Working in so called higher education has a few
perks. One of which is conferences. Free conferences and free travel to and
from said conference. Very perky.
In theory.
In practice, when you take your three-count ‘em-three
kids along, perky can (and does) become pesky if not painful.
Ima tell you what happened.
The detes:
Conference in Chicago. Never been to the windy
city so...cool.
Fly out wed morning, fly back sat afternoon.
The devil in the detes:
Fly out of logan airport in, oh god, Boston, MA. Connect in LaGuardia. (Trivia
question: What was LaGuardia’s first name? You did know LaGuardia was a person,
right?)
First flight at, oh god, 9:30am.
The last devil in the detail is that we are
taking our three-count ‘em-three kiddos. Ages 7,5, 14...months. Oh god
indeed.
So imagine just packing for this trip
(toiletries, onesies, diapers, pull-ups) and then imagine lugging all of this
along with a stroller.
Ok, so we get the kids to bed tuesday night and
pack and get to bed at a reasonable hour. Good start.
Now someone in the family, not gonna say who,
gets up at 4:40am every day, and was ready to go Wednesday morning to drive
from god’s plan (providence) Rhode Island up to beantown but someone else in
the family, not gonna say who, may or may not have lollygagged a tad.
Conclusion: got on the road a little bit late. Not great.
Oh, tank is on E, so we have to get gas. No
biggie, place down the road. 5 mins. Oh but then on the way to the expressway
the 5 yr old says he’s gotta pee. Turn around, head back to the house. Um.
Running late.
Alright, we got this. On a good day, a drive
from god’s plan to Boston is one hour.
Did I mention the morning commute through god’s
plan is, anything but divine?
Running later.
Did I mention the morning commute through Boston
is anything but hell?
Running latest.
In effing stop and go traffic, with the five
year old getting car sick from said stop and go, we finally make it to Logan
for our 9:30am flight at, oh, 9:20...ish. We, of course, have to go to the top
of the parking deck, lug everything out, kids included, and try to check the
bag and get through security, replete with full body cavity search and
mammogram.
We miss our flight.
Like a little leaguer facing Nolan Ryan we whiff
on that flight. Not even close.
Alright. These things happen. We do what you you
do when you miss a flight -drink at the airport. No that’s not right, you check
the next flight. You problem solve, you stay calm, and you let those tots have
all the screen time they want, cuz your ass is stuck at Logan.
We’re on standby. Not great. Our tickets, should
we even get on the flight are not together. Not greater. Thinking about my five
year old next to strangers is disconcerting. Thinking about some poor sap with
my ball busting 7 year old is funny though.
Good news: we get on the flight to LaGuardia.
(Trivia answer: Fiorello. Please take a moment, 17 hours actually to watch the
Ric Burns documentary New York - worth the time, I promise). Gooder news, a
kind woman trades seats so I can sit next to my five year old and my wife was
close “enough” to the 7 year old. I might add at this point that the 14 month
old is just a champ through all of this.
Ok, we get to LaGuardia and, with all due
respect to Fiorello and all he did for New York as Mayor, man is this airport a
shithole. That aside, we have to try and get to Chicago. My wife, stands in
line for 2 hours, whilst I entertain (hands kindle to tots) the kids, to try
and get us on a flight to Chicago. Nope. Not gonna happen. Two hours wasted
quicker than a frat boy at a kegger. But, wait for it, we aren’t the only ones.
Three flights nixed to the windy city.
Alright. These things happen. You get on the
horn and you get a hotel. Three missed flights full of people do the same thing
and apparently they did it a LOT earlier than we did. Hotels full. Except for
the Holiday Inn LaGuardia, and, with all due respect to Fiorello and all he did
for New York as Mayor, man is this hotel a shithole. Not his fault I know. Oh
and when you have a 14 month old, you make sure to ask the hotel if they have a
crib. Check: Holiday Inn LaGuardia has a crib.
