Guus Bosman

Friday morning I left from San Juan to New York. The plane left at 7:30 o'clock so I got up really early. My alarm went at 5.15, and so did my cellphone and the wake-up call: I didn't to miss this flight.

There was a new machine at security in the airport, an Ionscan Sentinel II. It looks like a typical airport metal detector but it uses an new technology called Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS). This performs a chemical analysis and identifies a "fingerprint" of a target substance, such as explosives or narcotics.

You step in the machine for a few seconds, and it blows small plufs of air to you, Then the gate at the other side opens and you can leave. Someone in front of me got surprised by the pluffs of air and the screener guy laughed at her.

The moving side walk to the Starbucks terminal seems to have been fixed, but apparently they don't switch them on very early in the morning. I was glad to see that Starbucks was open already.

The plane was not as full as the afternoon flights that I usually take when I leave. I worked on the plane, and had some time to refresh my Spanish lessons. I arrived at 11:00 o'clock in JFK and took a bus to Manhattan. Originally I thought to leave the bus at Penn Station, but when I had to transfer at the Grand Central Terminal I realized that our hotel was very close and I walked to there.