane, during which time I had cause to say to Josh: I wonder if it's called 'Sbarros' because 'Sbgrossos' was even more difficult to pronounce.
