November 29, 2004
Hint: Gate 4X is next to Gate 4, not 4*
Well over there all All Things Alceste, Dan expects me to write something about travel. I guess I can considering I took this photo while I was at JFK:
These are the machines I referred to in my post from last week about the random collection of Ms Pac Man machines in JFK T9. Except that these thoughtfully placed machines are in JFK T8. Yes – I can’t think of a better way to put three machines except completely packed side-by-side, with the same game at both ends. Brilliant. (This is why you need Program Managers – to think through customer scenarios!)
I apologize for the blurriness of the photo – I still have not mastered the art of taking photos on my Audiovox SMT 5600 Smartphone. And I prefer not to take photos with my Canon S400 since I tend to get strange looks when I use it at the airport … what, me? A terrorist?
Anyway, going back to travelling day, my day had no such serenity like Dan’s. I woke up early, frantically showered and packed, and got a ride from a dad to JFK at 8:00am. And it was raining like crazy that Sunday.
As we drove into JFK, I suddenly realized that I didn’t know what gate I needed to go to. You see, half of the American Airline flights leave from Terminal 8, and the other half leave from Terminal 9. Sometimes, a flight arriving at Terminal 8 will depart from Terminal 9. It’s critical that you look at the departure gates and the arrival gates.
If you remember one thing from this post, remember this:
-Gates 1-23: Terminal 8
-Gates 30-49: Terminal 9
-It’s a 15-30+ minute walk from from the edge of T8 to the edge of T9 — and more in the opposite direction because it is uphill. You need to leave security and clear security again. So on a super unlucky and bad day, this can be a 1 hour trek.
I’ve seen a dozen+ people screw this up and barely catch their flights. I’ve also seen 2 people now miss their flights because of this.
So using my Smartphone, I check the aa.com website and find out that I’m at Gate 4X.
Now, I’m a Computer Science dork… I see 4X and think “Oh, where X is a value between 0-9 – it’s probably not defined yet!” and go to Terminal 9 where all the Gate 40’s live. Fortunately, I’m Platinum on AA so I can skip the line with the giant crowd, and can talk to someone directly… who tells me that Gate 4X means “Across from Gate 4… in Terminal 8″.
I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but suffice to say that I’m glad I spent the 30,000 miles to upgrade myself – I always do for the return flight from Thanksgiving. It’s fantastic to be able to board the plane early, not have to fight for overhead luggage space, and be able to sip champagne to relax. Unfortunately, this was a breakfast flight so I only had a warm biscuit, pancakes, grapefruit, kiwi, turkey sausage, scrambled eggs, with a dessert of cheeses, green and red grapes, and a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie. Frankly, I much prefer the lunch or dinner flights: I’ve had one of the best lobster tails for lunch and a shockingly tender filet mignon before. And the ice cream sundae is always a nice treat.
Flying over San Francisco was amazing on Sunday though – it was so amazingly clear. And of course, the first thing a few Californians asked me was “Wasn’t it really cold there?”
New York City Metro, San Francisco Bay Area – I’m so glad I am able to live in these fantastic places. It’s truly a blessing. One that I was reminded of today when I saw that not everyone is as fortunate as I to be able to live in places like this. Were it not for my parents, my education, and the opportunities I’ve been given… well, I’m just lucky. But not everyone else is as lucky as noted in this picture linked from this blog I read:
4 Comments to “Hint: Gate 4X is next to Gate 4, not 4*”
November 30th, 2004 at 6:00 pm
That’s not Shreveport, it’s Atlanta!
No wait, it’s Springfield! No no, Fort Myers!
Actually, it is the title location of the Kunstler book I just read, _The_Geography_of_Nowhere_. It’s really a great read, if for nothing else than a coherent explanation of the evolution of American architecture and its consequences. (why do some suburbs have colonial architecture while some use wood or stucco, and what does this have to do with the type of commerce on which the local economy is based? why does the lack of publicly-owned land in the American model of city planning lead to a politics of complacency and self-perpetuation?)
