Stranded at JFK: Two scenarios that caused it, plus one that should have saved me but didn't

My Delta Flight out of JFK was scheduled to leave at 5:05 PM, so I reasoned that if I set out from the Alaska House guest house at 2:00, I would be in good shape. I think I would have been, too, had it not been for two setbacks - the first a miscalculation on my part and the second a bit of faulty information given to me by one of those guys who sits in little booths in the subway stations to sell tickets and answer questions.

First, my miscalculation: the guest house is very near to the subway station at Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue and so it was my plan to walk there, get on the train and go. Just before I set out, I decided I wanted to know of any train changes I might have to make along the way and so I pulled up HopStop.com. Hopstop allows one to enter his starting and ending points and then it gives directions as to what subway station to go to and what trains to take.

It instructed me to go to a different station, one in the opposite direction than Christopher, but in the actual direction of travel. So I set out for that station, thinking that it might take about 5 minutes to walk, certainly no more than ten. It took closer to 20. Even so, I should have been in decent shape.

Once I got to the station, I went to the booth, manned by an ornery man who likes to make people who do not know as much about the New York subway system as he does feel stupid.

From Hopstop, I knew that I had to take the A train, but I asked him about it and where I should go to most quickly access it. "You go down those stairs and you take the A train - the A train to Far Rockaway," he emphasized authoritatively.  "Only that A train. Not the other."

I went down the stairs and found myself on an island between two tracks. To my right, an A train was arriving at that very moment. I looked at the sign above it and it said "A local." I looked to my left, where there was no train at the moment and it said, "A, Far Rockaway."

So I let the A train to the right go without me and waited for one to come in at the left, the A to Far Rockaway, just like the man said.

As I waited, a B and then a C train came in on the track to the right, but no trains on the A to Far Rockaway track. Then another A local came, but still no A Far Rockaway.

Still, the man had said to take the "Far Rockaway" only and, as ornery as he had been, I figured that he knew what he was talking about. That faith would wind up costing me over $350 that I simply cannot afford. I would put it all on a credit card, of course. While at the moment I do not have one concrete paying job set to go in April or anytime in the future and I begin the month with barely enough money to support Margie and I for about one week - as long as we delay paying a few bills that long - there are always prospects out there and perhaps enough good things will happen in the future to allow me to get that credit card bill paid off and make a living, too.

I have been a freelance photographer/writer now for 25 years and I love it - but sometimes I hate it, too.

And to those who have bought into the cynical rumor, started by one who knows better, NO, NO, NO! I am not retired.

I will retire on the day that I die, or become too incapacitated to keep working.

That is the only way that I will retire.

But I grow angry and digress. This does me no good, so I will return to the story:

The cycle of A local and non-A trains on the left track continued unabated, but not a single train showed up on the Far Rockaway track. I began to grow very nervous that I was going to miss my plane if I waited much longer. So, finally, I jumped on an "A local" and asked a savvy looking man if this would get me to Far Rockaway and JFK.

Yes, he said, but I would have to change to a different A at a certain station about 40 minutes away. As to the Far Rockaway train that I had been waiting for - it was shut down for the weekend and that damned, ornery, smart-ass, authority in the booth whose instructions cost me all this lost time and money should have known that.

Suffice it to say, though, that I eventually made it and then found myself on the Airtrain, the last leg to JFK, where I took this image of all the many happy travelers traveling with me. While I knew I was cutting it close, I thought I was still in good shape and would be fine.

When the A Train dropped me off at Terminal 2, where Delta is based, I was a little surprised by the distance still ahead to walk. It was just about 4:00 PM. I was a little worried about what it might be like to go through JFK security, but still figured I would be okay.

So I made the walk, crossed the road, found the elevator, took it up and worked my way through the bustling crowd to the check-in kiosk. I used the "swipe your credit card" card method to check in. At first, the computer did not recognize me, so it asked me a string of questions before it finally figured out who I was and where I was going.

It then asked for the number of bags I would check in. I selected one. It then told me that all bags for this flight had been checked in and no more would be allowed. Did I want to continue? Yes, I did, but when I tried, the computer would not issue me a boarding pass. It told me to go to the "assist kiosk." I checked the time at that moment. 4:10 PM. My flight was scheduled for 5:05. I I had missed the baggage deadline by three, maybe four minutes at most.

