I had used UBER before. Once while staying with a friend in Maryland, she used her UBER app to get me to the airport. It seemed a bit apocalyptic when a message popped up on her screen “Jesus is coming in 2 minutes.” But Jesus gave me a bottle of water and a nice ride to the airport. Another time I tried the driver never found me and the third time I had Brian help.
I am always nervous about getting to airports, and in this case a passenger ship terminal on time. I wondered if we could find a car to fit all of us with our luggage, if it would arrive on time, if this “new” technology was reliable. Brian pointed out that there were dozens of UBERs sitting just outside Newark Airport and if we went on the app one would be at our hotel in 5 minutes.
As it turned out it took a little longer for him to get to our hotel. It is in the middle of, as a friend put it, a “bowl of spaghetti.”
Three nights before we had trouble finding our way in. I missed a turn (actually I was cut off while trying to cross several lanes of traffic and ended up going round and round in the spaghetti. In college a math professor told me that Brouwer’s Fixed Point Theorem was conceived while Brouwer was stuck on a US 1 & 9 traffic circle in New Jersey. It took me an hour to get back to the hotel and I am not smart enough in math to come up with a new Nobel candidate of a theorem. And the UBER was a little late, the driver apologized. “It’s hard to find this place.” I understand, you can see it but can’t get to it, and this hotel is no Bali Hi. The first time we ever tried to get to this hotel, years ago, they were reconfiguring the spaghetti. I stopped at a cop directing traffic and asked him how to get there. He said “I don’t think you legally can from here.” He stopped traffic, allowed us to make an illegal left turn and we arrived. Now that left turn is not possible, a Jersey Barrier blocks it off.
The car was fine, large enough for us and our bags and we were off across the Pulaski Skyway headed for the Holland Tunnel, downtown Manhattan, through the Battery Tunnel and into Brooklyn. Pier 12 is in the Red Hook neighborhood. We only made one missed turn to get to the cruise terminal.
