En Route

BBM Convo: Tuesday, 8:15 AM

Cassandra Kubinski: I'm at the airport, ridiculously early, for a 9 40 flight to bahamas. They said it was international and therefore recommended to arrive 3hrs before, so I did 2 hrs, but I checked in online last night w no bags to check, so now I'm bored out of my mind and wishing I had some samoas to mow. But, like, calorie free samoas.

Sarah Rotker: Want me to tap dance for you?

Cassandra Kubinski: I literally just guffawed out loud. The guy at the Cibo espresso bar is looking at me weird.


There's so much I love about airports. The cheerful female voice announcing automated-ly that your gate has just been moved about a thousand miles away from your current gate. The breakfast that somehow manages to cost more than Balthazar. Hey, at least there was a sprig of fancy lettuce in that plastic container. And don't forget the screaming children. Oh, please God, oh please, let me sit next to the screaming child. I'm in the JFK jet blue terminal now, and there are at least 3 possible candidates crawling around the boarding area. Yay :-)

Lest I sound like a jaded, hardened air traveler, which, of course, no one either in New York or in music is, I do have to say that every time I fly, I am reminded of how absolutely unbelievable it is that we can even DO this. You mean, that massive metal thing is going to lift off the ground and float around the world at 30,000 feet? Really? And, I'm going to actually get IN it and trust that it's going to land somewhere fabulous (in this case, Nassau, Bahamas)? Wow. The entire air travel experience always makes me feel astounded at the technology, the math, the calibration, and the organization it takes to keep a plane in the air, keep a bunch of planes taking off and landing from a bunch of airports in a bunch of cities all over the world. Not to mention the inspiration, the guts, the belief, and the faith it must have taken for those first air travelers to even conceive of this idea and get IT off the ground. I take planes to visit my family, to visit my colleagues, to work with my clients, to perform, to soak up culture and wonder and get reinvigorated about life and people, and to remind myself how much bigger the world is than the one I sometimes get too wrapped up in, and how much smaller it is than it used to be... I am so grateful for this. And, you know, the bad airline experiences, thankfully, seem to dissipate into recollections that actually seem sorta funny, or make me go "awwww, remember when (that really hilarious thing that was actually extremely annoying or stressful or scary at the time) happened?" Kind of like bad relationships. But that's another post for another day. I expect an easy ride down to the Bahamas today, because it's April and clear skies and fairly early in the morning...unlike that time I had to fly to from NYC to Buffalo in order to get a connecting flight to Nashville, and then we got snowed in once in Buffalo...or that time last Fall when the Delta gate closed in Cairo 5 minutes before I got there, so I'm literally having a breakdown in the airport, KNOWING that my plane to JFK is just SITTING on the tarmac, and I can't get on it (and there was no charming the airport staff in Cairo- like, way, way less than a snowball's chance in hell), so I ended up flying for 24 straight hours the next night from Cairo to Amsterdam to Atlanta to New York, all for the low "I screwed up and didn't get to the airport with enough time for my international flight from a turmoiled Arab country to the US" exchange fee of $400!

Anyway. Like I said, goooood memories. Basking...

Fortunately, blogging, Blackberries, the internet, and your very own computer are allowing us to stay so close, even in the midst of this international adventure. They are also enabling me to occupy my time and my mind, instead of obsessing over which screaming child I most want to sit next to, similar to how I obsess over which flavor of gelato I want from Cones on Bleecker.

But, they've announced the boarding, which means that it's about time for me to have one final momentary freakout that I forgot my passport, even though I used it to get through security, and fire up the iPod nano with Ke$ha and the tracks I'll be demo-ing for a couple writers next week.

Oh PS, yesterday I got to sing a reference vocal for a new tune by Jared Cotter, who wrote Jay Sean's smash hit "Down", produced by Justin Davis, thanks to the cool guys at Missing Link music and Brown Sugar studios . That was cool.

As they say here at Jet Blue- til I see you again, Happy Jetting!