Why We Push

Randy’s Rants —————————————————————– I’m in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which is as beautiful as advertised. Puerto Rico is a fascinating place. The island itself is small, about 35 miles by 100 miles wide. It’s actually the smallest of the Greater Antilles that make up the northern part of the Caribbean archipelago. It has its own mountain range, tropical rainforests, caves, mangrove forests, palm-covered beaches, and something way cool: bioluminescent lagoons! The glow is actually caused by a special kind of plankton that light up with any movement in the water. The people in Puerto Rico are wonderful, and exude the Latin love for life wherever you encounter them. Like everywhere in Latin America, they love to sing, dance, and eat! If you visit here, be sure and stop by the Ajili-Mojili restaurant, and get a table on the bay. Order the “mofongo” which is made with fried plantains that are mashed and spiced and then filled with beef, shrimp or chicken. And wash it down with the frozen lemonade. The economy faces some serious challenges, and politics are a complete mess here. A polarizing issue is whether Puerto Rico should become the 51st state. Of course a lot of people on the mainland oppose this, because of the changes to the flag, 51 being an odd number, etc. For my part I understand both sides: I like the 50 stars on the flag and that stuff. But when you think about it – do we really need Vermont? BTW, my last note on the secret about “The Secret” generated a huge response from you guys. I told you about a free e-book that would show you how to actually apply the Law of Attraction to manifest prosperity. In one hour or two there were over 35,000 downloads and that blew out the server. So if you had problems or got an error message, here’s the link again: http://www.mastersofthesecret.com/?join=563 I promised to tell you about an amazing prosperity experienced I manifested last week. Here’s the story behind the story: I was scheduled to do a tour of Atlantic Canada. And you know how much ranting I’ve done in the past about Delta Airlines. Last fall the final straw came when I got to MIA to discover that they were using SONG jets on the Delta route. So instead of 3B in First Class, I had seat 2C in Cattle Car Class. Now of course you would think Delta would leave the middle seats open in the first couple rows for the people who booked First Class. But that would assume that someone at Delta operations had a higher than room temperature IQ. Of course they packed in every body they could shoehorn in. I was pissed, but at least I had an aisle seat, and it was just a short hop to Atlanta. Coach Don Shula was sitting across the aisle from me, and they squeezed him in a center seat. Anyway, I cancelled all my remaining Delta trips and switched to American. Now it’s not that AA is really any better, it was just a case of Delta being the last one to piss me off. So I’ve been flying a lot of American and now I’m Executive Platinum with them. The biggest problem with flying AA from Miami is they are spread out from concourses A through E. And they absolutely won’t tell you what terminal or gate you’re leaving from. It won’t tell you on the website, and even two hours before, if you print your boarding pass it will leave the gate blank. So far I can see no system for what goes out of where. So I usually check in at C, and kind of split the difference to where I have to schlep my luggage. So that’s what I do on my trip to Canada… I get to the counter and they tell me I can’t check in there; go down to terminal A. So I trek my suitcases down there and find about 15 people waiting to check in at the First Class line. I finally get up to the agent who breezily tells me, “Oh we closed that flight for check in five minutes ago. We close international flights 60 minutes before departure. You have to ship your luggage some other way.” Right. I have a lot of options to do that at the airport at 6 am. I ask for the supervisor, a woman who was actually more condescending, rude, and indifferent than the first bitch. Now you might think that an AA supervisor would try and find a way to accommodate a Platinum member who bought an international First Class ticket. But if you do think that, you probably also think Will Ferrall is going to win the Best Actor Oscar for his brilliant performance in “Blades of Glory.” All she’ll keep parroting is that I would have to book a later flight. So now I face the choice of: throw away my TUMI suitcase with $20,000 worth of suits and shoes inside and have no clothes for my tour, or, take the next flight, which would get me in Fredericton two hours after my speech. So next I drag my luggage back through terminals B, C, D, E, F, G, and finally at H, trying airlines along the way for another flight. My last stop at Delta in H confirms the worst: No one can get me to Canada in time for my speech. In fact, because of the east coast snowstorm a few days before, everything is sold out. Now it’s beginning to look iffy if I can even get to my second program, which is in Halifax the next day. I realize I have to change from my victim-hood mindset of being abused by AA and start to think of something a little more positive and prosperous than fantasizing tortures for sullen, belligerent airline employees. I asked myself, ‘What would McGyver do?’ I head over to the Jet Setter spa, nestle in for a pedicure, breakout my cell phone, and start dialing. I track down a private jet company and arrange for a 6-seat private jet to take me through the whole tour. (Naturally I put the whole cost on my credit card, which gets me frequent flier miles with American!) What a prosperity experience… It’s got to be the coolest thing I’ve done since flying the Concorde. Each day the pilot asks me what time I want to leave the next day. You pull your car up to the tarmac and walk on the plane. There’s no TSA morons, take off your shoes and belt, put your mouthwash in a baggie, get to the airport two hours early, or any of that melodramatic nonsense. I just pulled out my laptop and got some work done in peace and quiet. After the first day, I invited a couple of my colleagues who were on the tour to fly with me, and we had a chance to have some personal and productive conversations. I could get used to this real quick! It’s funny, I have been thinking about going the private jet route for some time. I set a goal that when my new business was making me $150,000 a month I would spring for it. I’m getting close to that number, but this latest stunt from AA is making me reconsider to start it a little earlier! What a wonderful prosperity experience. It’s funny how relative things are. A couple days later, my travel agent called about my ticket to London. The Business Class was seven grand, and the First Class was nine. Well after the cost of the jet, $9,000 seemed like a bargain!