Flying out of Anchorage it is never this tight. 4:10 for 5:05 departure would still easily get your bags on the plane and you would make it through security and you would fly.

Getting to the assist kiosk was a tedious, time-consuming process. It seems that many people coming to JFK arrive too late and so the lines were long and packed with frustrated and angry people, trying to get to clerks who were tried, frustrated and angry from having to deal with them all day.

As frustrated and frazzled as I was, I decided that I would be nothing but polite, friendly, and courteous to the poor, frazzled, frustrated, impatient woman who would deal with me, because it was not her fault and nothing that I could do now would change the situation. Nothing would put me on my scheduled flight home.

Indeed, she was impatient. She did not want to explain anything to me and, once she had determined that there was not a single other flight that I could take out that evening, she made it clear that she resented the fact I now expected her to help me find one the next day.

"There's just nothing," she said. Then she looked at me as that was that was that and we were done.

"I have to get home," I told her. "I can't stay here. If you can't get me out tonight, then you have to help me find a flight for tomorrow."

With an expression of great pain and annoyance, she got back into her computer. "I can put you on the same flight tomorrow, but there will be a $200 penalty."

"I have to get home," I reiterated, "but is there anything earlier tomorrow?"

She sighed wearily and then got back into her computer. After a few minutes, she told me should could put me on an earlier departure that would route me through Minneapolis instead of Salt Lake and put me in Anchorage a bit after 6:00 PM instead of 12:54 AM Tuesday morning. This would cost me another $653.

There was no way. I paid the $200 penalty and got rebooked for a 5:05 PM departure Monday, to arrive in Anchorage at 12:54 AM, Tuesday. I left the assit kiosk and headed back to the Airtrain. As I neared it, my phone rang. It was a recorded courtesy call to let me know that my 5:05 flight - the one I had not been allowed to check in for, not the new one that I had rebooked - had been delayed until 5:30.

So, you see, if Delta gave as much thought to its passengers as it does to their money, they could easily have still checked my bag in and put me on that plane and saved me all this time and money.

There was no way that I wanted to face the prospect of working my way back to JFK from Manhattan again Monday, so I booked myself at a Comfort Inn near JFK. I took the above picture from Federal Circle as I waited for the Comfort Inn Shuttle to come and pick me up.

I never get bored, but I got bored last night - only because I was too tired and weary to blog, write emails, work, or do anything. I took a walk. I ate. I called home and talked to all the Easter celebrants - that eased the boredom for awhile, as did this image of Kalib and Muzzy hunting Easter eggs in the back yard, iPhoned to me by Lavina. Wow! Look at what a huge patch of snow has melted away out of the back yard!

I lay on the bed and then stared, bored and bleary eyed, at my motel-room TV, watching nothing complete but different segments from different programs and movies plus bits of news about an earthquake in Mexico, felt strongly in California, among other happenings.

My flight is schedule to leave in just under 6 hours from now. The Comfort Inn lady has given me a late checkout time of 1:00 PM - one hour and 40 minutes from now.

I will go take a short walk, return here, see how much time I have left before checkout, decide what to do with it, then take the shuttle to the airport, check in early, go through security and then just hang out for awhile. I will buy something to eat and take a few pictures - although I already have far more pictures from this trip than I will possibly ever get around to dealing with at any time in my life.

But I will deal with some. Interested readers will see which ones. In the meantime, here is an iPhone image of Kalib and Jobe sent to me by Lavina:

On Easter Sunday morning, thousands of miles from home, I find a blue egg and a little girl with a basket

I made a bad mistake when I booked my ticket to come on this trip - I chose this day, Sunday, April 4, to fly back to Alaska from New York City. I did not realize that it was Easter Sunday. My plane will not arrive into Anchorage until just after midnight, which means that I miss this special day with my family. I will not join in the feast, I will not photograph Kalib as he happily scurries about the snow in our back yard, searching for Easter eggs.

I will not photograph Margie loving little Jobe, nor will I be able to pick him up and let him burp upon my shoulder. I will share no hugs with my sons and daughters.

