A Sort Of Homecoming - My Last Post
37.77498° N, 122.51064° W
To get home from St. Martin, we had to fly through Miami International Airport, which is not very well organized. I was the only crewmember with a checked bag, and if you are arriving in Miami on a flight from outside the U.S. with checked luggage, you have go through the following:
- an immigration/passport checkpoint,
- find your checked bag at one of the baggage carousels
- take said bag to a customs checkpoint
- declare any items that might have duties levied against them (I had none)
- state that you aren’t transporting any agricultural products (I wasn’t)
- re-check the luggage with the airline
- go through a TSA security checkpoint to get back into the terminal of your connecting flight
The security checkpoint we were being funneled towards was total chaos, and I overheard wait times of 35 minutes or more. I was in a hurry to get back into the terminal to meet up with the rest of the crew before their flight to Seattle departed.
I have a TSA Pre membership, which meant that I should have been able to go through a security checkpoint very quickly, but only if I knew which checkpoints allowed TSA Pre screening. The signage in the airport was terrible, and I finally had to aggressively go after someone wearing a badge to find out which checkpoint offered TSA Pre. I was at Checkpoint #3; TSA Pre was at Checkpoint #1, almost a quarter-mile from my current location.
I shouldered my backpack and ran to Checkpoint #1. As I slowed up to get in line, a gentleman behind me told me that the zippers on my backpack pockets were open. I thanked him, checked that the open pocket contained my passport, wallet and cellphone, zipped up the pocket, then scurried through security. My flight to SFO was departing from gate 46, and the rest of the crew were already at gate 50 for their flight to SEA. I had come out near gate 25 after I cleared security, so once again, I shouldered my backpack and ran the length of the terminal to find my crewmates.
We only had 10 or 15 minutes to say our goodbyes before they lined up to get on the plane. I had had no food since a morning croissant on St. Martin, so I bought a Vitamin Water and a salami sandwich, sat down in one of the waiting areas to consume it, then went to gate 46, got in line and boarded the plane.
I tried to do some blog writing on the plane, but there was a fair bit of turbulence, and once again, my body wasn’t too happy that I was staring at a screen, so I closed up the laptop and slept fitfully nearly all the way to SFO.
Still dressed for the Caribbean, I got off the plane in SFO, picked up my bag from the luggage carousel, made my way to the wind-chilled upper-level of a parking garage to catch a Lyft ride back home. It happened to be a Tesla with a driver who was courteous, but said nothing once I was settled in the back seat and we were on our way. As I stared out the window at the expanses of barren concrete illumined by the cold light LEDs, I felt the pang of missing the sun and the heat and the lush overgrowth of Grenada.
The Lyft driver dropped me off on the curb in front of my building about 1 a.m. As I turned from taking my bags out of the trunk of the car, I could see that a homeless unhoused person was outside the front door in the throes of some sort of drug-induced episode. Eager to sleep in my own bed, I got near the front door, set down my bags and opened the pocket of my backpack to retrieve the house keys I had seen while packing the previous morning in St. Martin.
Except the keys weren’t there. My mind leapt back to the open pocket of my backpack as I ran through MIA and realized that I had missed checking for them along with the other important items. I called and texted everyone who was at home. They of course were all asleep with their phones silenced, and for about two seconds I felt a surge of frustration that they weren’t reachable. But I asked myself if it wasn’t better that my family was sound asleep with their phones off, as it should be? Of course it was, so I had to figure something out to get me through till morning. Now I was suddenly one of the unhoused, in front of my own house no less.
The shorts and t-shirt I was wearing clearly weren’t going to be enough, so I opened my suitcase, took out the one long-sleeve shirt, one pair of pants and one pair of socks that I had and put those on. Then I hailed another Lyft ride to take me and my luggage to Seal Rock Inn less than a mile up the hill from the house.
I asked the driver to wait while I checked to see if there was anyone at the front desk of the hotel. There wasn’t, and as I returned to the car, I saw the driver take my suitcase out of the car, leave it on the sidewalk, then get back in the car and drive off. He either didn’t understand my request, or didn’t want to.
I called two other nearby hotels to see if I could find a room. Neither of them answered the phone. I was getting a firsthand taste of San Francisco’s inhospitableness. The anger mounted along with the chill. I didn’t know what to do next. I considered trying to find a spot to lay down in the park across the street from the hotel, but even though I was familiar with it, nothing came to mind. I turned and slowly walked back down the hill up which I had just been driven, my suitcase rolling along behind me. The cold was becoming too much, so I stopped at a bench, placed my suitcase on it, pulled out my foul weather jacket and the cap that Dan had knitted for me and put those on to keep warm. Feeling a little better, I zipped up the suitcase and continued my stroll down the hill towards the beach.
As I got near the bottom of the hill, I noticed that there was a campfire still burning on the beach, and it appeared to have no one near it, and I knew then I had what I needed to make it until morning. I quickly walked back to the house, removed my critical items from the backpack, then stashed both the backpack and the suitcase in an outdoor utility closet. Free of the baggage and finally warming up under the high collar of my foul weather jacket, I walked quickly back to the fire on the beach. It was a huge piece of charred driftwood. A hole had burned in the bottom edge of the wood where it lay in the sand, and with the gentle (but cold) breeze coming in off the ocean, it acted like a tiny bellows that kept the huge piece of wood burning. It felt like a miracle.
I knelt down to warm my hands near the coals and thought back to the last time I had worn the foul weather jacket. It had been off the coast of South Africa, and I recalled that I had been cold, tired and hungry then too, plus a little seasick, but I hadn’t minded it then…what was the difference?
Expectations. I had expected to be cold, tired, hungry and sick when I was on the boat in the middle of the southern ocean, but I wasn’t expecting those same challenges standing in front of my own house. And because it was unexpected and uncomfortable, some sense that I was being treated unfairly triggered an angry response in me. Once I let go of the expectations, the anger disappeared with them.
I sat in the sand in my warm jacket and my warm cap, staring out at the moon reflecting on the Pacific ocean and the lights of a fishing fleet on the horizon, just like I’d done for 30 nights crossing the Atlantic. Another member of the unhoused community approached out of the darkness and asked if he could join me at the fire. I of course said yes. He plunked down his belongings and settled in nearby, and for a long time we sat in silence, staring into the small fire. Then he got up, left his things near the fire, and went up to the sidewalk running along the beach to rummage through the garbage cans. After 10 or 15 minutes he returned with a bag full what appeared to be Presto® bricks. I can’t vouch for their environmental friendliness, but adding them to the existing fire made it brighter and warmer. I asked him what his name was, and he replied “Therrin.”
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket, and when I took it out, I saw a text message from my daughter saying she was awake and could let me in. I bid Therrin a good night, and as I walked up the beach and back to the house, I realized that my daughter had texted me back at exactly 3 a.m., the very hour that marked the end of The Harpooner…I wasn’t on a boat, but I had just stood my final watch of the journey, and now it was time to sleep in my own bed.