Our flight from Helsinki to JFK landed on time and taxied over to our gate. Only 2-3 minutes delay, and we were trudging off the plane and beginning the long march towards immigration.
Mike & Laurie
A novel treat awaited us - a lurid Express Connection packet containing boarding passes. With it in hand, we were bundled along, past ropes, around the maddening crowds and over to the Global Entry passport-reading machine.
The usual grim-faced agent checked the passports (again); collected our Global Entry tickets; we went on to baggage claim. Another 10 minutes, our bags arrived, and we declared ourselves GREEN LANE/nothing to declare. Then we rechecked the bags, went up 2 floors in the terminal and into another round of checks: Passport. X-Rays. Boarding pass.
Is this ridiculously complex and infuriating? Yes, of course it is.
We barely got to the gate on time. Everyone else had boarded the flight, we thought. But no, we were in time to join a huge queue in the jetway.
A guy behind us said the crowds were due to no one being willing to fly yesterday. I asked "Why?" and got scolded for not knowing yesterday was 9-11 or realizing that I was in New York City. Oops. I don't even know what planet I'm on.
So we're now 2 hours into a 5-hour flight. Laurie is sleeping and I'm listening to the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
My right fore-finger (my Blogger finger) is calloused from three weeks using my iPhone 6 for everything. I've been looking at all the photos I've taken with my phone - I have no idea how many I took with the big camera - 1500-2000?
What a long strange trip it's been. And a great immersion experience into the world of Russian Orthodox spirituality.
Stay tuned to this channel to learn how you can see some good pictures of the trip.
