Clearly I am (again) riffing
Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a 1987 American road trip comedy film. It grossed $49.5 million against a $15 million budget and received praise for its blend of comedy and sentiment, as well as the performances of Steve Martin and John Candy.
Why this time?
We were vacationing in Taormina, Sicily (a most charming town center, I would put it ahead of even Santorini, Greece) – yes, at the Four Seasons that was the location in The White Lotus (Season 2) – and Mt. Etna erupted, which was visible from the balcony of our suite (with a private swimming pool) that overlooks the harbor (almost as stunning as the view from the balcony in the suite at the Belmond in Portofino) – itself, evidently, is not considered such a remarkable occurrence by the locals, but this time, it was for longer, with more mini-eruptions than normal, leading to uncertainty in when the Catania airport would reopen – and so I started to look at multi-modal alternatives to the direct flight to JFK.
It turns out Sicily, at its closest point to the mainland, is only 3 kilometers away (and there are swimming competitions)! An hour drive to a ferry – 20 minutes to cross – took us to a railway station, where we boarded a Frecciarossa to Rome, slummed it in St. Regis (no Four Seasons in Rome) for the night, before flying to the US.
The most delightful part of the journey was the Global Entry (which I have enjoyed since 2024) – a simple photo click at the booth that took just all of two seconds – and the swiftest and the smoothest commercial flight entry into the US that I recall in the forty years I have been here (arrived to the US the first time on August 18th, 1986, and it took nearly two hours at JFK then to get through Passport Control).
It is hard to beat a Private Jet entry to the US: (a) the Passport Control folks come to you as you remain seated in the aircraft, sipping champagne and (b) as you step off the plane, the ground transportation is right there. Of course, as a Continuous Improvement opportunity – recall that I am an Operations Management professor getting ready to teach – I wonder if a drone can hover over the stairs of the private jet when we land, snapping our picture, and we walk to the car…
