MY SON THE TRAVEL CONCIERGE

 
My son Ted specializes in extracting parents and relatives from travel crises. He never gets lost. He always knows where he is. Ted has been like that since he was age 9, when he rode the Lee Road bus for the fun of it.

Ted, Alice, and I recently got delayed at LaGuardia Airport. Delayed big-time. Our flight was canceled. It was canceled just as I pointed out to Alice, “This weekend has been seamless.” We had  traveled to a family wedding a couple hours north of NYC. When our LaGuardia flight was canceled, Ted immediately got on Priceline and booked us a hotel at a nearby dump in Queens. But a nice dump.

New York’s outer boroughs — I like them, in theory. But when I go to NYC, I rarely leave Manhattan. How often do I ride the bus in Queens? Just this once. With Ted’s assistance, we caught a city bus outside our hotel and went to Flushing and wound up at a noodle house. I hocked the Chinese-American guy next to me in the restaurant. He said Chinatown in Manhattan is bigger than the Chinatown in Flushing. But Flushing’s Chinatown felt bigger to me. Flushing was like a total-immersion Asian experience. (Manhattan’s Chinatown is more like a neighborhood touristy thing, next to another colorful neighborhood, Little Italy.)

The next morning we caught the first flight out of LaGuardia. Ted arranged all that. (Also — on our way to the wedding — Ted had done a magic trick with Turo, the car rental company, which delivered a rental car right to our exit door at LGA. No shuttle bus to a rental-car area.)

Koffi, an African clerk at the Delta Airlines counter, said to me, “Your son is in charge now. He has a good demeanor.”

Right. Glad.