Terror at 40 Feet


Tales of the Procrastinator Extraordinarius

Terror at 40 Feet

Do any of you also do this? Get so worked up over a vacation, no matter how much you are looking forward to it, that you wind up procrastinating on the packing. You even have a few dreams, months before, that you've gotten to the airport as your plane takes off, but you wind up magically on the plane, but you're in your underwear, or naked, or worse, in ill fitting clothes? The stewardess winds up being your graduate advisor, asking, "Coffee, tea, or thesis?"

Well, I always pack the night before, but into the wee hours. I wind up getting little or no sleep. Before my Mexican vacation, I was up until the car service showed up and I kept them waiting 18 minutes, which I paid for by the nanosecond. And then I am hell the entire next day. I hope in vain that perhaps I will sleep on the plane, but can anyone sleep when you're on a big iron bird with gigantor engines? What drugs do you need to sleep on a plane. Apparently, Xanax. More on that later.

I made sure to get at least three hours sleep. It's sort of a like Christmas (not like this Jew knows a thing about Christmas), where you are so full of anticipation you can't stand it. I just love travelling, and in general it loves me back.

Meanwhile, during this big lovefest, I think my journey into middle age might require new luggage. My "main valise" is a fairly nice blue canvas High Sierra bag with tan straps, which I pull around on a metal luggage trolley from the Florence train station. It's tied to the trolley with bungee cords. I feel like the world's oldest high school student or the youngest bag lady sometimes. Completing the ensemble is a North Face knapsack and an old leather/leatherette bag that L up in Boston called my "European carryall." I certainly must look like a refugee from an early, one-level mall.

So, that's what I look like when I get to Newark Airport directly from a frantic day at the office. I forgot to mail something to my brother, and I call C at the office and leave voice mail asking if she could mail it. Good thing I gave her my office door key before I left.

Based on the crowd at the gate, the flight is going to be pretty full, and I make sure to buy some bottled water and other treats for the flight, because no matter how good Virgin Atlantic is, once those stewardesses get busy, boy, you could dehydrate right there in your seat. I usually stay in my seat the entire flight, and only get up to go to the loo just once. This time, as I leave the toilet, a little girl refuses to go in, and her mother berates her. Maybe that kid has a sixth sense. Maybe that kid saw what happened to me last year when I made the mistake of eating the fish dinner.

Posted: Wed - July 19, 2000 at 01:42 AM        

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