The After Story

It was April of 2016. After ten unforgettable days in Cuba, replete with castles, fortresses, great food, delicious flavored rums, and fantastic music and dancing, I had landed at the Miami Airport. That was when the real adventure began. It was 9:00 p.m., and I had a 5:00 a.m. flight from Fort Lauderdale Airport to Washington, D.C. the next morning, where I planned to rent a car and drive 75 miles to visit my sister in Culpeper, Virginia. The Concierge at the Marriott Hotel, where I stayed the night before flying to Cuba, advised that a shuttle on the third floor of Miami Airport would take me to Fort Lauderdale Airport.

It should be noted that since childhood, I’ve feared getting lost (a story for another time), and considering I was completely unfamiliar with both airports, I was a little frightened at even the prospect of finding the shuttle. However, I had about seven hours to get to Fort Lauderdale and no other options. What could possibly go wrong?

I said goodbye to my travel mates and found a porter who directed me to the third-floor shuttle but advised it would take me to a Metrolink train, which I would need to get to Fort Lauderdale Airport. This was already getting daunting. I found the shuttle, but when it dropped me off at the Metrolink station, there were multiple trains, and I had no clue which one to take; I started to sweat. Fortunately, I found a uniformed transit worker who directed me to the correct one, but said to hurry because the last one for the night was already downstairs in the station. I ran to the elevator, where another transit worker was also waiting. Nervously, I explained what I needed; he looked at his watch and frantically pushed the button on the wall as if that would make it arrive faster. When we finally reached the lower level, he escorted me to the proper place and shouted to the Metrolink conductor standing on the platform, "One more".

The conductor shouted back, "Hurry and get on."

"But I don't have a ticket; I didn’t have time to buy one.”

"Don't worry—just get on," he responded.

I did; he never came to ask for payment.

I found a seat beside a man and asked if he could tell me which stop was for Fort Lauderdale Airport. “No worries,” he said, “I go that way daily; I’ll let you know". Just then, the conductor came pushing a large African American woman in a wheelchair down the aisle, rolled her up to us, and advised that the space in front of us was for wheelchairs. My seatmate got up and disappeared into another car; I never saw him again. I moved across the aisle to the only other available seat

The woman in the wheelchair noticed I was trying to use a portable charger on my phone and said, "You can plug it in for real over here,” and showed me the USB port next to the window. She moved her belongings from the seat to make room for me. We started chatting. Her name was Vivien. When I told her where I was going, she said, "You’ll need to take a shuttle or a taxi from the airport station to the terminals, and I don't think the shuttles are running this late." “I’ll go ask the conductor,” I said, panic rising again. "They don't know anything,” Vivien called after me as I began walking. Upon finding the conductor, he told me the schedule had changed to keep the shuttles running later, but he didn’t know if the change extended to the weekends. Needless to say, it was Saturday.

Upon returning to my seat, I noticed a tall man wearing a white cowboy hat, snakeskin boots, and an Amtrak jacket chatting everyone up and making them laugh. He was talking to Vivien when I arrived, and when I told her she was right about the Conductor, she tried, unsuccessfully, to call a taxi to pick me up at the station. I was getting very nervous. Upon reaching the airport stop, the Conductor came running down the aisle to tell me the shuttle I needed was in the station. “Hurry, it's the last one,” he said. “Follow the crowd across the tracks after this train leaves, and get on."

Upon hearing this, the Cowboy took my arm and said, “I'm going there too. I'll get you there." Since there were a lot of folks, I went with him, following the crowd.

As we were hurrying to the shuttle, he told me about himself—he was a gay, celibate cowboy (I think one of those words was superfluous), originally from Oklahoma, and currently worked for Amtrak. Years back, in the 80s, he had been an actor and in a movie with Robert Downey, Jr. He was hilarious; I felt safe enough with him. Coinci-dentally, he was booked on the same flight as I was from Fort Lauderdale to D.C.

We reached the American Airlines terminal; it looked like an abandoned ghost town—not a soul around. We couldn’t check in or get past the barricade to the gates. There was not even a chair or bench in the lobby. Cowboy Alan said, "Don't worry. I do this all the time; follow me."

I followed him to the Baggage Claim area, where we found an open concession stand; he bought us some munchies. There were benches and a few people around.

Alan said, “We can camp out here,” at which point he dropped his bags, stretched out on the floor next to one of the benches, and covered his face with his big cowboy hat. I sat down against a wall close by, then stretched out on the floor, my head on my suitcase. I guess it’s safe to say I slept in the baggage claim area of the airport with a gay cowboy I had just met an hour before on a train. I didn’t sleep much. We got up at about 3:00 a.m. and went upstairs, checked in, and headed to the gate.

This night was quite an adventure and a real eye-opener for me. Before this trip, I thought that people, generally, are overrated. This trip taught me there are some very special folks out there, like the beautiful, warm, generous people of Cuba who were happy to share what little they had with me; and so many strangers who, for no apparent reason, had my back--the porter who made sure I got on the right train, Vivien, who helped me get my phone charged and tried to call a taxi for me when she thought I would be stranded, the train conductor who ran through to train to tell me a shuttle was waiting, and of course funny Cowboy Alan without whom I’m sure I would have lost my mind if I had arrived at the American Airlines terminal all alone, and found it ghostly empty. I’ve been in touch with both Vivien and Alan ever since.

Oh, yeah, I made it to D.C., picked up a rental car, and got to my sister’s without falling asleep at the wheel.