It happens to the best of us: you head out for a trip, forget to double check where you’re departing from, and end up at JFK, when what you really meant to do was go to the pier, steal a boat, paddle out to sea, and start a new life as a stateless water rat!
We’ve all been there!
On this particular occasion, I was running behind schedule, and since my usual airport is JFK, I just hopped in the Uber, hit the airport’s location on my Recents, and settled in to download shows on my phone (I never travel without a healthy backlog of Friends reruns ready to go). By the time I arrived at the airport, I was so zoned out that it took me walking all the way to the front of the security line to realize my ticket didn’t say JFK on it. Then, it took me hopping in another Uber headed for LaGuardia to remember that I didn’t even have a ticket, just a little checkered rag filled with my most precious belongings tied on a stick, a plan to commit grand larceny, and a dream of a better life at sea.
What a terrible mistake!
There’s nothing worse than having to ask your Uber driver to reroute in the middle of a trip – especially when they ask where you want to reroute to and you just say, “Uh, the pier?” and they say, “Which pier?” and you say, “Any pier is fine,” followed by, “Take me to where the boats are,” and then they proceed to give you a side eye for the remainder of the trip, before inevitably dropping you off at a ramshackle marina where the boats don’t even look sea-worthy.
Uh, four stars!
At that point, I’d wasted a good hour and a half in ride-sharing hell that could’ve been spent getting adjusted to my new life as a swaggering seafarer, and I saw that my Uber rating had dropped down to 4.35. A 0.1 drop in just two rides? I’d certainly be making a call to Uber – once I found myself a vessel worthy of the Atlantic and a decent phone signal in the middle of the ocean, that is!
Nomads have to call customer service from time to time, too!
Ultimately, while I was exhausted from my day of unnecessary travel and unreasonable Uber drivers, I was excited to finally begin my new life as a novice sea captain just on the cusp of hurricane season! Unfortunately, there was someone in the first boat I tried stealing and we had a bit of an altercation, so now I’m on the run from the law, in another Uber bound for JFK, watching the episode of Friends where Rachel gets off her plane to Paris to reunite with Ross and – oh, wait, shit, the ticket actually says Newark…Sir!
