Travel Blog

Last Wednesday I drove down to Miami for my appearance on Topical Currents. As usual, I arrived ridiculously early. (You never know what horrors await on I-95.) I grabbed an empanada at a cafe on Biscayne Boulevard and then, at about 20 minutes to 1, just as it started to drizzle, I arrived at the parking lot of WLRN.

"You can't park here," the guard told me. "You have to park in the lot across from the entrance."

"But I parked here two months ago when I came for an interview," I said.

He knew nothing about that; only that I was not allowed, now, in the lot that seemed to belong to the building. One that, I couldn't help but notice, had a number of empty spaces.

He opened the electronic gate at the other end of the lot and I took a left onto 15th Street. A sign in the lot he had directed me to read "Police Vehicles Only." I drove around the block and returned to the guardhouse.

"It says it's for police vehicles only," I told him. "Can't you just let me park here?" It was now starting to rain harder.

"That's only one section," he said. "You can park in the middle."

He opened the gate again and I hurried on through. Now it was getting ridiculously late. I pulled into the lot, which was quite large, and completely full. I returned to the guardhouse, and begged to be allowed into the lot just behind it. The rain was now falling in sheets. I was sent instead to a lot that sat next to the Arsht Center.

After finding a space, I reached in the back for my old umbrella, which Hania had tied using a thin thread. I couldn't see the thread, or which way the button needed to be pushed to open the umbrella. I tried breaking the clasp, without any success. Of course. It was now, incredibly, five to one. I imagined Joseph Cooper saying, in a few minutes, "Good afternoon. We're NOT here today with travel writer Thomas Swick."

I felt, to use the old cliche, like the star of my own nightmare. Finally, the cord loosened and I was able to open the umbrella. I ran toward the studio, splashing through puddles the size of lakes, only to discover that I was blocked by a fence. I retraced my watery steps, found the exit - did I need to pay? I had no time to look for a machine - and ran through rain that now resembled a monsoon.

Across the street, past the guardhouse, I had a split-second decision to make. Do I try the entrance by the lot I wanted to park in but wasn't allowed to, or the one by the lot I was told to park in but wasn't able to? I went for the former. My shoes, pants and shirt were now completely soaked. I dialed the number of the receptionist on the outside phone; nobody answered. Finally, the producer Richard Ives appeared - he had come down to look for me - and opened the door.

It wasn't until I entered the studio that Richard noticed how wet I was. Good thing this is radio, I said. Richard went and got a shirt - a handsome blue denim number with the station's letters on the pocket - for me to change into. When the show was over, and I offered to give it back, he told me I could keep it. I was the first guest, he said, who had ever required a wardrobe change.