My Life is Murphey´s Law

Well, right off the bat, I had a four hour wait in Kalamazoo to catch a train. Boarded the 9:50AM train at 1:35PM. The approximately two hour train trip took about four and a half hours. The time difference going to Chicago got me there at about 5ó clock, the L got me to O´Hare at about 5:55, barely enough time to catch my 6:25 flight to JFK...

...which was canceled. Ok, whatever. New flight to JFK in the morning. Turned out I would be spending the night in Chicago instead of NY. However, the Miss Genius at the ticked counter failed to notice that my new AM flight to JFK would arrive after my flight for Brasil was scheduled to leave the next morning, thankfully the guy who checked my passport/ticket did and sent me back to the ticket counter. Fantastic.

So, they throw me on an 8:00PM flight from O´Hare to La Guardia. It´s not JFK, but it´s close. Whatever, I´ll take it. However - and here´s where the story actually starts getting bad - they put my bag on the morning flight to JFK, which I find out at La Guardia. At 1:00AM. And if you think reading this in English is confusing, try explaining it in Spanish.

So there´s not much I can really do now, as I´m in NY, my bag´s in Chicago, and the next flight from Chicago to NY arrives after my flight to Brasil leaves, which I think was the only flight to from Brasil from NY that day. F. Uck. So after a $35 taxi ride from La Guardia to JFK, I spend the rest of the night, from about 1:40AM to 6:00AM, curled in a ball, propped up on an iron I-beam, sleeping about 45 minutes of nodding sleep.

Flight to Brasil arrives at about 8:00AM, leaves about 10:00AM. And may I say, it was the strangest, most bizarre flight I have ever been on. From take-off to landing, about ten hours, the entire plane was sealed shut. Every single window was shut, overhead lights turned off, and people sleeping, during the day, the entire trip. I also was only offered a Coke the entire time. Strange. Strange. Strange.

Sao Paolo is the worst-designed airport I have ever been in. It makes no sense. It wouldn´t have made sense if spoke Portuguese. Insane. No sign, in English, Spanish, or Portuguese mentioned that there were other terminals, terminals where my flight was. So after a broken Spanish-Portuguese conversation, I learn of this other terminal and am pointed to it´s vague direction. It´s also really hot in Brasil, and I´m still in the cashmere sweater I put on in Kalamazoo where everything was covered in ice and yuck. I also haven´t showered in about a day and a half and the only sleep I´ve gotten was on a tile floor at JFK or nodding nap/sleep in the crazy plane to Brasil.

Finally arrive in Montevideo at about 2:00AM. Talke to about a dozen people trying to get them to request my bag. TAM airlines sends me to GOL airlines, GOL sends me to Pluna, which gives me a number to request me luggage. This paragraph could be about ten times as long, but I don´t want to write about it, because I´d rather write about getting a enema.

Anyhow, after that I spend the day at a hostel sleeping on a plastic chair because the beds where taken, showering and drying myself off with a flannel shirt, breaking my day and a half fast with a burrito I got with a cool dude from Ireland. (In hindsight, the burrito was a terrible idea.) Slept like a dead man that night once a bed was open, woke up, just out-smarted burrito-fueled explosive diarrhea, and have been walking around the city, waiting for the airport here in Montevideo to give me a call about my elusive green duffel bag.

On the bright side, I didn´t have to eat any rugby players.