I did not realize this mistake until I was on the East Coast. I wanted to change the return date, of course, but I booked the ticket through Orbitz and it is a terribly expensive proposition to change an Orbitz ticket and I am broke.

There is simply no way around it, I am flat-out broke. My travels here and all my expenses have been covered by those who brought me out, but this change would have come out of my pocket and I simply don't have it.

On the good side, this allowed me to spend a very good afternoon yesterday with Chie, who showed me parts of New York that I would never have seen otherwise. I will yet share this with you, as I will my search for a New York pretzel, my stroll through Central Park, visit to the sacred place where so many died on 9/11 and my other wanderings about New York the past two days.

Still, this morning, I got up feeling kind of bad that it is Easter and I am separated from my family.

I have a breakfast appointment with Aaron Fox, but decided to take a short walk beforehand. I walked down to the Hudson, and then on my way back spotted an Easter egg under a chain-link fence with more eggs lying beyond it.

No children were present, but I knew they soon would be. Soon, a little hand would pluck this egg from it's not-so-hidden hiding spot and happily plop it into a basket.

I walked just a short distance further and then came upon Avanna Angelina, walking with her grandfather. They were in a hurry to get to whatever celebration they were going to and could only afford to give me about about ten seconds.

That was just enough to document Avanna with her grandfather on the Easter Sunday during which Kalib will hunt his eggs without me.

At New York City's Alaska House - an excellent evening, followed by a good time at Je'Bon's, where I left my computer behind

One thing that is stressed in Iñupiat culture is that a person should not be arrogant or brag about him or herself, so I should probably not begin this post of this of this photo. Yet, despite the applause, it is not total self-praise, as the gentleman who is showing me the top of his gap is not happy at all.

Still, I found my entire evening at the Alaska House  excellent and I greatly enjoyed it. The event had been scheduled to begin at 6:00 PM and by 5:55 PM, I was getting a little worried because only about four or five people had arrived. "Don't worry," Ellaine Legaspi, director of the Alaska House assured me. "This is how it always is. They will come."

And she was right. People began to come in and to go downstairs where fruit, cheese, crackers, wine, beer, soft drinks and water were being served. At 6:30, all moved upstairs and I began to show my slides and tell tell a sliver of the stories behind them.

Everyone showed interest and at the end, I was engaged with many questions.

After I took this photo, it was announced that there was time for only one more question. After that, anyone who wanted could hang around, visit and enjoy the refreshments.

I had to make a choice between upon the gentleman at right and a woman who was eagerly waving her hand, but who had already asked a couple of questions. This gentleman had asked none.

In fact, he had taken his seat only after the question and answer began, but I thought perhaps he had been standing off in the back somewhere during the slide show, because if he hadn't seen it, than how could he have any questions about it?

So I called on him.

I cannot put his question back together in here, but basically, he had not seen the show but he wanted to come anyway, to ask me some things about Inuit shamans, and he threw in a comment about the Pope. Even if I had clearly understood the question and had a good answer, which I didn't, I do not think I could have satisfied him, because it soon became clear that he had come not to discuss, but to contest.

Fortunately, Andre, wearng in the purple shirt, stepped in to speak from the perspective of a man whose bloodlines include Iñupiat and Yu'pik and also reach back to American slaves stolen from Africa. Andre did not satisfy the man, but he did defuse the situation.

Then many of us lingered, visited, and socialized and had a good time.

Among those I met afterward was Torin Jacobs, the brother of Andre. Torin in an alumni of New York University and a Marine veteran of the Iraq War. He lives in Anchorage now, is getting married in July and is building a career in music, production and dance.

People familiar with my past work know that in the early days of this new century, I did a project of portraits and interviews of Alaska Native veterans for the Alaska Federation of Natives. While I got a decent start to the project and took it beyond the limits of the funds that I had, I could never find the funding to take it anywhere near as far as I felt it should go.

I still see it as part of my ongoing work and while I had no time to anything formal with Torin, I did do a quick pose of him in front of a work by Alvin Amason.

We have a friendship now. Someday, perhaps, I will be able to tell you more of the story of this Alaska Native veteran.

Afterward, Torin, Andre, David Murray and Cherie McCabe invited me to join them for a sushi dinner at Je' Bon, a nice walk away from the Alaska House. That's David, also of Bethel, on the right.

