I had a rough time getting to Arizona. It started when I woke an hour late, which is a congenital problem with me.

I run around the apartment chucking my stuff into bags because, like the idiot that I am, I didn't bother to pack the night before. Of course, I leave things. My jacket. My mouthwash. A few other assorted toiletries. God knows what else. I throw on my clothes from last night. And no time to take a shower. I hope the plane isn't crowded because pity the poor fool who has sit next to on a cross-country flight.

I leave the apartment at roughly 6:12. I have an 8:05 flight from Baltimore/Washington International Airport. I flag down a taxi. I don't know where the driver was from, somewhere in Africa, but wherever it is, he obviously didn't learn how to drive. He would accelerate by pumping the gas and would slow down by, take a wild guess, pumping the brake. We'd sit at a light and he'd release the brake so the car would lurch forward incrementally, I suppose, in an effort to see if he could actually touch his front bumper the car in front without doing any damage. The net effect was that by the time reached Union Station, I was severely nauseated.

Buying a MARC ticket from DC to BWI is a piece of cake with their electronic system. I was sweating it out in the taxi, thinking I didn't have a chance in hell of making to the airport in time, but my 7:05 train arrives at BWI at 7:32. I plant my bags and go off to get what passes for a bagel in the train station at some French chi-chi cafe called Bon au Pain.

The train is on track 15, which is way the fuck down the station, so I'm dragging my huge duffel, my backpack and my laptop all the way down the line. The first car is business class. The second car is business class. Bastards.

The train is comfortable and extremely efficient. There's only one stop between DC and the airport. I get off. Then I have to wait for the shuttle. By the time I arrive at the doors of the Southwest terminal, it's 7:45. Only 20 minutes to departure. I check in the Sky Caps. Happy to be relieved of my huge bag, I proceed to security. Oh, what joy.

After waiting in line for 10 minutes and watching the clock tick down, mocking me. I get the front of the line, put my bags on the conveyor belt, and am about the step through the metal detector, when the guard goes, better take off your shoes, because they are going to set off the detector, and you'll have to take them off anyway.

So what do I do? I ignore him, because I'm in a fucking hurry. And sure enough, I walk through and the alarm sounds. They stick me in this little glassed off room with two other guys who failed to heed the warning. I felt like an ass. A guard comes in and tells me take off my shoes and stand on this mat with two white silhouettes of feet. Stick your arms out, he says. He wands me. Finds nothing except two dimes in my pocket. They let me go.

I do the OJ thing down to my gate, B19, which, you guessed it, is the last gate in the terminal. That's the old OJ thing. Not the new OJ thing. I didn't have to kill anyway to make the flight.

I'm the last one to arrive at the gate. Southwest has festival seating, which always concerns me. I ask the attendant if the flight is full. He says yes. Then he changes his mind and says no. I don't know what to make of it, but I'm thoroughly confused, yet happy he didn't say no first and then change his mind. Maybe I would have done the new OJ thing.

I found an empty seat at the rear of the plane and settled in the for long haul out to Phoenix. I was so thrilled to have made it (my ticket was non-refundable and non-transferable and non-everything else you can think of, including non-expensive), that I was almost willing to forgive Southwest for serving no meal and not having any entertainment other than the in-flight magazine and the Sky Mall.