Of course, the prudent reader will want to skim through Kunstler’s often overly-sentimental comparisons of Main Street, USA to Greenacre Estates, Nowhereville; and he still does not offer a viable alternative besides either aggressively hijacking city planning boards or simply waiting for the oil to dry up and laughing at the ensuing clusterfuck from your studio loft in Portland, OR. Speaking of which, his case study of Portland conveniently downplays both the role of its geography (nestled in a valley, with some natural barriers to expansion), and the fact that its model of city planning is ultimately not replicable across a large scale, since the intentionally stifled (by Draconian review boards) local economy cannot re-spawn itself to create baby Portlands like the suburbs can.
Still, this book frames the problem that will either give rise to our generation’s greatest accomplishment, or perhaps the final undoing of our nation’s prosperity. Basically, suburbs cannot continue to expand at the rate that they have for the last 50 years because the land will not support it, and if oil production declines they cannot even continue to function in their current state. Since land expansion and subdivision has been *the* underlying stimulus of our economy since the 1700’s (read the book to find out why), this will lead to a radical change in the landscape of both our economy and our physical places. We can either create places which promote flexible use, or we can stick to our current, specialized model and watch the suburbs and the economy as we know it crumble like the cities they effectively replaced after the industrial revolution.
Aesthetic arguments aside — posed in purely capitalistic terms — continued expansion creates its own self-fulfilling economy until we run out of places that can support a dense commuter lifestyle, and/or cheap oil. How do we create the right incentives for people to break this 300-year old cycle of economic expansion and livelihood, to both create and derive income from a place that is sustainable beyond the threshold of unlimited land and oil? If we solve this problem, developers will flock to this new conceptualization of community, because they will make almost as much money there as they did in the Oak Parks of the latter 20th century, and this will sustain our economy. If we don’t solve this problem, they will continue to plunder the land, to turn out flimsy suburban developments that do not constitute infrastructure in any real sense, because they will soon become completely and utterly useless. The difference between these scenarios is that the former recognizes development, the creation of place, not (just) as a means of economic supply but as the potential cohabitant of a community, something that lasts long after the pressure-treated pine and asphalt siding of its physical components have rotted away.
We have to realize that the natural resource on which developers, retailers, and real estate agents of the 20th century made their fortunes was not steel, brick, or concrete; it was community. They could undercut the alternative (urban life) because they were not offering a lasting place, and the individual consumers were too short-sighted to realize the consequences. Despite all the recent talk of a global community and 5 billion markets of one, we still need a palatable physical space which both accommodates our need for home and comfort, for social interaction, as well as our source of livelihood. If we sacrifice either one of these components for the other or for monetary cost, the whole system will collapse and the physical and social infrastructure of our places will be wasted. It is up to us as — potentially — a community, with common goals and values, to realize this, to create the conditions for the existence of such a perpetual thing in our physical places. We must prevent the loss of communities by such disruptions as oil prices that render livelihood inaccessible from suburbia, or a sense of identity stolen, abused, and destroyed by highly specialized, mass-produced, and concentrated workplaces.
If we fail to do this, we fail to acknowledge that our values and our culture are worth passing on by not providing a place for them to perpetuate or, worse, we fail to create a culture that is worth passing on.
November 30th, 2004 at 10:36 pm
To be honest, when I first saw that picture I thought “Texas!”. Then I thought “Florida!”
>>It is up to us as — potentially — a community, with common goals and values, to realize this, to create the conditions for the existence of such a perpetual thing in our physical places.<<
Unfortunately, we don’t have common goals and common values. If we did, we’d all snap out of it and realize that this is insanity – that the American dream that has been sold to us is nothing but a carrot at the end of an infinitely growing stick called “consumerism”.
The only solution is a clusterfuck ending.
December 1st, 2004 at 5:12 am
cynic
December 1st, 2004 at 9:55 am
“The Americans will always do the right thing… After they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.”
- Winston Churchill
Just call me a realist.
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