I am a cursed traveler. Odysseus, the S.S. Minnow, none of them have it quite as rough as I do. In the past two-and-a-half years of flights, I have suffered more delays than I care to remember, two canceled flights, five lost bags, a power outage on a train, and a midair attack from a giant wasp creature. Now we can add something else to the list: an overnight stay at scenic Newark Liberty International Airport.
The story: After 11 days of Intersession with my girlfriend (yes, I know!) at her school outside Chicago, I was scheduled to leave O'Hare on Monday night at 7:15. The weather was bad on the drive in, and I just knew it would be far more than a three-hour tour.
First the flight was pushed back to 8:00, then 8:15, then they put us on the plane at 8:15 and made us sit there for over two hours before we were finally deiced and pulling away from the gate. Apparently there is only one deicer for the whole lousy airport. Isn't that a little like a rest stop gas station having only one pump?
We finally took off at 10:45 p.m. Central. I did the calculations — two-hour flight, one-hour time loss, I'd get on the ground by 1:45 a.m. Eastern, leaving me not enough time to get my bags (if they were there) and catch the final train headed to Princeton.
Sure enough, it went about like that. I got my bags, thankfully, and had about three hours before the 5:07 train. I found a nice hard chair, sat down and called Emily back in Illinois. She was sympathetic but not enough to stay up with me. I see how it is.
I didn't dare fall asleep. An airport after 2:00 a.m. isn't exactly filled with happy children and gorgeous women. I found an electrical outlet and broke out the computer. What followed was one of the greatest sporting performances in history.
'The Streak' begins
The game was FreeCell. I have run up a decent record in my career, but I am just entering my prime. I started up a game, won pretty easily. Another game, another win. Then another. Then another. Suddenly I'd won eight straight, a new record streak on my machine. I considered calling ESPN. If Janet's breast is a week-long story, then I could at least get a paragraph for this.
About 3:00 a.m. I was feeling the burn. It had been 17 hours since I woke up in Illinois and my eyes were about to file for free agency. My stomach decided to join them. I hadn't eaten since the warden gave me four bite-sized pretzels on the plane, and being too tired to move, I convinced myself that nothing was open at the airport.
My buddy Gene
Enter Toothless Gene. I saw him lumbering toward me from a distance, a six-footer with disheveled red sweatshirt and a mean mystery stain on his jeans. I thought he would veer off, but he kept coming closer, threatening to jinx the streak. Finally, he walked right up to me.
"Excuse me," he said, through a big black smile. "Do you have $1.10 for a cheesesteak?"
My eyes shot up. "A cheesesteak?" I said. "You mean there's food somewhere?"
"Yeah. In the food court. It's open 24 hours."
The food court, of course!
"Well, I'll go with ya," I said, just having won the ninth straight FreeCell game. I packed up my computer and he offered to carry one of my bags. Maybe I was delirious, but I let him. I shook his hand, he told me his name, asked me where I went to school.
"Rutgers," I said.
We continued the discussion, and it moved to sports. I told him I played basketball in high school (I didn't). He told me he played semi-pro ball for the New York Squires (I don't believe it). We ordered our cheesesteaks, and while we were waiting, we had this conversation:
"So, Gene, do you work here?"
"No. Just hang out."
"Oh."
When I make a list someday of the Top 10 Moments Where I Realized I Was From a Different Planet Than My Company, that exchange will be near the top.
Delirium
Refueled, I went back to my original locale and turned the computer back on. My eyes went back to hating me as I combined sleep deprivation with retina-searing radioactive computer rays for another couple hours. The cheese, steak and lemonade were swimming in my stomach. It caused an early snag — I was down to only two open cells and no obvious options. I was nervous, sweating. I needed applesauce. Somehow I prevailed in a flash of strategic brilliance.
Hallucinating, I thought I saw a horde of onlookers cheering and Bob Costas doing the play-byplay and saying things like, "Whew, I didn't think he was gonna make that. What a recovery!"
Really the only person watching was an old man meandering toward me with a broom and a Chicago Bears hat. He looked like an airport official, but then again I was so spaced that it could've been Paris Hilton, and I wouldn't have been able to see her straight.
"Someone pick you up?" he said.
"Soon," I lied.
"I come from upstairs. It is warmer."
I laughed. "I come from Minnesota. I'm okay down here."
"Oh, Missota. Yes. If you are from Florida then maybe it is cool."
Exactly.
Thirteen wins, then 15. I was starting to feel immortal. The wins kept piling up. Sixteen, 20, 25. "What a showman!" Costas was saying. After the 27th straight win, it was 4:11 a.m. I started the 28th game, but as I clicked on the screen I had a funny feeling, the crowd took a short breath, and sure enough, I blew it. The board was tough, I made hasty decisions, and the streak ended at 27 straight, my all-time FreeCell record improving to 137-73 after the tirade. "He just got greedy there," Costas said.
I gathered my bags, hopped on the train, and decided to try my luck at what the computer calls "Classic Solitaire." If hell has a game they make you play, it must be Classic Solitaire. There's just nothing you can do. You click through the whole damn deck and see exactly zero cards that can help you. Then you finally get to move that one card that's been bugging you and what's underneath? The same card! After about a half-hour and 12 tries, I gave up. "A champion on the decline," snooty Costas said.
The Streak came against all odds. It was Michael Jordan overcoming the flu to beat the Jazz in the '97 Finals. It was gimpy Kirk Gibson lifting that World Series home run into the seats in '88. It was battered Boo Radley showing Scout the way to a good life. Jordan, Gibson, Radley, Pierce. OK, maybe not. But if ESPN airs cheerleading and poker, then there's hope for a FreeCell tourney.
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