Story Title -Ride of My Life
Date Story Happened - March, 2001
Location - New York City
Category - TRUE
Sooooooooo... I was in NYC with my good friend and engineer Lee Mars (former keyboardist for Trent Reznor) who was mixing my very first record, My Heart. We were up for 3 days in a row scrambling, and I had a flight to catch back to Cleveland, for an important show. Wound up and exhausted, I arrived at Laguardia, by taxi in plenty of time for my flight. After dragging my bags to the gate, I was dozing off in the super comfy ridiculous chairs (joke) as a series of strange announcements began to come over our loud speaker...
Announcement #1 "All those who are on DELTA flight blah blah blah to Cleveland, we just want to let you know that your plane has been rerouted to JFK due to high winds. Don't worry, it will be flying here shortly to pick you up." WHAT THE?#$_#%(#^%_? A 747 can take off from JFK and land at Laguardia?? I fell back asleep...
15 minutes later came announcement #2 "Those on flight blah blah, who's plane landed at JFK, we want to let you know that plane will not be coming here after all, but we have another plane coming to your gate to pick you up." As if you just happen to have an extra one, lying around?!? I fell back asleep, I mean, they assured me...
15 minutes later "All those on BLAH BLAH, we are having trouble finding a plane, but don't worry, we're still looking." Try under a rock... Perhaps now I should be alarmed? I fell back asleep. 15 minutes later "Hello everyone, ALL FLIGHTS ARE CANCELED". Just then the lights go out... Laguardia is silent and dark, except of course for the 55mph winds whipping around the runways. I had a heart attack right there... Everyone jumps up and gets in line in front of the desk, as if that will somehow magically align the planets so the power returns and things are back in order... This announcer gets up on the desk and yells, "Your plane is still at JFK, it will still be departing in 15 minutes, if you want to chance it you can go there and try to catch the flight, but by the way, the only freeway from here to there is closed." WELL THANKS FOR TELLING ME THIS AN HOUR AGO! BASTARDS! It takes about 20 minutes to get there on a GOOD day!
So this cool woman jumps out of line and says "I am taking my chances, who is with me?" So I jumped out and said "ME!" and we made a run for it. We get outside to grab a taxi (in an illegal zone, but did we care at this point? Bribery gets you anywhere) and this third woman says, "going to JFK? Can I catch a ride?" We said sure. Meanwhile the cab driver from who knows where is terrified of taking us in an illegal, drop off only zone... we assured him we had no time to argue, and threw our bags in his taxi before he could do anything. We were on our way! This was the most horrifying, exhilarating, chase scene ride I have ever had in my life! We were hanging on to the "oh shit" handles for dear life! As soon as we said step on it, we were flying! We said, "we need to get to JFK in 10 minutes, but the freeway is closed." He replied "closed?" in near unrecognizable english... Oh boy... So this "mystery lady" starts telling exactly where to go and we are flying ON and OFF the freeway, going 60 down marginal roads, disregarding red lights, it was insane... But myself and lady luck were like, cool, she obviously knows where we are going, so we turned to each other and finally introduced each other...
It turns out it is Liz Magnes, a world renowned jazz pianist... She lives between DUNBO and Tel Aviv. So we are chatting it up while screaming and hangin on for life and the "mystery lady" says, "ok, when you pull in to the airport, go here and then here and then up this ramp backwards and go to the back of the terminal and there will be a pebble holding open a door to our exact gate." HUH? Liz and I looked at her and at the same time shouted "WHO ARE YOU?!" She said "A Delta Flight Attendant!". We were like "SCORE!!!"
Wouldn't you know, the door was being held open by a pebble... Now inside, after all the excitement, "mystery lady" handled finding the gate for us since she "spoke the delta language". We had made it in time to catch the flight! We saw some stragglers come in that had been in that line at Laguardia (I wonder if they had a similar ride to ours) and so about 8 of us were sitting there waiting... It did not dawn on me that there would only be 8 of us on a HUGE plane... They had us all sit in first class and gave us free champagne and whatever we wanted!!! It was the coolest experience in the world to sit in first class, turn around and see 200 empty seats! I ran up and down the isles! Liz and I talked the whole way home and I lost my voice! Ha! But I made it in time for my show and was able to pull it off. I keep in touch with Liz to this day. I hope you enjoyed this Stone Story. Chime in on the Q&A and tell me what you think.
Hey Robin... I love the pic of you and your sister! It so warm and beautiful. See you Wednesday! 