I’ve wrestled with the exact way to start this piece. I’ve tried a few different ways to make it work. And I think, like the flight situation I ran into on Sunday, I’m just going to pivot from what I had planned and figure out the best path forward after that.
I’ll just start things this way:
I’m grateful.
There’s nothing else I can be right now, to be frank and straightforward about the whole deal over the past day or so.
I owe a lot of thanks to the wonderful folks responsible for organizing travel plans and logistics for Raising Cane’s.
I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to head out to New York City (a place I’d never been before) to see the enormous spectacle that is Times Square (it’s absolutely a lot to try to take in and experience) and to join in on a press conference where Olympic Gold medalist hockey players Caroline Harvey and Jack Hughes spoke with media members and influencers in the Times Square Raising Cane’s location (more on that in a bit, I promise).
I’m grateful for the impressive organization and collaborative efforts that must go into setting an event like this up (shoutout as always to Olivia and Amy and their team) and I’m grateful for the incredible hospitality that Raising Cane’s provides.
To be clear, there’s a million ways that this post could have started. I’ve wrestled with the best way to write it, but I keep circling back to the need to express gratitude.
I could have started in a temporal sense from when my brother-in-law told me that he saw something on Instagram from the Houston Chronicle about how the TSA line at Hobby Airport in Houston was getting a little long. I could have started with the sight that I was greeted with at Hobby Airport, which was quite literally the longest line I’ve ever seen for anything in my life.
Folks, I’ve seen a few long lines for rides at Schlitterbahn growing up, but I’ve never experienced anything like this prior to Sunday.
And the only thing I could do about that was laugh. It was absurd.
For me, the deal was just an inconvenience, so what else was there to do but to find a bit of humor in it? The situation certainly wasn’t ideal.
I mean, to be clear, this was a dreadful experience for the families that were trying to meander through the line with children who grew exhausted and restless as everyone was slowly following along in this monstrosity of a line that snaked and explored the full depths of Hobby Airport. This was more than just an inconvenient experience for the TSA folks and anyone else involved in working at Hobby Airport, all of whom had to work through a complete and total mess that made the news in the midst of the current/latest government shutdown.
They are the folks who were significantly impacted and they are the folks who are among those who deserve for this situation to come to a quick end. They don’t deserve to be navigating tricky situations.
For me, for several other folks in line, this was just simply a good opportunity to take a deep breath, connect with people around us in some sort of easygoing way, and then to figure out the best way to end up at our destination.
And I’m grateful for that opportunity to be present and patient.
I got to eavesdrop on the two young men behind me who were in town for a bachelor party as they pondered life and relationships and what chicken strip restaurants to eat at. I may or may not have interjected a bit with a few bits of advice. And also for them to eat at Raising Cane’s.
It gave me an opportunity to watch the young siblings in front of me pester one another (and to watch the younger of the two toddle along and try to pull a small suitcase with it flipped in the wrong direction). At one point, the line snaked past a vending machine area.
As we were slowly milling by, I noticed that one machine had a transaction started but not complete, so I instinctively pushed the cancel button. Nobody was around. I didn’t know what would happen. And then I was given a random amount of change all in the form of quarters spilling out of the machine.
The two kids in front of me excitedly get a couple of handfuls of quarters richer. A woman in front of them excitedly told me to play the lottery. I got the opportunity to watch the children’s mother react as the younger of the two methodically and periodically dropped a quarter or two every 30-45 seconds.
That alone was a wonderful sight to behold.
Eventually, a couple hours passed, we ended up going in and out of the airport and up an escalator and around hallways and back and forth through the building. And then my boarding time started getting closer and closer. The two guys behind me, seemingly frequent fliers and certainly smarter than me, had TSA precheck and were able to get through a bit quicker due to reaching an access point after about 2.5 hours.
And then the family in front of me was able to peel off and get through security because they had young children and their mother pleaded with someone with the TSA to let them through so that they could make their flight which they may or may not have already missed at that point.
So, I was left alone. Kind of. There were, of course, several hundred other people.
