WC2006: Ausgang

NEWARK AIRPORT (3:36pm local time) -- It's never just you. On the shuttle that left the hotel at the ungodly hour of 6am, at least two other parties had fallen for the "Airport Hotel" hack, not realizing you could just hop the S-Bahn from pretty much anywhere in Frankfurt. The only real upside is the lack of bag schlepping.

Which isn't a bad upside to have, as the drum now has clothes and souveniers inside it.

On the one hand, I lucked out and had someone offer to swap my middle seat for an aisle seat so a couple could sit together. On the other hand, the people in front of me seemed to think it was their god-given right to recline their seats as far back as possible for the entire flight.

The inherent flaw in the "I'll sleep on the plane" approach is that sometimes, you can't sleep on the plane. Right now, I think I'm pegged at 3 or 4 hours of sleep out of the last 36, and yet I'm still going at a reasonable rate.

I was laid over in NYC long enough to have a nice lunch with my sister and a downright Amazonian waitress at a bar and grill down the street from Penn Station.

Then it's the final leg of the AirTrain to LIRR to NJ Transit to AirTrain madness, with luggage in tow. While the convenience of the Newark AirTrain is certainly a plus, it's not going to disabuse anyone's notion of New Jersey as one big sewage treatment plant.

The last remaining travel question is if my flight into Midway will get in somewhere reasonably close to its scheduled arrival so I don't miss the Fire match. Right now we're running a half-hour late.