I am in Milan after 2days of flights: albuquerque – st.louis – nyc – milan… the TWA flight from kennedy airport in new york 2 milan is delayed by 1 1/2 hours…

the flight manager doesn’t want 2 let me bring my guitar onboard: no space in the overhead bins!! i say, i can put it in a closet, but she replies that that is illegal… i reply, that i do it all the time… she says, it’s always illegal… i say, i CANNOT let her have the guitar… i walk 2 the upper deck… she says she will check on me… ah, but the flight attendent on the upper deck likes flamenco + stores the guitar in the little closet… ‘don’t tell the flight manager’, he says… i won’t, i reply… i sit down + pray that the flight manager will 4get all about me…

there are only 2 other people on the upper deck, an american couple flying 2 a wedding in italy… an announcement: we won’t have a lot of cabin space 4 luggage, since TWA purchased this aircraft used from Air France + it hasn’t been changed 2 the specifications of TWA yet… more delay… maybe the pilots cannot read the french manuals 4 the 747 we joke… well, this plane doesn’t even have video, we are told… i point out the overhead video projector… oh, but that never worked… hm, aha, but the engines are supposed 2 work? more delay… a stewardes says, that we will leave soon… i ask, how she knows this + she answers, that the pilots are now pushing a lot of buttons… the steward shows us the safety instructions, but warns us that he hasn’t actually gone through them in a long time, ’cause all other planes show safety instruction videos… now i’m 29,000 feet above the ground in this old 747, formerly owned by Air France + i’m helping the stewardess translate the temperature readings of the stove, which are in centigrade… the next morning i arrive @ the hotel in milan, turn on CNN + find out that flight #800, which couldn’t have left JFK airport more than 5 or 10 minutes b4 or after our flight, had exploded in midair… what a feeling… i saw some of those people waiting in the terminal!!!

I call my friends in the USA. Some of them only knew that I was flying to Italy, and worried that I might have been on Flight 800…