We kept milling about. Slowly. Sluggishly. Some areas had good AC. Others definitely didn’t. And then I reached out to the Raising Cane’s travel logistics because I was about to run out of time to make my flight and there was no way I was going to get through the airport in time.
They worked their magic. They offered me another flight. I just had to get across town from Hobby Airport to Bush Intercontinental Airport.
Which, you know, no big deal. Houston traffic is famously easy and convenient to get through.
And surprisingly, it actually was.
One Uber ride later and a very quick waltz through TSA lines that were not overwhelmed and I was able to get settled in at IAH in a very expedited manner. I mean, the subsequent flight also felt expedited. I got the chance to watch Ford v. Ferrari and the plane landed in Newark without any issues.
For all of that, I am grateful as well.
It was hectic. I was tired. But it really wasn’t that big of a deal at the end of the day. To be clear, at this point, the day had technically ended. Time zones and whatnot, but it was after midnight at this point.
In my Uber ride from Newark (I can now check New Jersey off of my list of states that I’ve been to), I was presented with the opportunity to learn some more about the types of pizza places to check out and the ones to avoid. I learned a brief bit about Nepal, a small amount about Hinduism, and then a good bit more about highways and tunnels.
On top of that, thanks to the kindness of my driver (shoutout to Sushil, that dude rocks), I got to Times Square, where my hotel was.
After a few hours of sleep, I was able to get up, meandered my way into the overwhelming atmosphere that is Times Square in the middle of the morning, and then eventually on over to the Raising Cane’s which was housed right in the heart of Times Square.
Which was objectively really cool.
More on the event in a bit, I’m working on sorting through a few quotes from Caroline Harvey and Jack Hughes, but it’s important that you know that they both were so welcoming and easygoing when it came to the questions they handled during the press conference. They both come across as intentional in the way they speak and answer questions (and both seemed VERY soft-spoken as they answered said questions).
Which, I supposed I just haven’t been around many hockey players prior to this. And that’s just another thing to be grateful to be able to experience.
Now, I mean, there were some interesting characters in Times Square. They were certainly an experience as well.
Beyond just the soft-spoken nature of Harvey and Hughes, it was fascinating to see them light up as the event continued on. After fielding questions from the media members gathered, the two young hockey legends chuckled and giggled their way through a few scripted video shoots.
Or, at least most of those video shoots. There was definitely one that they couldn’t complete and someone somewhere has some footage of Harvey and Hughes absolutely cracking up as they went through take after take, seemingly unable to fully get through the scripted lines for one promotion before cackling.
And I’m here for it. We need more videos of Olympic athletes being lighthearted and having fun.
After a quick Uber ride to La Guardia airport (and yet another easy time getting through TSA security), I had the opportunity to wait for a flight to Nashville with some lovely folks from Rankin County, Mississippi. They spotted my Mississippi State hat. We chatted briefly about the Bulldogs. The husband told folks on the phone that he met a Texan who loves Mississippi State. We talked about our kids and how they’re adorable but giving us gray hair. They asked me what I was up to in New York. They told me that they were celebrating their anniversary.
I mean, truly just refreshing, relational connecting with strangers.
And while that particular interaction didn’t continue past the waiting area outside our gate, the theme of relational connecting with strangers continued on the plane.
I was trying to file my way to my seat near the back of the plane, but another passenger spotted me and pulled me aside.
“I’ve got something for you,” he told me.
No additional context, just a random guy digging into his luggage and momentarily stopping me from continuing to go sit down.
“You’ve got something for me?”
After a moment of sorting through his backpack, he handed me two Raising Cane’s gift cards.
Logically speaking, he almost certainly works for Raising Cane’s. Or he’s someone who just genuinely loves Raising Cane’s and has a backpack full of gift cards and decals for Raising Cane’s.
He did confirm to me that he was at the event this morning.
And as far as interactions with a random person telling you “they have something for you” goes, this was absolutely the best case scenario for how that could have played out. I didn’t get the chance to get his name, I was mostly confused and probably not caffeinated enough to know what was going on.
I plan to ask around a bit so that I can thank him.
Regardless, it was another thing to be thankful for. If you couldn’t tell, I’ve had a few of those sorts of moments with this trip.
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