Next, get on the shuttle to the Holiday Inn,
with three kids. More driving. Not awesome.
The room is small. College apartment bedroom
small. Studio. Two beds. We are famished so we head down to the “restaurant.”
The “food” was foodish and I’m sure contained some sort of ingredients but how
the meatball served to me with my “spaghetti” qualified as a meatball, I am not
sure. My wife said her salad, served in a wooden bowl, was ok. The kids, pent
up from all of this run around the “restaurant.” But good news, it was only 4pm
so the other customer didn’t seem to mind - I think he was drunk.
Right about now I should mention that our
checked bag, the one with all those diapers and pull-ups, was on its way to
Chicago. Sooooo, whist I try to manage three kids in a closet, my wife has to
uber out to the nearest Target, which happens to be in oh a seven story mall,
to get the bare minimum of diapers, pull-ups, boxers, deodorant, toothpaste and
brushes and a change of clothes for the next day...and in the big apple, this
only cost us 200 smackers.
Alright. These things happen.
So the little gal has to sleep between us and
the boys somehow share their bed and get to sleep. We make it through the
night.
We make it through “breakfast” and we make it
through the 10 mile yet hour commute back to LaGuardia. More driving. We hang
out as best we can at LaGuardia for oh, just two hours and then suffer the
indignity that is air travel. Again.
We get to the windy city after two hours cramped
in the trunk of a 1979 Pinto, breathing air fresh out of a forsaken aquarium
bubbler, and retrieve our checked bag and, wait for it, pile into another car
for a 30 mile trip to the hotel. A 30 mile trip that took an hour and a half of
stop and go traffic with a top speed of, I kid you not, 25MPH. ON the
expressway. What the fuck is express about 25MPH? The 5 year old got car sick,
again, but didn’t throw up. The little gal finally had had enough a cried up a
storm while out driver said “This was the fastest way.”
We make it to the hotel. Very nice place. Mood
rises in all of us. We haven’t had a vaca in three plus years so we get club
floor. So the wife and tots head out for the dessert hour whilst I get the
little gal a bath and relax a little. My wife brings me back a dark and
stormy.
We strategize bedtime. I will take the 7 year
old out so he doesn’t fight/play/punch/wrestle/giggle/fart with his brother
when they should be going to sleep. Ok, let us go check out the pool. Get some
energy out, do a little swimmin’. Concierge so nicely informs us that the pool
is being serviced, but that, a mere ten blocks away, a mere 15 minute walk
through the streets of Chicago, at 8pm at night, with a mere 7 year old, is a
swimming pool we can use. How she kept a straight face and told me this is
beyond me. I do keep the kid out long enough for his brother to be asleep by
the time we get back. However, my wife tells me that our room has a connecting
door and that the guest arrived and we need to be quiet. I wasn’t planning on
having a rave but ok.
We get some sleep. And don’t drive or fly
anywhere. Bonus.
Because she missed a conference day my wife has
to be up early to check in for the conference and retrieve a poster and yadi
yada and we all make it out to club floor breakfast at the ripe ole time of
6:30am. All of us. My wife departs and I head back to the room with the three
kiddos and figure I will plan the morning activities. Well do you remember that
we have a connecting room? Well the boys are off the wall as they usually are
and our fellow traveler starts banging on the connecting door and starts
turning the handle like if it were to open, he would waltz right into our room.
I furrow my brow as I’m holding my 14 month old, and the banging
stops...because he left his room to come around to our entry door and bang on
it. “How may I help you?” I ask. He screams “Can you keep it down?” I retort:
“Doing the best I can here.” Mind you, this is not a freshman dorm we are
staying in here but a 23 story hotel in downtown Chicago and this cat bangs on
the door and screams. Great.
Alright. These things happen.
So I gather up three kids and get in line at the
front desk to explain why we need a room change. They say they can accommodate
but to check back around noon to make sure. “For future reference,” he says,
“just call security.”
