February 18, 2011

An Old Friend, Carmine and Adrienne: One Difference Traveling with Sugar

With a generous offer from Griff to drop us off at the bus terminal, we embarked on our journey in a Concord bus from Bangor to Logan. We had bought the earphones for $1 apiece and watched “Do You Want to Dance” on the way to Portland. What a mistake! For the last 15 minutes of the movie, I’m sitting there with the tears pouring down my cheeks, hoping that everyone in the crowded bus wouldn’t notice as I kept brushing them off. Those movies should have a WARNING at the beginning so I wouldn’t end up like a blathering idiot. And is this something that happens as you get older? Seems like I’m reverting to my childhood, when I couldn’t make it through a Lassie episode without freaking out. It got so bad that Mom wouldn’t let me watch Lassie for a year or two, or maybe four or five. Luckily, between Portland and Logan, they showed a Disney animated movie with a lot of cars in it and I skipped the earphones.
Before we knew it, we were being dropped off at Terminal E, the international terminal at Logan, where we would get a courtesy van to the Embassy Suites. Sugar thought we should go in to the restaurant that we ate at before going to Italy “for a small pick-me-up.” We entered the terminal, saw the restaurant and were seated by an old friend, Imelda. Griff and Sandy will recall that we ate there before our Italy flight, and after we paid the bill, she wrote on our receipt, dated it, and returned it to us, saying “Take this. Go out and get in the right hand lane for security, go the front and give this to the guy with the blue shirt.” A little skeptically, I took the slip, and we entered the right hand lane (aka the handicapped lane), walked past hundreds of people waiting to go through security, and handed the slip to the security man, who looked at it, and instead of macing us or drawing his weapon, smiled and told us to go right through. Now that’s a friend you don’t forget, and I didn’t. Imelda (“the one without so many shoes”) is a short, attractive waitress who wanted to become a doctor. She had a family instead (she looks about 17), and has a 2-year old named Juan Damien. Her parents came from Guadalajara, Mexico and raised her, with two other children in Boston. She showed us pictures of Juan and his first haircut, a buzzcut like his father’s. He’s very cute.
Imelda was not our waitress but Carmine, a native Boston Italian, who loved Sugar’s scarf, made up of his “favorite colors, pink and purple.” He had definitely “come out,” and was most attentive to Sugar, asking her her sign, her stone, etc., choosing our pizza for us (Margherita), and otherwise hovering from one table to another. He made sure we had lemon in our waters, and that if he had to make a pizza delivery and would be gone for 3 minutes, that we knew others would be looking out for us. He was also solicitous of our next table occupant, Adrienne. She had a tough story, having been at Logan or in its vicinity for 21 hours. She missed her flight to Iceland last night at 8:30 due to a mechanical on her connecting flight from Philly, and then when they had fixed that, they forgot that they hadn’t gotten any fuel so had to wait for the fuel truck to come. They took off at 7:30 and landed at Logan at 8:20, only 10 minutes, 3 terminals and 1 security line from her departing flight. She made it to the gate just as the staff were packing up - the plane had left the gate. And the reason she was going to Iceland? To see the Aurora Borealis, and today is the only clear day forecast for the next five days - and she is due to return Wednesday. She was pretty disappointed, but she’s looking forward to going to Thailand later on to celebrate her 50th birthday. And she looked about 35! Is this also what happens when you get older? We think that anyone without a wrinkle must be in their 20’s?
So here’s one difference traveling with Sugar rather than Bay. As soon as we got off the bus, we had to get something to eat. And when we checked in, Sugar took advantage of the free macadamia nut cookies by wrapping two in a napkin for the room. I’ve concluded that I won’t return to the USA having lost 15 pounds like the last trip with Bay. Shucks! I was counting on that.
BTW, it’s 58 freaking degrees at 6 PM. Yippee.

Later, Dad, Nat, Matt, DB