David's mother comes from Rosebud, a Lakota reservation in South Dakota. David was trying to think how he could describe Rosebud to me, as he was certain that it was a place that I would know nothing of.

"Rosebud is where I met my wife," I told him.

And the woman sitting next to him? That's Cherie, Navajo. We had already spent quite a bit of time visiting, first at the Alaska House and then as we walked together to Je'Bon. After she had first introduced herself at the Alaska House, I had asked her if she knew Frank McCabe, who I knew in college.

"Frank is my dad!" she exclaimed.

Now she, the daughter of a friend from college and he, who hails from Bethel and whose mom came from the small town where I met my wife, are a couple.

What is it they say about this being a small world?

On our walk over, we happened upon a minor fender-bender . "So people do crash in New York City," I said to Cherie. "It's kind of always looked to me like everybody continually has near-misses, but that no one ever crashes."

"Oh, they crash!" she said. "All the time. I work in an emergency room and I see the results." She is a doctor, doing her internship here in New York City.

The sushi! The sushi! We ordered a large variety of rolls and it was all exquisite.

Right now, even as I type these words, David and Cherie should be running a half-marathon that began at Shea Stadium this morning. I had been thinking about going over there to see if I can photograph them finishing, but I fear that it is already too late. I have been told that it will take me an hour to get there and hour to get back and the day is so sunny and beautiful and it is my last in New York.

So I am sad to miss the finish, but glad that I got to meet them and eat sushi together.

After we had eaten, we were joined by a college friend and roommate of David's who lives and works on Wall Street.

There were many young, college-aged, people about. They imbibed heavily, laughed loudly and partied hearty and one particular young man among them had a chance to make to score big at my expense. When we left at closing time, I walked out with my hands full of left-overs from the Alaska House reception and absentmindedly left my computer behind.

Three blocks away, as I walked with Torin, I remembered it. Torin and I ran back and all the way I thought of those kids and how tempting that computer might have looked to some among them and I knew that they would all have passed right by where we had been sitting as they made their way to the stairs that led up to the main floor.

People were still leaving and the door still open when we got back, but the owner stopped us before we could return to the place where we had sat.

"Relax," he said. "I have your computer." He gave it to me and then took me outside where a group of the party-hearty youth continued to socialize. He introduced me to the young man who had found my computer and and had then turned it over to him for safe-keeping. The young man and I shook hands.

Perhaps in the morning, he would awake with a hangover. He would also awake with my gratitude.

People leaving.

Afterward, the brothers: Andre and Torin Jacobs.

Besides working at the Alaska House, Andre has started a Native radio program that will be heard nationwide, including on KNBA in Anchorage. He told us about a rather tragic story involving family that he is working on. For now, I won't say anything about it, but in time, when his story is right, I will see if I can write a few words and point readers toward it.

By the way: I did find that pretzel. I plan to post a full report on the pretzel and some of my other experiences as I have wandered about New York as a typical tourist tomorrow, before I board my plane back to Alaska.

Time to quit wasting time and to go find a pretzel

Folks, I'm sitting here just being a dummy. I don't mean here in the picture, where Andre Jacobs is giving me rabbit ears at an excellent and rowdy Sushi house as Cherie McCabe takes my picture with my camera after I had gone around the table photographing everyone else.

I mean right here, at the desk where I sit in the Alaska House guest house typing as morning turns to noon. Being as how I got to bed at the not-unusal-time for me of 3:00 AM, I did not get up this morning until a few minutes after nine. I then went out and found a nearby dinner, where I ordered an omelette that was not all that good.

I then returned to this desk, did a small amount of web-surfing and afterward began to edit last night's pictures from my Alaska House presentation and those from the little gathering that followed. I was invited to that gathering by a group of Alaskans from the Bethel - Hooper Bay and a young Navajo medical doctor who is doing her internship at a hospital here in New York.

But folks, I am in New York City! Time is passing.

Outside, believe it or not, the sky is not only clear and blue and the sun shining with an intensity and warmth that I have experienced in a good seven months, but the air is clean and pleasant to breathe.

Yes, right here in New York City.

So, rather than waste any more of these few, precious, daylight hours working on this blog, I am going to take a shower and then go out, roam the streets of New York City and see if I can find a pretzel somewhere.

