More peregrinations. From Abu Dhabi to the middle of New Jersey in eight “easy” steps covering 25 hours.

More travel details. These fascinate me, for some reason.

Midnight cab ride from the apartment to Abu Dhabi International. Brutishly hot. Of course it is. British Airways to London at 2:30 a.m.  On an aisle of a 3-3-3 configuration, which somehow seems worse than a 2-5-2. With no one in front of me, a mordbidly obese man two seats over, but no one between us. So good times. I see the end of Chariots of Fire (on a previous flight I had seen the first two-thirds) and decide the film is annoying and overrated — even if it contributed the “medal ceremony” music for London 2012.

Arrival at Heathrow around 7 a.m.  The place was crowded, and becoming moreso by the minute. I attribute it to Olympics people leaving town.

A three-hour layover. I did no lying at any point, though I did buy a few more London 2012 trinkets (using up the last of my British currency) and found a chair in front of a departures board, and read a book.

A big break on the next flight. After the 25 minutes in line to check in again for/with America Airlines (I already had a boarding pass), I ask the agent if they have an aisle instead of the window I am holding, and the guy gives me an aisle on an exit row. Cool. I am appropriately grateful.

It got better. The sort of thing that never happens. Aboard the plane, a 2-5-2 configuration, back in steerage, I put my stuff down, backtrack to get a cup of water from the lavatory, and when I return a husband and wife are standing at the exit row. The wife and I have boarding passes for the same seat. I go hunting for a flight attendant to adjudicate.

My fear is that in their zeal to get the couple sitting next to each other … I will be moved to one of the interior seats in the “5” of the 2-5-2. Which would be hellish over the course of an seven-hour flight.

The first flight attendant I can find is standing at the top of the “bigger seats, but no other special treatment” section (maybe called “premier coach” or something?) … and as I approach her it’s like she is waiting for me. “Paul?” … and I say, “Yes … we have two people in the same seat,” and before I’m quite finished saying that she is handing me a boarding pass, and I’m shuddering anew at being in the very middle of a “5” in what is becoming a very crowded plane, after having negotiated my way to an exit-row aisle … and I look at the new boarding pass … and it is 12J.

12J! That can only mean Business Class. Capped up. Holy mackerel. This is huge. So I go on back to 33 or 36, whatever row that was, and I smile at the couple and comfort them with an “All yours!” and pick up my backpack and fight my way forward to business class, where I am on the window of a 2-3-2 configured area — where every aisle takes up about as much back-and-forward room as two rows, in the back. Maybe three.

And that was nice. Most of it is just the space. The room to move and wiggle and stretch and recline. Sure, the four choices of entrees, the champagne before and after takeoff, eating on a little tablecloth, newspapers, the ability to ask for your food later. But at the end, it’s the space and the ability to recline. More than once I think of the masses in the back, where I sit 99 percent of the time, and I actually send a text message in which I concede that, on the whole, my luck usually is pretty goood.

On the ground at JFK (after watching Woody Allen’s Manhattan for the first time) at about 1:30, and the tough part begins. How to get to Princeton via rail.

The air train, I think they call it, to Jamaica Station. That’s $5 to get out. Outside and over, getting on a train with “Penn Station” on it — but not realizing that the $5 I had spent was for the air train, not this train — but I am able to buy a ticket for $12 from the conductor, and she accepts the crisp $50 bill I had gotten in Tashkent and had always worried might not be quite genuine. (But she holds it up to the light, and decides it is legit. Whoo.)

At Penn Station, I do not realize that the real Penn Station apparently includes emerging into the daylight, up two banks of stairs. I ask for directions, and everyone is helpful. Even the guy in uniform outside a bank to whom I say, “Can I ask you a tourist question?”

Where I need to be is just past the entrance to Madison Square Garden, which is a half-block away from where I have exited. Me and my suitcase attempt not to impede the horde of rushing New York pedestrians.

Now, I figure I’m on Amtrak, for the trek south to New Jersey. But no. I need a New Jersey train. (Honestly, they have four kinds of trains down there. Who can keep it all straight?) After standing in line at an information kiosk, I finally find the line for the right ticket (for $16.50)– en route to Trenton. And when the track is posted, about 200 people rush for the same small door, including me dragging my suitcase.

Then the long ride south. A couple of guys who went to the Mets game (“they won”) are behind me, and my bag barely fits overhead, and I’m sweaty, because I am dressed for London, not for 85-degree New York.

Past Newark, and places named Matuchen and Rahway, and on and on, and the crowd eventually thins out, and just when I wonder if it’s possible I missed Princeton, the conductor tells me it’s up next, at the Princeton Junction stop, but that I will need to take “the dinky train” into Princeton proper. As we get out at P-Junction, up pulls the dinky train (apparently an actual title, and not just a description), and it’s two-cars long, and we ride that through woody, green areas (of the sort that do not exist on the Arabian Peninsula) into town and get off at a precious little station, the end of the line.

I now need to get to an address allegedly not far off. No one is waiting for me, which isn’t a surprise, because despite having two cell phones and two different sim cards, I cannot call or message, here in the States. I find the one pay phone (how retro), but I need $1 in change to use it, and have only 50 cents. So, I look around and see one of the two cabbies in Princeton, and I climb into an ancient LTD, and a few minutes later I’m at the address I need, $7 lighter, and when I knock on the door … my daughter is in her new home!

Not so tough, was it? Well, actually, it kinda was, especially the four rail legs, at the end, not quite sure about any of it. (As a Californian, I will never be comfortable negotiating trains or train stations.)

I give my daughter a hug, and plop on the couch, get a glass of water. And here I am. Princeton, N.J.,and my vacation has actually begun.