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     On the morning of July 6^th, 1984, I got up early to do a bit of shopping, as I planned on staying in bed most of the day since I was flying out that night from JFK.  Because I’d be shortly returning to Arabia, I was naturally dying for a pork fix.  So I stepped inside Patrick’s on 42^nd Street, which served breakfast, and got an excellent ham and cheese omelet with hash-browns.

      42nd Street, Manhattan.

     Sitting at the end of the bar, with a view of the establishment, and the world outside its plate glass windows, I made two observations. 

     It was around nine in the morning, so the place was naturally empty save one other customer.  Seated inside a booth was an attractive, well-dressed lady in her early fifties, reading a book and taking sips from a cocktail. 

     Plainly, dear reader, this was a lady of means with the right idea for breakfast - truly a hard-core New Yorker.  I was sorely tempted to meet her halfway, by ordering an Irish coffee.  But I was flying that night and needed to stay off the booze.

     I then made the terrible mistake of gazing through the windows at the bar’s front – which brings me to my second observation.  They were similar to lemmings - hundreds and hundreds of lemmings.  They crowded the sidewalks on both sides of a canyon of skyscrapers – stretching out for miles – the low morning sun spilling onto their well-groomed bodies.  This was Manhattan’s work force on their way to “clocking-in.”

     I set my coffee down as a shudder literally climbed my spine. 

     How on earth do people live like this, dear reader, bottled up on top of one another on this congested, tiny island?  Shoving, pushing and clawing, in their competition to win their daily bread.  And even in death, there’s obviously no escape from this monumental over-crowding.

     That’s what depressed me, when I passed that jam-packed graveyard the other day.  My air-whore’s heart began to panic – I took several deep breaths – reminding myself I would be escaping the belly of the beast tonight in my 747.  Struggling and lost in the herded masses outside would never be my fate – gradually the anxiety subsided.

     As I slept that afternoon, resting up for my all night flight back to Jeddah, the sound of severe thunder woke me up.  Grumbling at all the racket, I ignored it, rolled over and went back to sleep.

     At 6:P.M. that evening, we assembled in the lobby and boarded the crew bus; it was still raining with lots of thunder and lightning.  Even so, as we rode to JFK, I paid little attention to the weather.  The ground visibility was good, plus we had colored weather-radar onboard the 747 that would help us to avoid the nasty bits.  We shouldn’t have any trouble departing on time.

     Intimately familiar with the weather and air traffic conditions on the West Coast, dear reader, I failed to consider the weather and overcrowded air traffic conditions on the East Coast.  New York was about to bite me firmly on the ass.

     Our 747 was parked at Terminal Three, built by Pan American Airlines in 1960 - expanded for 747 operations in 1970 - and christened the “Worldport.”

     All went smoothly, until I called the tower for “push-back and start” clearance.  The tower informed me to stand by...as we were 155 for departure!

     At first, I was hoping I hadn’t heard the tower correctly. Nonetheless, from the radio chatter and weather reports the flight engineer was getting, a rather bleak “big picture” evolved in my mind.  This summer thunderstorm had turned out to be major – screwing up all air traffic up and down the Eastern seaboard – delaying aircraft departures everywhere.

     We ended up stuck at the gate for over two hours, before we were finally given “push-back and start” clearance.  After which it took another hour to taxi to Runway Three One Left (310°/130° magnetic, NW/SE) – as they kept cutting other aircraft in front of us – making the taxi queue longer and longer.

     Following over a three-hour ground delay, plus another twelve-hour and 18-minute flight to Jeddah, I was thoroughly fed up with the “Big (rotten) Apple.”  Even though, when passing abeam of Newfoundland, we killed our cockpit lights and marveled at the aurora borealis. 

     Despite this, for the next year, I stuck with exclusively bidding eastbound trips – never westbound.

     At this stage of my life, dear reader, me and New York City were quits.
 I never wanted to experience its air traffic nightmare again.  However, in the long run,
 the real question turned out to be this:  Was the “Big Apple” quits with me?