I don’t know how I did it, but I did. Tuesday morning I unknowingly figured out the art of time travel.

Maybe I’ve become too comfortable with travel. Or bored. I don’t know, but I know I should have planned things better. I had a day’s work to be done in Boston Tuesday and so I scheduled an early flight to get a head start. Thinking that the Boston flight would last as long as my familiar flights to Newark, I saw the arrival time of 8 AM and assumed the flight would leave at 7.

Uh, no.

I woke at 5, showered and dressed, and kissed my sleeping wife goodbye. As I picked up my bag, I fished out my flight details and got a shocker: my flight was leaving at 6:05. I had thirty-five minutes to be on board!

I raced to the kitchen and grabbed two granola bars: my breakfast. I remembered I had promised to leave a picture on the fridge for the kids, so I quickly drew a heart on it. Then I bounded down the front steps and drove away, thinking there would be no way this would work.

The one advantage to being late for an early flight is traffic: there’s usually none. I-540 had few cars and those it did were moving at a nice clip. I behaved myself in traffic, too, getting passed by a dozen cars on my way.

It was about 5:40 when I drove up to the airport. I parked on the fourth parking deck and checked in at the American Airlines ticket counter. Then I hotfooted it to security, where two gates were open and only one passenger was in each line.

As luck would have it, my flight was on an Embrarer jet, so it was parked all the way at the end of Terminal C. Without even tying my shoes, I bounded down the concourse, reaching an empty gate and a closed jetway door.

“Mr. Turner, I presume,” the gate agent said with a smirk. Out of breath, I nodded. “I was waiting to see if you were going to check in,” she said as she turned toward the ticket machine.

I moved to follow her. “No, stay there! Stay there!” she barked. I felt like putting my hands up or something but instead I just stopped in my tracks.

She fetched the ticket from the machine and handed it to me. “Have a good day,” she told me as I raced down the jetway.

I walked into a mostly-full plane and calmly proceeded to the back of the plane. No one even batted an eye.

I casually looked at my watch and my eyes about fell out of my head. It was 5:55. At 5:30 I was kissing Kelly goodbye. I had gone from home to my seat in an astounding twenty-five minutes! We didn’t even pull away for another ten minutes. Amazing!

I still can’t figure out how I walked out of the house, drove to the airport (legally even), parked, checked in at the counter, passed through security, ran from one end of the terminal to the other, and took my seat in only 25 minutes. I should have never made it, but I did.

Maybe I’ve got some luck left in me, after all.