We make at to Millennium park. Before 8am. I
guess it’s nice that we have the place to ourselves. We check it out, we snap
some pics at the bean, stroll the grounds, aaaaand, it’s 9am. Try to keep it
somewhat entertaining and the Crown Fountain helps but the tots get soaked. The
boys will need a change of clothes which means I have to go back to the room.
We head back and because it is so damn early, we can still get some breakfast.
Mollifies them a little. Try to get the little gal down for her nap, put the
boys in a warm tub. Doin’ my best here. Joe Blow next door isn’t banging on the
walls so I’m ok. But she’s not having it so we’re out the door again. Back to Millennium park. Now it is packed but I get to see my sister inlaw and her
husband and their newborn so it works out. The boys make friends at the
fountain and the little gal sleeps in her stroller. A reprieve.
It is short lived.
Near noon so I check on the status of the room
change, while the boys have trouble “waiting patiently.” i.e not punching and
wrestling and hanging on the velvet ropes like rhesus monkeys. After hemming
and hawing they can do the change. And guess who has a half-hour to pack up
everything and move it to the new room while juggling three kiddos. Not
literally. Stressful as there is schtuff everywhere and fitting it all back
into the bags was, not exactly a walk in the park, more like a bear crawl in
the Andes. I get it done. I don’t know what item is in what bag or where
anything at all is but I get it done.
The wife gets back and we meet up again with her
sister at the navy pier. Nice enough. The kids dig the Children’s Museum and we
get a little burned out near five but avoid a complete meltdown and make it to
dinner back at the hotel. We split up the bed times again and get some
sleep.
We’re packed up and head to the Chicago
aquarium. Half-hour drive wherein the driver, obviously at the end of a loooong
shift, proceeds to fall asleep at a red light. But no worries, we woke him up
when it turned green. Safety first kids! Where we have, tops, one hour but pay
through the bottle nose dolphin prices. At this point it is all becoming very
tiring and I haven’t even had a chance for deep dish pizza. We check out and,
no need to guess it, uber back to O'hare at a mere hour-ish. At this point it
is all becoming most tiring and I haven’t even seen any of the Blues Brothers
sites, other than a Wacker Drive sighting, whilst [sigh] driving.
The captain tells us that “we are waiting on the
catering truck,” so we sit on the tarmac for a half hour before our two hour
flight back to Logan...before our, if we’re lucky, hour drive back home. We
make it back to Logan and it is about now that we deem our seven year old
possessed. So many constraints and directives on this trip, in addition to
ample screen time, I realize must have been really challenging for him. We get
our bag aaaand trek it back to the 7th floor of central parking which feels
miles away at this point aaaaand for the life of us, can’t find our car. We try
two different garages. We are so spent my wife and I that we can’t remember
can’t make heads for tails. So we call parking and this little old man comes
and picks us all up and we load the luggage for the billionth time and he
drives us across the lot and we realize we had walked right past it. Sheezuz.
We drive out of Boston and make for home.
But the tots get thirsty so we have to pull off
and get fluids. More time. And to cap it off, just as we are about to hit our
town, the five year old throws up in the back up the car. A lot.
We’ve got to lug everything out, again, get the
kiddos dinner and a bath, get the little gal down, then get the puke stained
car seat out of the back which only requires a thousand cuss words.
Now in theory, I don’t suppose that the universe
was speaking to us very early on in the throes of this trip, to, you know, NOT
GO. In theory, I don’t suppose the universe speaks. Who has two thumbs and
doesn’t like to anthropomorphize? (If you are keeping score at home, that was 5
syllables, count em’ 5) This guy.
In practice? The universe screamed at us,
slapped us hard across our face, uppercutted us in the sternum, did the sign
language just in case, made a sign, a series of sings like in Bob Dylan’s
Subterranean Homesick Blues, imploring us to bag it, DON’T GO!
Still, it was better than work (was it though?).