Late tonight, when it is dark and the sun is gone, I will make my report on last night. Anyone who is interested can see it tomorrow.

Unless, of course, I find my night self swept into the ever-bustling, energetic crowd that flows through these same lively streets night and day.

Once again, I have violated my policy of only using photos taken by other people after I take a picture of the photo on a computer, phone, printed paper or whatever.

I just don't want to take the time to photograph the image and then transfer that back into the computer...

In fact, why am I evening taking the time to explain...?

I'm outta here.

I sadly leave the mansion at 99 Main, fly out of Nantucket, wind up in New York, ride the subway, dine, and wind up with Chie and her students at Columbia University

Although I have experienced these feelings countless times in the past and expect to do so again in the future, I still do not understand why. As usually happens when I travel to another place, I felt a sad ache, as though I were leaving a place that I had known for a long time - a place that was home.

I have felt this feeling in villages all across Alaska, various places in the Lower 48 and Canada, Greenland, The UK, Russia, Mexico and India.

All these places cannot be my home, so why do I feel this way when it comes time to depart?

It had been my intent to devote a post entirely to the Quaker modest mansion at 99 Main and to photograph all the art work, stairs, antique furniture and such that adorns, but I never managed to do it.

Just before I left, I did photograph this ceramic cat that sits atop a chest in the bedroom that I occupied.

I should also note that I did succeed in photographing two living, breathing, cats in Nantucket.

I have not yet had a chance to look at those photos - and I took many, more than I did of any other single subject that I shot. In fact, I took just about as many pictures of those two cats as I did of all my other Nantucket subjects combined.

There are three reasons for this: one, the home in which I photographed the cats was very dark and I was shooting at extremely slow shutters speeds and I knew that many of the pictures would be badly blurred and cruddy looking. Two, it was pouring rain outside and so my host and I stayed inside for about 45 minutes or so and I had nothing else to do during that time but to photograph the cats.

Third, the cats were the only subjects in Nantucket that I used my big DSLR camera on. That camera shoots five frames a second, so one tends to hold the shutter down and just bang away, like it was a machine gun.

The pocket camera, however, can sort of manage one frame every 1.5 seconds, but it is really slower than that, because it takes time to focus, to zoom in and out and to do all kinds of things that happen very quickly with the DSLR.

This is a pocket camera defect that I both love and hate. 

Soon, Ben Simons dropped me off at Cape Air and I was on the plane, about to fly to Boston. The lady in front of me was reading a newspaper and I could not help but notice that the local high school athletic teams call themselves the "Whalers" and "Lady Whalers" - just like in Barrow.

The difference is, when they use this name in Barrow, they describe themselves as they are now and always have been.

When they use it in Nantucket, they describe a people of the past who followed a short-lived, furious, money-making enterprise that seems to have been a model for much of what has happened since in the United States: a resource is discovered, that resource is exploited at all costs, making some people very rich while leaving many more disappointed; it drives other industry and development, is then depleted and the communities that are built upon it fall, to be replaced by something else.

Then that short, furious, past is remembered romantically.

I promised that I would make a post, or maybe two or three, in which I would use some of the many photographs that I took in Nantucket to say what I could of that past. I still will. As I flew toward Boston and then New York, I began to read the book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, given to me by Bill Tramposch, the Executive Director of the Nantucket Historical Association.

With each turn of the page, I learned something new and decided that I would wait until after I get home and finish this book to make that report.

Soon, we were landing in Boston.

This young lady was very worried that she was going to miss her flight. Somehow, she had managed to remain on the Boston Logan Airport Shuttle as it passed the terminal she was supposed to fly out of. Now she  had to go all the way around the airport again and she was already cutting it close.

Not long after that, I was on the ground in New York, riding the subway, headed for Manhattan.

After I got off the subway, I walked to the Alaska House and I was overdressed, wearing both a sweatshirt and jacket in what for me was t-shirt weather. I was hot, sweaty and dehydrated when I got there. I was given the keys to the guest house where I now stay, told that it was about a 15-20 minute walk and it was suggested that, to prevent me from getting even hotter and sweatier, I take a cab.

