The World’s Most Unusual Trip, Part 3

Part 1 | Part 2

I’m at the End of the Line on the MBTA, with no transportation. At 1 am.

This is amusing. At every step of this process, I’ve made the most sensible choice—or at least a reasonably good one. But it’s just gotten ridiculouser and ridiculouser all along the way.

There are no hotels within 2 miles. Mine is 6.3 miles away, but I’ve told them to hold my reservation despite my late arrival, and I really don’t want to pay for a second hotel room and still have to walk 2 miles to get to it.

“Hey, Siri. Get me to my hotel. Walking.”

In the rain.

It’s a straight shot north to my hotel through Auburndale—an affluent village in my old hometown of Newton—and Waltham. As I walk, I total up my blessings—

• The land is reasonably flat.
• The temperature is mild.
• The streets are empty and quiet.
• All my luggage is in my backpack; I’m not wheeling a suitcase. Or two.
• I have an umbrella.
• I have a phone with battery life left, and a laptop I can use to charge it if I need to.
• I have healthy legs to walk with, including pain-free joints. At 68, that’s nothing to take for granted.
• I have a healthy back to carry the backpack.
• I’m going to have a lot of fun telling this story.

Along the way I find myself laughing at the absurdity of it all.

I’m a visibly older man walking through an affluent neighborhood—with a backpack—in the rain—at 2 in the morning. Don’t you think some policeman, somewhere, would feel the need to go over and talk to this guy?

Where’s a cop when you need one? A ride in the back seat of a cruiser would actually be pretty nice right now.

Long story short, I arrive at my hotel at 3.30 am. They ask for ID. I explain that I lost my ID on the trip up, but I do have a state-issued photo ID in the form of a SC Concealed Weapons Permit. They’re hesitant—I wonder if it’s because this is Massachusetts, after all, and do we really want this gun nut staying here?—but eventually they decide it’s good enough, and they give me a room key.

I unpack my backpack to let everything dry out, and I fall into bed.

I can’t sleep.

_____

I think about getting back home without a license.

I have several options—

• To fly, I’ll need some kind of ID. Since I’ll be here for 4 days, I could have my wife FedEx my passport.
• I could take the train; they require less ID, and I’ve always wanted to take a train trip in one of those suites with a bed and a shower. I’d have to leave sooner, since the train takes longer, but that would be fun.
• I could take the bus. That’s, um, my last choice.

The next morning I look into the options. Amtrak doesn’t seem to match my schedule. Don’t wanna take the bus. I’ll have the passport sent up.

Oh, and I fire up my Uber app, and it works fine. No idea why it didn’t work last night, when I needed it.

Thanks to my wife’s diligence, my passport arrives Saturday morning, just as I’m about to leave for the daytime reunion activities.

The reunion is great. My Greenville classmate and his wife kindly give me a ride, and all of us have a great time reminiscing. One of my classmates is a cop; I tell him my story, and he tells me that the passport shipment was probably unnecessary; I can probably fly back with the concealed carry permit or the other state-issued ID, which I’m not telling you about.

I take an Uber to and from church on Sunday, and spend Monday morning in downtown Boston, touching old bases. I eat lunch at the Pahkah House, wheah they invented Pahkah House rolls and Boston Creme Pie. I have a lobstah roll. It’s delightful.

I fly back Monday afternoon. The passport gets me through security fine, of course. As I come out the other side, I see a TSA desk and amble over to it. I tell them I have a question, just out of curiosity. I show them  my 2 state-issued photo IDs and ask, “Would either of these have been sufficient ID to get through the checkpoint?”

“Nope. Good thing you had the passport.”

“I have a friend here who’s a cop. He said he thought these would be enough.”

“Enough for your friend, maybe. Not enough for us.”

OK then.

BOS to DCA to GSP. My lovely wife is waiting at the curb. Great to be home.

Yeah, I shoulda just grabbed a cab at the Boston airport.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

I was right. It is a lot of fun telling this story.

Photo by Phil Mosley on Unsplash