When were you last at Logan or another airport for the night? Why visit forts, churches, museums, when the “Logan Night Experience” is running every night and free?
How did I ever get into doing these kind of things? My mother was very penurious? Camp Kawanhee encouraged me to be self reliant and give anything a try? I’m an only child and have always spent a lot of time with myself? I need material for these pages?
What other things have I done like this? I am never at a bar for last call. Drinking is an important activity for me and I do not willingly gather with the amateurs. 10 years ago? my schedule called for me to leave Maine late so I went to Brunswick, closed the Sea Dog brewery and slept in my can on the Bowdon campus. I tried to find a common room to sleep in but of course security on campus has changed since the 1960s and students are rightly suspicious of a 60 year old man looking for a place to sleep. The campus police came by to talk but let me be. I faintly remember I had a favorite common room on the BU campus in Boston that I used to use when over nighting with no room in the 1960s. I’ll probably remember some other recent precedents. My point is that this is not that odd for me. The whole story of how I got to Logan for the night is elsewhere in this blog but the bottom line is probably that I did not want to arrive alone at the lot where my car was snowed in at 2AM. in zero degree temps. It was really cold. I wanted to wait to tackle that challenge until morning when there would be others around.
My flight lands from JFK at 1:20am? I am still wearing my shorts and Hawaiian shirt. I take advantage of the spacious handicap bathroom stall to switch to long pants, long sleeve shirt and fleece. I have an umbrella, a very heavy backpack, a smallish rolly suitcase, a light wind breaker and a heavy duty yellow sailing slicker. The wind breaker and slicker go on the extended handle of the rolly so I have the umbrella in one hand and the rolly in the other.
The lounges along the gates look pretty nice. TVs playing. I better find security and ask where they like us homeless to gather. Two guards are lounging at the door out of TSA control. I tell them my ride is not coming until 5am, where would they like me to stay. The one guy says you have to go outside into the zero temperature. Then decides that 72 year old men are prone to believing this kind of shit and changes his story to be I can stay anywhere outside TSA control. He says they close this area at 3:30am. I ask about a bar staying open and he does not think that is a reasonable question but he does tell me about Dunkin Donuts. I find them down by the baggage claim and they are open 24 hour.
I walk around a fair amount. This is Terminal C. I find a couple of different hallways that lead to “Do Not Enter”. I am surveying where the 50? other homeless have camped out on sets of chairs. I don’t realize at the time that maybe some of the most desirable sets of chairs do not have arm rests so that one could lie down. It never occurs to me to lie down, too vulnerable a position. If I sleep, it will be sitting up with a hand on my backpack and suitcase.
I settle into a set of chairs right next to the most active baggage conveyor. It is just a few yards from Dunkin Donnuts. And there is drama! Two couples with children have just come in with me from JFK. They have a mountain of strollers, car seats, suitcases. The two mothers are working with the kids. The kids are remarkably calm. One father is working the phone. The other father is making like 8 trips to move the material somewhere, but where? Finally the couples wish each other well, hugs and kisses for all and separate. I have no idea how they proceeded on.
A new flight has come in and 100 people gather at the baggage conveyor. No bags. Finally a woman handler announces that the good news is that the bags are here but the bad news is that the conveyor has frozen and it will take some time to unfreeze it. There was some judgmental phrase in the announcement about how the ground staff had just let her know that things were going down hill. After about 20 minutes, with much searching and grinding, the conveyor started, the bags came out, the people left, the conveyor was turned off. Still 20+ HUGH bags on the belt. 5 uniformed employees, mainly women, show up to handle this. They have a cart, but it take multiple trips to collect these ownerless bags and drag them off to baggage lost and found. The one woman tells the other, “yep, JFK just sent us these 20, God knows what is going on down there”.
A couple more flights come in. A few more suitcases are dragged off to lost and found. I go over to Dunkin Donuts and discover they basically have only coffee. I ask and the man does have English muffins. I ask for one toasted, dry, I don’t drink coffee. There is a sign up that says Credit Cards Only. It appears that the men operating the Dunkin have access to the credit card machine but not to the cash drawer. Other customers handle this by having the ones who have credit cards pay for the others and some who say they do not have a credit card eventually pull something out. There has been a bit of a rush. It may be about 3:30. Mainly people who work here. I stand back to await my English. Nothing. People come and go. Finally I catch the eye of the cashier and he questions the other man working. they produce a toasted English with apologies.
I sleep in the chair on and off. Maybe about 4am I went up to the main departure floor and was amazed it find it in full operation. There were 100 people in line for TSA. There were 20 people working the airline booths. One news stand was almost open and another opening. Workers were arriving. I set the alarm for 5am as the bus was due at 5:10 and fell asleep at least once more to be awakened by the alarm. I put on all my cloths and went to stand in a area between two sets of automatic doors. The position gave me a good view of any buses pulling into Terminal C Arrivals. There was a pigon in the same airlock. over in the corner. He seemed alive but just staying where he was. Someone had put popcorn within his reach People walking by, either on the inside or outside could trigger one of the doors and I would get a blast of cold air. It was really cold outside.
A woman, maybe 60, appears and asked about Uber. I showed her the sign that I think directs one to the pickup area. She stayed in the airlock and started to work the Uber app, asking me about how to use the promo code. By now it was after 5:10, that is when C&J bus starts its route at Terminal A, so I was all eyes on the road, no eyes for her phone. I pointed out to her some young men in working safty cloths that were available just inside the door and would know a lot more than this old man about Uber. She came over to my other side and again worked to get me to help her. I warned her that there was a pigeon on the floor behind her, please be careful not to scare it. She left. At 5:20 I called C&J just to be sure they were running and the woman who answered was able to report that the bus was at Terminal B and coming. Five minutes later it arrived, I ran along beside, waving my umbrella but he went on 20 meters to his regular stop and 4 other people appeared who had a better idea then I did about exactly where the bus stopped and had been waiting up there. We loaded and the driver reported we were full and we just skipped Terminal E. Glade I was not waiting there. Note to self: if you have the time and it is not as cold as it was this time, walk back a Terminal to raise your chances of not having to wait for the next bus.
Uneventful easy ride to Newburyport C&J parking lot. It is Martin Luther King day, so not traffic. And though it is very very cold, there is no precipitation falling. At the terminal, I left my umbrella and suitcase in the public area and walked to our Rav 4. My daughter had texted me the row number where she left it two weeks ago and a picture of how she had attached the key to the front right tire area. I retrieved the key. The car started! The frozen snow and ice was half way up the hub caps. With a lot of scraper banging I was able to clear the ice off the windows. Decided to just try getting out of the spot instead of returning to the terminal to borrow a shovel. 4 wheel drive is an amazing thing. I’m sure this is an exaggeration but once I put the Rav 4 in reverse and gave it a fair amount of gas it spun a wheel, spun another, found one with traction and out we popped into the plowed lane. Picked up the umbrella and suitcase. Drove carefully home and was having a nice breakfast omlett by 8am. I do like this kind of adventure, especially when it turns out ok!