I was going to do so, but when I got to the cabs, I was traveling faster on foot they were on wheels, so I decided just to walk. When I arrived at the guest house, I could not open the double-deadbolted door. I could hear and feel the deadbolts moving and clicking, but I tried and tried and tried and those doors would not open.

So I called Ellaine at Alaska House, and she sent Andre, originally of Hooper Bay, over to help me. As I waited for him, I saw this man walking this dog. Andre arrived about 15 minutes later and at first experienced the same problem, but then he quickly recalled the feel of it and opened the door. 

He showed me how and ever since then, the door has been easy to open. I can't even imagine why it was hard to begin with.

About 8:PM, I set out in seach of some food to eat. I had not gone far before I came across this scantily clad mannequin. I would soon discover that such mannequins are common in this neighborhood. In Wasilla, we do not see mannequins dressed like this. Wasilla mannequins dress much more modestly, even when left alone all night with their closest male friends and husbands.

They say that sex sells. Now that I have posted this picture, maybe I can finally begin to make some money with this blog.

I never did discover the name of this restaurant, but I came upon it after I had walked over 20 blocks, during which time I passed many restaurants and had one pizza guy threaten me when I walked into his restaurant, looked the goods over, found nothing that appealed to me and turned to walk back out.

I just laughed him off.

This restaurant was excellent. I don't remember the name of the dish that I ordered, but it was packed with mushrooms and more hot spice than I should be eating and tasted so very good.

These three diners kept photographing each other, but could not get everybody in one shot. So I offered to take a picture of all three with their camera.

They admire pictures of themselves. "Thank you," they said to me, when they left.

Would you believe it? After dinner, I walked back to the guest house, relaxed for just a little bit, then took a 26 block walk but forgot my camera. I could photograph nothing. I decided that I did not want to walk another 26 blocks back and would ride the subway back instead.

It took me to a different place than where I wanted to go.

When I got off, I discovered that I still had about 15 blocks to walk. I said, "what the hell," and walked it.

I got up early this morning and rode the subway all the way from Lower to Upper Manhattan, where I found Chie Sakakibara looking for me.

Chie is originally from Japan, but has spent a great deal of time in Barrow and has become close to many families there. When she learned that I was coming to New York, she invited me to come and show my slides to students in the "Indigenous Peoples and Environment" course that she teaches under Columbia's "Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race."

With her colleague, anthropologist Aaron Fox, Director of Columbia University’s Center for Ethnomusicology, Chie helped return some lost dances, filmed in 1946, to Barrow. The dances were performed at the last Kivgiq and both she and Fox were called onto the floor to dance.

Before her students arrived, we did a technology check in the classroom. Chie then surprised me and pulled out a container of bowhead meat and offered me a taste of breakfast.

I have eaten some fine food on this trip, but the little bit of bowhead that I ate here is the best thing that I have tasted on these travels.

It is from a whale caught by the crew of Roy and Flossie Nageak of Barrow, who have adopted Chie into their family. I wanted to keep eat more than my fair share, but feared I would deplete too much of Chie's precious stash.

"It's okay," she said. "Roy will get me another one."

Her beautiful attiqluk was sewn for her by Esther Frankson of Point Hope.

When her students arrived, each shared in the bowhead breakfast. I heard nothing but praise for it. I am often asked to describe the taste of bowhead and this always leaves me at a loss. It tastes like bowhead, and nothing else. Furthermore, each part tastes different than the other parts.

"This tastes like a kangaroo of the sea," one of her students said.

So now I finally know how to describe it.

My presentation was well-received. Afterward, I was still hungry, so we went to campus coffee shop where Chie ordered tea and bought me a coffee and an egg, cheese and ham bagel sandwich.

Soon we were joined by artist Les Joynes, who is at Columbia as a Visiting Scholar in Contemporary Art from the University of London. He had planned to come for my presentation, but a 16 year-old cat that he got in Japan, where Joynes has spent much of his life, had some emergency medical problems. Joynes had to attend to the cat - something that I understand fully.

He created the piece in front of him in Singapore as part of a long-term project that depicts how people become separate and alien from their own environments. With the position of his hands and arms, Les is describing some of the positions that some of the people of Pompei died in, as evidenced in the "molds" left behind in the volcanic lava.

He is also launching an art project in the Arctic.

Chie and Les, Columbia University.