Pre-Greece Jitters

Here's a travel tip for you: If you want to check-in online the night before your international flight, make sure your passport isn't going to expire in less than three months. I'm leaving for Athens tomorrow and I received an email from Delta inviting me to check in online. I go to the website, punch in my passport number and expiration date which is next Feb. and I get one of the little red lines saying "You cannot check in if your passport expires within three months. You must see an agent at the airport." My heart stopped. I have visions of having to go the Greek embassy or winding up like Zev and Justin of The Amazing Race when they lost their passports in Cambodia and losing first place. So I called Delta and was on hold for 20 minutes--don't worry I amused myself by watching Jonny Quest--it was the one set in Norway with the acrobatic dwarf disguised as a gargoyle in order to steal the anti-gravity device.

Finally a human got on the line and explained when your passport is within three months of expiring you're not allowed to check in on line. They have to make sure you won't stay past your expiration date--they think of you like a quart of milk. But I said I'm returning in a week, it's even on my return ticket. For some reason, they need a human agent to verify you won't get stuck in Athens for three months.

Oh well, it's off to the airport tomorrow. I'm taking the E train all the way to nearly the last stop and getting on the airtrain to JFK. This is the first time I've done it going to the airport, I've done it coming back. I was tempted to go a comic book sale in the morning, but it's deep in Brooklyn and with this new wrinkle, I want to get to the airport in plenty of time. I'll have to skip it.

I do like travelling in spite of these little hiccups. I love my little blue bag of toiletries I can hang on the towel rack in the hotel. I love sitting in the airport terminal reading a left-over copy of USA Today. There's a travel store on 12th St. where I bought some anti-jetlag pills. They had two fascinating books--one with transit maps from all over the world and another filled with pictures of tickets--from airlines, trains, theatres again from all over the world. There is some fascinating about these little souvenirs and scraps of paper giving glimpses of yours or other people's lives. I bought a Thor comic at Time Machine the other day. (It was #128 with Thor and Hercules fighting the forces of Pluto, the god of hell.) Inside the plastic bag containing it was a credit card receipt dated 2000 from a comic book store in Scranton, PA. I wondered who bought it there and how it wound up in New York. Will someone look at my boarding pass and think "That idiot should have renewed his passport sooner."?