Wow. I wouldn’t normally act as a travel writer or critic, but I can’t stay quiet about Miami International Airport. I recently went south for a few days to relax before an upcoming run for Michigan’s 23rd. My beautiful wife and I departed the fantastic airport that lies in Romulus: Detroit Metro. In Florida our plane’s captain routed around a looming thunderstorm that was threatening the South Florida area and we landed a few minutes late at MIA.
The first word that came to mind in Miami? Dingy. A few other words came quickly thereafter: old, run-down, impractical, unnavigable and lousy. When we departed the plane we naturally looked for signs for baggage claim. Signs? What signs? After asking an airport custodian directions to the baggage area we proceeded the seemingly fifteen miles to the luggage belts. We walked, and walked, and walked. You know those moving walkways they have in airports around the country? Ha! What silliness, what pablum! Apparently Miami International and it’s airport authority doesn’t trouble itself with such mundane matters as customer service, efficiency or comfort. No, no. That would be silly. I hopped on another guy’s bag and he rolled me to the baggage claim. It beats walking.
Is it done yet?
Construction. We here in the MotorCity are familiar with the orange barrel. We also are familiar with the scene of four guys in orange vests watching a fifth guy in an orange vest direct traffic around the construction site so as not to bother the other four guys eating lunch. Compared to Miami’s airport construction, however, Michigan roads will be rebuilt some millenia before the face-lift at MIA is completed. A construction project has been ongoing, according to a Florida source of mine, for at least 10 years with no end in site. The newest terminal at Metro was finished, seemingly, overnight without impacting the flow and traffic here in Detroit. Miami can’t seem to get it done.
Upon our return off our cruise ship, The Norwegian Sky, we disembarked to MIA and again realized that we should have carb-loaded at 6am so our bodies would have sufficient resources to compete in another half-marathon. I didn’t have a water bottle and my wife with her ailing back forgot to pack her personal transporter pad and couldn’t beam the light-years away to the baggage claim again. I’d thought about carrying all our luggage onto the plane myself, but I had liquids, electronics, books, wine, pictures, towels, soaps, sheets, pillows and robes from the cruise ship and it all weighed about four tons.
I stepped outside while waiting for my valuable baggage (I’d paid 50 bucks to check it – therefore it must be valuable). Upon taking in the air filled with the sounds of idling construction equipment, the odor of burning diesel fuel and the sight of hardhat-clad uh-hum workers chatting. I smiled at one of them and was accused of taking a union job away from the official smiler on the site. Sorry about that guys.
Barack Obama ran on rebuilding US infrastructure and shovel-ready jobs. Great. A good idea, I think. Building roads and airports and train stations are usually a great idea provided they actually get completed. The fair people of Florida have been waiting a decade and more to come into the 20th century with their airport. Unfortunately this is the 21st century and they’re a whole century behind. The answer? Easy. Make ‘em work! What a concept.
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Thanks Mike.