The most direct path between point A and point B is a struggle

It is amazing how travel can exhaust you. I don't mean sight seeing or walking around charming foreign neighborhoods and pointing excitedly at locals, though of course that amount of patronizing can be very tiring as well. No, I mean the actual transport. What is it about canned air and terrible food and edited movies that makes you feel like you just ran a marathon? But of course the plane was not the only traveling I did yesterday, oh, no, not at all. The plane was one leg in a long day's journey into struggle. Highlights of the trip? Well, they would include viewing the same film we had seen on the way there, by the way, he might just be into you, apparently there are no rules for this. Additionally, I can say that in an angry moment when Becca refused to take my bag down from the air plane overhead rack I told her and Lisa that our pact to check on each other at the age of 60 should we be all alone and have cats that might want to eat our faces off was OVER. Lisa's insistence that should would never have a cat was irrelevant. I was DONE with these people, done. These people who had followed me to the Caribbean, stayed with me, stood through my odd attempts to see museums and try to make it to 12 without passing out. My best friends at not-Yale, some of the most important people in my life, yes, it was over, just like that.


Until of course a kindly fellow traveler gently removed my bag from the overhead compartment and sweetly murmured to me, I don't think you are going to die alone. As he handed me my bag I smiled and blushed. It's amazing how a stranger assuring you that a cat will not be eating off half off your face after your death can lift your spirits. As Becca and Lisa and I traveled first the shuttle from the Newark airport to the Newark train to Penn Station, then the subway from Penn Station to Grand Central Station, then the train from Grand Central Station to New Haven, all I could think was how happy I was to have them with me. Oh dear, I can't even describe how much struggle occurred between the Newark Airport and the New Haven Train Station. Let me describe it in a few words: Amazingly slow walkers, awkward homeless people on the subway, odd people from Jersey, sushi that seemed like a good idea, three very large cans of Bud Light, a copy of Nylon magazine, rooting drunkenly through ones possessions to find something one hasn't yet read.

Arriving at the New Haven Train station we found a cab driver who, obviously, only spoke Spainish. Yep. The more places you go the more they seem to blend together...

Enjoy the above picture. Clearly in Puerto Rico even the fake heads of people are struggling.