Home.

My wife and I got through the cattle-drive that is modern air travel and by the time we got to LaGuardia, it was nearly one am and we still had to get our bags off the Soviet-inspired screaming carousel.

After I got two bags, with one left to go, my wife headed for the cab-line. Two people working in concert can take ten minutes off of the airport ordeal. Bag number three arrived and I balanced the five bags (including carry-ons) I was charged with and headed through the Scylla and Charybidis of people with strollers and oblivioids staring into their cell phone screens.

Outside, I found my wife about ten passengers from the front of the line at what I call, from now on, LineGuardia.

We finally made it to the front and the cab that was designated as ours (a Ford Explorer with a back seat that's dead solid perfect if you're 4'8") drove up on a concrete island in an effort to make the one lane of traffic two lanes of traffic.

The dispatcher pointed me over to the miscreant cab.

"That's yours," he screamed. He'd have woken the dead--but they preferred their slumber.

Thinking back to my cab arrears of two summers ago, I muscled up to my full 6'2". I thought about my children. My wife. My puppy. And most of all my incipient new kitchen. I wasn't going to risk stainless steel appliances on a crazy cabbie.

"No way I'm taking that car. He can't drive."

"It's your cab," he threatened.

"I don't take cabs that drive on sidewalks. I'll take this one," I threw my crap into the trunk of a Toyota Hybrid and hustled my wife in like a New York City perp.

We sped from 0-60 at approximately the speed of a Gemini rocket and in about 14 minutes we we're pulling in front of my building. The old Toyota had managed not to lose too many nuts and bolts and both bumpers had managed to stay on.

My clean, well-lighted building.

The doorman even put down his crossword to help me with the luggage.

We got the mail.

We hugged the pup.

We had made it home.