It’s hard to believe I haven’t been there for a whole year! That’s the longest I’ve ever been away from the city. I’m excited, if a little bit stressed, because what started out as a nice relaxing vacation has become a fully booked plans-and-packing-palooza. Poor Stark, I don’t think I’ve allowed us any time to ourselves. Between back to back games of Scrabble, bouts of beer drinking with assorted friends, Mets games, Liza concerts, trips to Coney Island, five mile runs, and voyages out to the outer reaches of Westchester, every evening is now occupied. And now that my parents have sold their house and need to be packed by the end of August, every morning will be spent working and every afternoon spent packing and going through the last of my stuff in New York. Fun fun fun!!

In my positive news: Porter Air for the win! This will by my first time flying Porter, and barring some horrible disaster, I am well pleased. I booked a flight from Toronto Island Airport to Newark a few months ago for $99 bucks. Already that’s cheaper than Air Canada, and leaving from and heading to way better airports. Air Canada requires an hour long trip out to the noisy, hectic Pearson, where they inevitably leave three hours late with no reason or explanation, and then eventually arrive in La Guardia, an even noisier and more overcrowded nightmare of an airport, out in the nether regions of Queens. Toronto Island Airport, on the other hand, is a short cab ride and/or free shuttle ride away, conveniently located to downtown Toronto. The island is a thirty second ferry ride away from land. You could swim it, if you felt inclined to touch Lake Ontario with bare skin.

But, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. So, a few months ago I booked my flight. A few weeks ago, I realized I would have to change it to a week earlier. I called them, and not only did I not have to sit through five years of “Press 2 for French, press 3 for assisted suicide, press 4 to hold FOREVER AND EVER,” but a human actually picked up the phone after two rings. They were friendly and helpful and being that the flight I wanted to switch to was actually cheaper (only 59 bucks from Toronto to New York!!), THEY GAVE ME MONEY BACK. Who has ever heard of such a thing?

So, this morning I got up hella early to leave for the airport, expecting the usual hassle. No, I took my cab down to the cheery ferry dock, checked in, hopped on the ferry, admired the view of downtown on the short jaunt over the water, was through security in two minutes, dropped off my bag, and am now sitting in the clean, quiet, and peaceful lounge in a comfy chair with my FREE cup of coffee and my FREE cookie, typing away happily on my FREE Wi-Fi. What is this nonsense? This isn’t how air travel is supposed to be! Air travel is supposed to be overpriced and full of surly staff, extra charges, noisy terminals, and rude security guards. This is just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Get me back to Air Canada. I can’t take this courtesy and competence.