Thursday May 22, 1:00 PM
Despite weather predictions, it’s not raining now in NYC. I’ve got about two hours before I head for JFK Airport to start a two-week run of dates in the U.K. and Europe with Blue Öyster Cult.
Having just come off the first leg of the Spring/Summer ’25 tour with Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks, I’m using the feeble remains of my brains cells to recall what I haven’t yet packed. The biggies are securely in my backpack: passport, carnet for the gear and a bunch of personal stuff. What did I forget? Socks? Check. Underwear? Check. Marshal 4×12 stack for practicing on the plane? Maybe not. I’m hoping the rain holds out so that my crew and I won’t get soaked when we meet our cartage company at the airport to pick up our gear.
3:00 PM —I’m packed up and timing my Uber. We plan to meet at 5:00 PM for a 9:00 PM flight—which some might say is way too early, but I’m spooked from hearing a story about a colleague who was traveling to Mexico and when they arrived, customs checked every serial number on every piece of gear against the carnet that they were carrying—15 Pelican works boxes full! The rain has started again but it’s not heavy.
3:30 PM — I depart for the airport. It’s only 13 miles, but the trip will easily take more than an hour, plus we’re flying out of Terminal 4 which is a complete mess due to construction. In fact, we’ve had trouble with cartage drops at this terminal because at times, the police will close the entrance ramp to departures and divert drop-offs to arrivals—which is a lot of fun when you’re dragging 10 pieces of band equipment upstairs to departures. Anyway, my ETA is 4:45 PM.
4:15 PM — Traffic on the Belt Parking Way Lot—I mean Belt Parkway—is the usual mess at this time of day, but still I’m on target for a 4:45 PM arrival.
4:48 PM — I arrive at JFK. One of my crew is already there and he watches our personal bags while I scope out the location of U.S. Customs downstairs on the arrivals level. That’s where we’ll bring the gear and carnet to have it validated. A few minutes later, the rest of my band and crew arrives. The cartage company is waiting in the cell phone lot, so I text the driver to inform him that we’re ready. But this time I ask him to drop off at arrivals since it’s on the same level as U.S. Customs. Ain’t I a genius?
5:15 PM — We have all the gear and get to U.S. Customs where they examine the carnet. Everything is in order, so they “stamp us out” (of the U.S.). That went smooth.
5:45 PM — We cart the gear upstairs to departures and start the check-in process. Our flight is on Virgin Air, so we don’t know the folks at ticketing the way we do the folks at say, Delta, which we fly a lot. We’re on a first-name basis with those Delta guys: donuts and coffee, Christmas cards, yup.
The check-in process is virtual torture. Mind you, it’s not easy when you need to check-in a lot of people and baggage, but this isn’t even a full-tilt check-in. It’s only five people with 15 pieces of baggage (gear and personal bags included). All five passengers are on different reservations, so the ticketing agent next to ours says she can start checking in another person at the same time to move things along. Great idea, though personally I find it easier to deal with one person so I know which bags have been tagged, who has the IDs, and the location of my credit card which will inevitably be used to pay excess and/or overweight charges. We check the first six bags, all of which come off the bag belt after being weighed because we’ll need to take them to the oversize baggage area. Grrr. Some of these bags are overweight and will incur additional charges. I’ve done this literally a thousand times: I give the ticket agent my credit card, they swipe it, give me a receipt, spin me around three times so I can’t read the amount we’ve been charged, kiss me goodbye, say “have a nice day,” and usher us away. I prefer it this way.
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Unfortunately, Virgin has some crazy system where a ticketing agent can charge for an extra or overweight bag but can’t take the payment. Whaaaaattt??
You need to go to counter 7, which we estimate is a half-mile away from the check-in counter. I might be exaggerating a little. In the interest of keeping things moving, I ask one of my crew to take the handwritten receipts for the excess charges to one of the Credit Card Queens who will charge the card and generate the receipts. I tell him “just sign my name,” but—after that half-mile jog to the payment counter—he is told that since it’s not his CC, he can’t sign for the charges. And we can’t fake it because the Credit Card Queen is also holding his passport, so she knows his name does not end with “La Cerra.”
Meanwhile, I’m at the counter with ticket agent #1 who asks us for the five thousandth time “what’s in here?” “Same thing as when you asked me five minutes ago: guitars.” That was my inside voice. My outside voice simply said, “guitars.” Ugh.
Ah, here comes my crew guy with my CC and receipts! He looks like he just qualified for the 440 at the 2026 Olympics, but he’s with the Credit Card Queen who brings me the receipts, so I can sign them (which I do) while the other ticketing agent continues to check-in more people and bags (using another credit card).
Of course, we have more overweight bags, so ticketing agent #1 asks if we can move some items to another case to reduce the weight. Yeah, nope, not gonna happen. We’re not pulling pedals off the guitar player’s brand-spanking new pedal board. Guess what? More handwritten receipts that go with our passports to the Credit Card Queen who disappears again for another 10 or 15 minutes, then magically reappears with the CC receipts for me to sign. And one of those old mechanical CC “Knuckle Buster” machines that presses the numbers from your CC into carbon paper. I’m kidding, but only about the Knuckle Buster.
6:30 PM — Finally, all the bags are tagged, and we haven’t missed the flight! Yay! Now on to the oversize bag drop. Boooo! Elapsed time: about 14 hours. Oh sorry, it only felt like 14 hours. As we make our way through security, one of my crew says, “I hope this is not an indication of how the next two weeks are going to be.” Yikes. I’ll let you know.
