At 10:30 pm PST yesterday, I put down A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and tried, again, to fall asleep. (I have read this book many times. I always forget how funny it is.)
At 1:30 am PST, I got up. This is a time my mom refers to as “O’Dawn Hundred.” This refers to any time more than an hour before dawn when my mom has to wake up and is not happy about it.
At 1:50 am PST, I left my mother’s house in Spofford, New Hampshire (don’t bother looking for it on a map, I was there and I couldn’t find it) in her LOL-mobile. (see entry http://stupidcool.blogspot.com/2004/09/not-urmoms-vanity-pl8.html)
At 3:15 am PST (38 degrees F), 6:15 am EST, I arrived at Hartford arrive at the airport. 3:25, I am through the check-in line.
Then I walk… out of Connecticut, out of the US, and into a different hemisphere, where the end of the security checkpoint line was.
At 4:15 am, I leave the checkpoint, with some clothes still on my back.
I was boarding the plane at 4:20 am, notably without my intended breakfast purchase.
The plane sat on the ground waiting for the rest of the passengers sitting in Siberia, AKA, don’t go that way for security, go left instead of right, and then straight about half a mile. (I think all of Connecticut was leaving.)
We arrive late to Chicago, 7:30 am PST. (As I wait to deplane, the women behind me starts talking about returning to 'Normal' meaning a town in Illinois. But, it made me think of the probability drive in A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. We discussed the book while waiting to deplane.) I now, strangely enough, do not have time to pick up breakfast being that we are a half hour late. I rush to my gate, through the stoner O’Hare Tunnel. The PA is singing the “Final Boarding Call” song.
I get on the plane, continuing my conversation about A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy with someone carrying the book, who I lose about row 25. I walk another 28 rows. I get to my row, 53, and there is someone in my seat. (The only time this has ever happened to me before was when I was on the wrong plane. I tried to explain then, that I was on the right plane and everyone else was confused, but they didn’t believe me.) Seats were juggled and I wind up on the same plane but without my window seat, crushed between two people instead. The person in front of me also reclined all the way, better to test me for claustrophobia.
Having rushed on board without breakfast, sitting on the runway for an hour, when I could have been in the terminal shopping for a nice warm breakfast burrito (or the Illinois equivalent) made me irritable.
Luckily, they said they would be selling food aboard, assuming take off happens.
Take off happened.
I am a funky sleeper in planes. I cannot sleep upright. I sleep with my arms crossed on the tray table and my head down. This comes from years of dedicated practice in school. When the person in front of you all the way reclined, this position is very uncomfortable. I always have this image of the person in front of me leaning back a little more, and breaking my neck between their seat and my back, against my seat. Charming thought.
So, we depart. Food is served perhaps an hour into the flight.
Do you think they had food for the 53rd row?
No.
There were out.
So, I arrive in San Francisco, late, imagine that, hungry, and with just enough time to find food.
Skip forward, food found, plane found, sky found, runway found, Santa Barbara found.
I get to my house at 3 pm PST. (Now nearly fourteen hours from when I woke up.)
I get home, to my extra thirsty plants. (Housemates did not water plants. I told John who was leaving town after me but after Jayne got back who was supposed to water before I returned.) I was actually hoping for rain. Checked for it everyday. Rain is a much easier form of watering the plants.
Where was I?
I get my book bag and go to class.
Class ends at 8 pm PST, nearly nineteen hours after the beginning of this rant. It is 40 degrees out. (It is November. I was in New Hampshire, 38 degrees, now I am in California, 40 degrees. It should not be the same temperature.) I am shivering on a street corner buying a 2 GHZ 1G computer, from a classmate, like a desperate drug attic. (It is a solid computer, at a fall off the back of a truck price.)
Now as haggard as the day should of made me, it merely made me realize how much I missed traveling, which I used to do for business. I strangely, though hungrily, enjoyed the day and that is cool.
Anyway… It is 21 hours later… and I am writing you. I am not sure why.
Perhaps just for a promise of things to come, stories of New York City….
I promise they will be funny or at least interesting and definitely shorter.
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