I’m back in New York after a weekend with the family. The airport slogs were brutal.

I booked the flight out of Newark, at 7 am. The price was better, and I figured the commuter trains probably started running some time around 5. I failed to take into account the fact that I was leaving on a Saturday.

I turned to Plan B, and asked the doorman if he knew a car company that could get me to Newark at 5:30 am on a Saturday morning. Like everybody else in Manhattan, he knew a guy. The guy called me and confirmed that he would be here between 4:30 and 5:00 am Saturday, that he would call when he got here, and that he would have me at the airport by 5:30 no problem.

5 am rolled around, and I was outside the building with nary a car in sight. I called him, and he assured me he was only a few minutes away. At 5:20, I called again. He was still only a few minutes away. At 5:30, I hailed a cab. At 5:45 he called me, wanting to knew why I wasn’t there. I felt bad, because he’d come all the way out for a fare, but if I’d waited for him I probably would have missed my flight.

Coming home, I took the train. Slow but easy. It was sheeting rain when I got out from Penn station, remnants of the storm that had kept us circling Cleveland for about an hour. You know it’s bad when the pilot comes on the intercom and says, “Well folks, we’re holding for a bit due to some weather over Newark… if you think you’ve been seeing the same city out the window, that’s because you have.” I had entertained thoughts about walking home from Penn, but hailed a cab, discretion being the better part of valor and all that. We got to the apartment, I ran my card, the cabbie popped the trunk, I went to the back to get my suitcase, and he started to drive off. Of course, since the trunk was open it flew up, and he stopped only a few feet from me.

The moral of the story being that perhaps next time I will be a true New Yorker and book through JFK.