Every winter around this time a mass exodus occurs. New Yorkers fly away in packs because five months of consecutive winter is just too much for anyone spoiled enough to live in the Big Apple to bear.
The destination?
Always somewhere warm, except for those NYC crazies obsessed with skiing, snowshoeing, and vacations in Aspen.
Last year, I traveled as far South as a New Yorker tends to go to experience Punta dell’Este, the New Year’s party capital of Uruguay. I changed planes in Miami before zooming down to Montevideo. This year, the journey stops in Miami.
Cue the Will Smith song.
This is where I’ll be for the next week.
I’ve never been particularly fond of Florida and consider myself to be in a healthy relationship with California, which was my original New Year’s destination location. Yet the work Holiday crunch left me with little spare time to play travel agent for myself. Then Christmas surprise-attacked me, leaping on my face like an angry cat I wasn’t expected to pet sit for several weeks to come. I still think Christmas should be celebrated every four years like the Olympics. Anyway, it got down to crunch time and rather than take responsibility for my fate, I decided to piggyback along with all my scene-y New York friends to Miami – a city I’ve never been to, although I have an intimate relationship with it’s airport.
What to expect?
I have no idea. Yet we’re staying somewhere called Di Lido (we’re calling it ‘Dildo’ for short) Island. I’m envisioning a lot of fake tits already. Half the people I saw this weekend in New York were catching flights to Miami either yesterday or today. So essentially it’s going to be one of those situations where you’re with all the same people you’d be with in New York, you’ve just traded bikinis for fur and margaritas for vodka tonics. Sound like the Hamptons anyone?
Since traveling in a group of five friends, we rented a van to haul our out-of-place summer dressed asses to LaGuardia. Not a moment of this trip with go undocumented as I’m live blogging, taking photos with my new Cannon (which cost the same as my apartment’s monthly rent), and another one of my friends is toting around her camcorder, acting as our videographer. There’s no way we need this amount of digital supervision, yet traveling in groups is ideal, specifically because there’s always someone to baby-sit your luggage while you go pee.
Late planning landed us on Spirit airlines, where checking a bag and consuming water on board all come with an extra price. There’s also surcharges called ‘seat fees’ just to pick a seat. Chic.
I enjoyed this security sign.
LaGuardia is clearly as done with the Holiday season as I am.
Now I’m on the plane with so many children that creating an on-board daycare center makes sense and, I kid you not, a dog. That’s right. Dog. On board. And not one of those tiny ones that fit in rich ladies’ purses.
The woman in the aisle ahead of us also just changed her baby, yes, changed, in the airplane seat. The flight attendant asked her to change her child in the bathroom, pointing out there was a changing station in there. She did not comply.
I realize I one day will be a mother, the plane identity everyone hates, but I don’t think I’ll change my child’s diaper in the middle of the plane. I mean, this isn’t a picnic blanket in a park. It’s not even a Boeing. It’s a Spirit plane, likely 30% cardboard, with so little legroom that I can feel the vertebrae in the man in front of me’s spine through the chair. It’s also packed full. I enjoy the smell of human excrement as much as the next person and am sympathetic to people unfortunate enough to travel with infants but really…?
Miami, here we come.
December 30th, 2008 at 12:02 am
I flew on Spirit once, i think there was throw up all over mine and my friends row. So we told the flight attendant and she was like “Well, I can’t help you.” So we asked for napkins or blankets, or something to cover the seats- they had none. Another passenger gave us some Dunkin Donuts napkins to lay out over the seats and sit on.
Best flight ever.