Ye Olde SmarteCarte

Sometimes it’s the little victories that while they may not win the war, make the battle a little easier to take.

I was in Miami International Airport recently, aka “Hell With Planes,” when my American flight to Boston was delayed by a couple hours. Now, I never check bags; for one thing, I hate waiting on bags, but mostly I refuse to pony up 25 bucks or more for a service that should be free forever. Why is that that they started jamming us for bags a couple years ago as fuel costs skyrocketed but once they de-skyrocketed the baggage charge stayed? It’s ridiculous. I fully expect to soon see as part of the preflight safety instructions, the flight attendant to tell you about the oxygen mask popping down and how to put it on, but then adding, “To facilitate the flow of actual oxygen, it will be necessary to swipe your credit card into the overhead light fixture. Sorry, cash is not accepted.”

Anyway, they changed gates from D to E - a gate just this side of hell to a gate on the other – and I was faced with the prospect of humping my carry-on bag (laptop, camera gear, book, doesn’t sound like much, but weighs heavy on a 56-year-old shoulder) and small suitcase (minimal clothing, doesn’t sound like much, see previous parenthetical aging lament) all that way. But like a vision, there it was, to my right, where it had been abandoned and I just noticed: A badly spelled Smartecarte, a three-wheeled baggage carriage that rents for four bucks a pop. But now, here it was, there, alone, free – mine! I looked around furtively, loaded up my bags and scurried away.

I cannot tell you the degree of freedom I felt at that moment, both empowered by a much easier way to get to my gate but mostly knowing I was screwing someone in the aviation field for a change. I wheeled casually to my gate, seeing other people with other Smartecartes, maybe some of them doing it for free. I felt like we should be shooting each other Harley waves on the drive-by down low. I walked and wheeled and smiled and even went to the bathroom once, taking my bags inside and leaving my beloved chariot unattended, because you just can’t leave bags by themselves, if you so much as leave an empty Dunkin’ Donuts bag alone in an airport these days, a bomb squad descends on it and robotically removes it to the nearest gravel pit for an exploding demise. So I left it there, went in, came back – and there it was, despite my initial feeling that I’d just left a brand-new BMW in downtown Boston with its doors open and engine running.

This was just amazing, a little dose of humanity in an inhuman environment, like it would be if airports just started putting in a few more electrical outlets near seats so we all might have a reasonable chance to use our laptops and charge our cell phones without having to walk around like we’re dying of electrical thirst trying to find one of those too few recharging kiosks that once someone finds a slot, they stay, banking enough electricity to charge their current and future portable electronic devices from now until windmill power is actually a reality.

I strolled more, leisurely, from D to E and back again, relaxed and not walking like a contestant at a world’s strongest man competition waddling a Buick on my back toward the finish line. It was great, it was freeing and it was free. I had nowhere to go but could go anywhere. I was like a kid with a new Schwinn, and I have no idea what a kid these days would use for a bike metaphor but I’m old and sticking with what I know.

It was like walking a pet or a child. I stopped at an ATM and didn’t take my eyes off my SmarteCarte, fearing it would just disappear if I did. It wasn’t so much my personal belongings I’d miss, but the conveyance that for a few magic moments was making my airport-bound life of crappy food, delayed flights and moronic security bearable.

And speaking of the latter: During my peripatetic burst, a pair of TSA agents on break from keeping the world safe from bottles of water larger than three ounces were coming the other way. One jerked his thumb toward his female coworker and said to me as they passed, “Hey, run her over will ya?” acknowledging my existence in an airport other than someone to harass for not taking his laptop out of his bag (what, it’s somehow impervious to X-ray?) and also proving that not all TSA agents are drones devoid of anything but geeky humor directed at other TSA agents in a code only they get and frankly, I don’t want to.

I had walked all I cared to, so I returned to my gate in terminal E and abandoned my new wheeled friend. A scant few moments later, a woman came by and took it for her own walk. I beamed proudly, pleased to have passed along the chance for her to save four bucks and enjoy, possibly for the first time ever, a walk with bags through the crowded, sweaty, badly lit soulless pit that is the modern airport.

It is something we all should do; buying for a mere four bucks untold happiness for the untold others after. You use your Smartecarte and then hand it off to the next person in need, and that Smartecarte wouldn’t be a slave anymore, it wouldn’t be a four-buck whore, never again to be shackled into that long, metallic birthing rack waiting to emerge into the world again, freed by the next tired human with four bucks in change, bills or credit card. It would be like friendship bread on wheels, benefitting others over and over and over again…

Now if only one of those greedy bastards at the charger kiosks would detach himself from the power grid long enough to give someone else a chance..