tight connections

friday, october 3rd, noon-ish. 

i'm currently on my third and final leg of my journey to marrakech, morocco and its been nothing but hail mary moves to get to where i'm at right now. yesterday began with me snoozing through all of my alarms and finally waking at around 8am for my 8:25am flight to philly; needless to say, i missed my flight. 

the panic light inside my head began to blink as i aimlessly scrambled through my room. i opened the laptop and began to lookup all east coast cities i could fly to that could take me to madrid with enough connection time to hop on my flight to marrakech. i began to loose hope until i saw an iberia flight from jfk to mad leaving at 8:55pm EST. and wouldn't you know it, there just so happened to be a flight with virgin america to jfk leaving at 10:30am. 

i burned through almost an hour on my web quest so by the time i showered and had all of my gear ready, it was 9:10am. pasadena to lax at that time is not the prettiest drive but luckily i bought myself a fastrak transponder from costco a few months ago so i was able to get to lax by 10:00am. another smart investment i made a few months ago was getting global entry, which included tsa pre-check and had me in and out of security in under 5 minutes; worth every penny! i got to gate 36 by 10:15am and just in time for final call. 

a few hours and several sam adams later, i landed at jfk and hit the ground running. we landed in terminal 4 and iberia was at terminal 7, by the time i got on the airtrain it was almost 7:20pm. i didn't have much cash on me and i knew there was a chase atm in jetblue's terminal 5. it was going to be tight but i quickly got off and made the long walk across the sky-walk towards terminal 5. i spotted the atm but not before also noticing the dunkin donuts halfway down the ticket counter. precious seconds ticked away as i contemplated my decision, but in reality it wasn't even one, deep down i knew i was going to get myself a coffee and bagel, how could i not.

i raced back up the ramp and hopped on the airtrain towards terminal 7. i finally reached the iberia counter and all i can think of is the warm round gooey goodness that's inside my bag. i inhale my bagel in seconds and dashed towards the iberia counter: it was 8:06pm and jose, the iberia agent told me the flight was closed for check-in. i took a long sip from my delicious dunkin donuts coffee and made my case. he must've felt sorry for me because next thing i know, he's calling the gates and after a few spanish exchanges with his supervisor, he gives me a boarding pass with a row all to myself. i thank him and again i'm off to the races, get through security and get to gate 4: it is 8:35pm. 

once boarded, all good, mellow was what i thought up until we began our taxi to the runway. the ground traffic in jfk was bananas so we spent an hour in a conga line waiting to take-off, which ate away at my tight connection in madrid. when we finally landed and deplaned, the time was 11:10am and the flight out to marrakech left at 12pm. i didn't have a boarding pass for my flight, which usually means you have to go past security and re-check at the ticket counter; i definitely did not have time for that. just my luck, i came across an iberia full service counter and spoke with a kind agent who helped me out and was able to print me my boarding pass and also give me a seat assignment. i thanked her very much and sped walk towards gate s23. it was 11:30 by the time i reached the gate and not only did i get there with enough time but my two friends were there waiting for me.

so now i'm back, here, where i first began flying across the straight of gilbratar unsure of what will happen in the next few moments and looking forward to the next set of tight connections. cheers