Not MIA at MIA

Sunday, February 16, 2014
Miami, Florida, United States
That, my fine friends, was a very abbreviated night. Short and interrupted, my sleep will need to be had aboard an American Airlines jet because not nearly enough rest was had when it should have been.

I have learned the primary shortcoming (beyond a shortage of space) of the "Studio" cabins for solo travelers and it is noise through connecting doorways. 12562 has a connecting door to 12564. Since these cabins are for solo travelers only, I would love to hear the marketing justification for having connecting doors but I shall save that for another time. Suffice to say that the occupant of 62 can tell when the occupant of 64 has lights on or lights off. As it says when one enters the London Tube, mind the gap.

One other point of note is that toilets aboard cruise ships are of the "vacuum flush" variety. To minimize the onboard use of scarce and expensive fresh water, the small amount of water in the bowl serves as a cocoon for whatever is placed there and ultimately carried away not by more water but by a noisy SWOOSH of compressed air.

Let's just say that the occupant of 64, a nice man I saw but a few times, should be dubbed on this night "Sir Flushalot." The light and sound, along with the excitement of heading home and seeing loved ones, kept yours truly on alert through the already short night.

Giving up at 6:30, I quickly showered and headed up one final time to Deck 15 for coffee, some fruit and a muffin. The sunrise turned downtown windows gilt and a final stroll of the week's haunts brought both memories and a sense of a mission accomplished.

Customs and Immigration went smoothly even though the immigration officer (a Major) took a moment to remark on the heft of my passport which has been made unusually thick through the addition of not one but two sets of extra visa pages. "What do you do for a living?" he asked. "Not much any more," I said. We both laughed and I headed out to a $10 shuttle for the short ride to MIA.

The pending rule change allowing mobile phone use aboard aircraft should be rejected. One of my van mates called her daughter for no apparent reason and yelled a greeting. What is it about mobile phones that causes folks to turn up their speaking volume when they are in a closely packed area? I normally turn my volume down to a whisper.

At MIA, the TSA Pre-Check line, normally a shorter queue was long, filled with many folks who had been randomly selected for the privilege of completing the security process without removing liquids or laptops from backpacks while keeping shoes, belts and light jackets on rather than shedding them for a ride in a bin through the machinery.

If you don't like the odds of being a random selectee, I would urge you to apply for TSA Pre-Check status and the award of a Trusted Traveler number. See how to do that at http://www.tsa.gov/tsa-precheck/participation-tsa-precheck

The American Express people have arranged for Platinum Card holders, of which I am one, to have complimentary access to American Airlines Admiral's Clubs so that is where I go to pass the two hours before my flights (I must connect at Chicago's O'Hare) depart. AA says both of my flights are operating normally and on time today. Over five percent (14,000+) of flights inside the U.S. this week have been canceled. For the entire winter (not yet over) 75,000 flights have been canceled, the most in the last 25 years. I have been lucky as to the travel days I chose and, my luck continues to hold. Not traveling through Cincinnati, Detroit, Boston or New York today (those airports are all reporting delays this morning) I hope to speed home for an on-time arrival.

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