Within a minute of Google’s prophesy, we enter the airport proper, and I drive up the Departures ramp, at the top of which we are greeted by a traffic desert. WTF?
To paraphrase Chairman Mao, who was paraphrasing Lao Tzu: A journey to Nice starts with a trip to LAX. This presents a substantial obstacle at 5:15 p.m. on the Friday before Labor Day. Google Maps is showing 55 minutes via La Cienega or 45 via Jefferson. Karen The Navigator, a former cell-phone denier who has fallen down an iPhone rabbit hole, is cursing Verizon for intermittent coverage dropouts as she relays Google’s intricate, turn-by-turn instructions. Our friend Keith, who will drive our car home after we debark at the Tom Bradley terminal, is in the back seat.
As expected, Friday afternoon traffic is constipated, but we’re not anxious—we’ve allotted a total of four hours for the (brief) ride to LAX, check-in, security, and boarding—so our observations about LA’s distracted drivers are clinical, not emotional. Though I am unruffled by the traffic outside the airport, I am apprehensive about the potential permaclog within it, the jamming at LAX being so much worse lately due to massive construction for the 2028 Summer Olympics. Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) is putting in a people mover. (Finally; a Pulitzer awaits the investigative journalist who uncovers the graft that for so many decades blocked public transit from LAX.)
Within a minute of Google’s prophesy, we enter the airport proper, and I drive up the Departures ramp, at the top of which we are greeted by a traffic desert. WTF? Am I in a Netflix alternate universe? There is hardly a vehicle in sight. From the back seat, Keith wonders about a bomb scare. From there we make every light, getting to Tom Bradley in under two minutes. I pull into an empty expanse of Tom Bradley curb—a sight I’ve never seen before—and unload the bags. Then I go to free a baggage cart from involuntary confinement. The ransom is $8.00. Welcome to LAX. Somebody’s got to pay for the people-mover.
Once inside the spiffed-up Tom Bradley terminal, we look for directions to Air France. There is no useful signage. Air France’s motto is, “We know where we’re going.” Families are standing around, looking dazed and broken, like refugees waiting for a UN rescue mission. Eventually Karen The Navigator—I have the sense of direction of an amoeba—figures out where to go and which check baggage line to stand in. Then, with two hours to kill, she navigates—mostly by dead-reckoning—to the One World Lounge (which for convenience I’m going to call the OWL). The quest for the OWL is Tolkienian, rendered mysterious by yet another example of LAX’s passengers-can-go-to-hell customer service ethos: ambiguous and enigmatic signs. Where Air France posts too few signs, LAWA posts too many, pointing every which-away, some of them actually wrong. But we find the OWL and, like Bilbo, Frodo, and the dwarves, we slip past the guardians of the OWL.
Heaven’s airport waiting areas must be like the OWL: There’s a free, all-you-can-eat, cornucopia of gourmet-ish foods.
The OWL is a private waiting lounge. It is operated by Quantas, and Air France, via contract, offers it as a Business Class perk. This—a private waiting lounge—is a new experience for us. The cost and amenities of Business Class tickets are well above our pay grade; our norm is the unleavened foam used in Economy Class seats that have been painstakingly designed to inflict maximum excruciation in the latter stages of a 10-hour flight. For this trip, courtesy of a multi-year accumulation of credit-card points, we’ve happily upgraded.
Heaven’s airport waiting areas must be like the OWL: There’s a free, all-you-can-eat, cornucopia of gourmet-ish foods. You then bring your plunder to small tables surrounded by overstuffed club chairs. Servers take your order for free drinks. The irony: Those who can afford thousands of dollars extra for Business Class tickets get free food and drink while Lower Class schmoes who can afford only Economy Class tickets must pay exorbitant airport prices for a bottle of water and a Snickers.
This thought segues into a reverie about private mortgage insurance (PMI). PMI is required of prospective homebuyers who can’t come up with a 20% cash down payment. Why 20%? Why not? The assumption behind PMI is that if you don’t have the resources (and discipline) to put aside 20% in cash—$150,000.00 for a house priced at $750,000.00—you’re a poorer credit risk. So to protect the lender’s investment, you must agree to buy and pay for PMI. But aren’t lenders already protected? Your house is collateral; should you default, the lender owns it plus the added value of its appreciation while you’ve been making your mortgage payments. No matter; the cost of PMI—several hundred dollars a month—is tacked onto every monthly mortgage payment. So follow the bouncing logic: Because mortgage lenders have arbitrarily declared you a poorer credit risk—you’re a way better risk at 20% than at 19%—they’re going to add hundreds of dollars to your monthly mortgage payment, thus making it harder for you to afford your payment, thus making it more likely you’ll default. Hmmmmm.
Capitalists love to portray Marx as an evil influencer leading humanity astray. Marx was not the source of but an observer of evil; capitalists hate him for calling them out.
These are my thoughts as we settle into our club chairs, dig into our delicious, bounteous, unlimited free food, and sip our excellent free wine. For the 90 minutes remaining until boarding, we happily munch, sip, replunder—don’t forget dessert!—and chat. Then we head down to join the polloi for the 10-hour, LAX to CDG segment of our long day’s journey into Nice. After a short layover at CDG, we’ll board a 2-hour flight to NCE. Because we will have traversed nine time zones, it’s be 20:30 when we arrive.
Just as we’re getting up to leave for the gate, Keith texts that he’s home.
