IT'S 6:08 A.M. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR FLIGHT IS?

I'm running.

Panicking and running along gray concrete, after rudely halting a conversation with my friend, Marcia Mitchell, who I haven't seen since college. She and I lived on the same floor of our freshman dorm at Brown University. She shares my December 12 birthday and, being the standout basketball player she was, she stand 6 feet, 2 inches tall and can look me directly in the eye.

Only her eyes conveyed disgust and shock as I leave and sprint alongside a man wearing a captain's hat and navy jacket, walking alongside a donkey-drawn cart.

"When do we sail, captain?" I ask.

"In about five minutes," he says.

My mind and my feet are racing, thinking that if I miss this ship, it's going to be very difficult to travel from this island to my next destination.

Then...blackness.

Suddenly, I'm jolted from my subconscious into reality.

Something doesn't feel right.

I should feel like I've awakened from a short, yet deep sleep. But I don't.

I reach for my cell phone on the end table and flip it open. I set the alarm for 4:30 a.m.

I check the time.

It reads "6:08."

"Holy ... !" were my first words this morning, which were loud enough to wake my sleeping wife and startle my cat.

"What is it?!" Arlene, my wife asked.

"I've missed my flight!" I said, panicking.

There was no denying it, no way around it.

I was never going to make the Delta flight I was booked on, to go to Atlanta, the first leg in a series of flights that are scheduled to deliver me to San Francisco, Manila and finally to Dumaguete, on the island of Negros Oriental, in the Philippines.

That's when Arlene, my wife, donned her figurative superhero costume.

I panicked and paced; she called Delta.

I frantically stuffed the last of my things in a backpack; she called Continental.

Within minutes, Arlene solved the problem. She got me booked on Continental flights to Houston and then San Francisco, which have me arriving just two hours later then planned. For just two $75 charges for each leg, for changing bookings.

More later, as I'm on the way to San Francisco!