December 14, 2005
Travel Day
It is quite good to be home, I must say . . . Better, even, than I thought it would be, despite months of feverish anticipation. Perhaps the pleasure of being back in Guatemala was heightened by the horrors of travel, I dunno. I swear, I used to love flying, back before my legs got too long for it to be comfortable. But now, I hate travelling more and more every time I do it. I told Rachel yesterday that the current state of air travel in the United States is a foreshadowing of the downfall of Western Civilization, and the more I think about it, the more true it sounds.
Anyway, perhaps a paragraph or two to catch the world up on my activities of the last month would not be amiss. I pretty much poured all of my blogging efforts into the "Top Fifty" list, and didn't have any time left over that wasn't taken up by schoolwork. Since last we spoke of life, I visited West Texas for Thanksgiving along with Rachel and her brother Jonathan. We had a pretty good time . . . and Jonathan did most of the driving, which was nice. I got almost all of my Christmas shopping done while I was there, and relaxed a bit more than I should have, knowing that I wouldn't have another chance to rest until I was sitting on an airplane.
Seriously, I feel as though everything between my return after Thanksgiving and my arrival in Guatemala was just a single, interminable day. It was positively dreadful. By the time I got back I was 15 pages into my 33-page paper for Intellectual History. I had to reread and present and write a paper on Till We Have Faces, plus finish the three quizzes I'd missed for C. S. Lewis. I had various last-minute details to see to about the Student Literary Conference, and I had to present my paper there and chair another session, and I had to write something for the newspaper about it. I had five journals to write for Literary Criticism. I had five journals to write for Reading the Bible as Literature, and a rather dense book to read. I had to collaborate with Paige on a book review of Memoirs of a Geisha, which I'd only half finished. I had to complete an overdue reflection paper and come up with some sort of resume for Crapstone. And all this was work to be done aside from finals week business, and packing to leave for Guatemala on the Wednesday of finals week (a departure time that was beginning to look more and more like a mistake).
Well, I got it all done, obviously, although I probably pulled 6 all-nighters or so during the intervening period. The C. S. Lewis presentation was on that Tuesday, the Literary Conference was that Saturday, my Intellectual History paper was the following Wednesday, my Bib as Lit journals were the day after that, and my Lit Crit journals were the day after that, after which I still had to find a time to write my paper for C. S. Lewis. Two of those all-nighters were this week (Sunday night and Tuesday night). I was finishing up my take-home final for Apocalypse through the Ages within an hour of departure time.
But it's over now. The trip down was an adventure. Uncle Doug locked his keys in his car at the first gas station where we stopped on the way out of Longview. For awhile I was more worried he was going to go fling himself in front of traffic than that we wouldn't be able to get back in the car. Rachel's brother came to our rescue with a few coat hangers, and we were on our way after a half-hour's delay. That cut things a bit fine, of course . . . We got a bit lost in DFW (despite all the times I've been there) because we took one wrong turn and couldn't go the right direction for awhile.
When we finally got to the gate, the line was out the wazoo . . . But we made it to check in with 45 minutes to plane departure. We also discovered that the weight limit has been decreased from 70 to 50 pounds. Even now that fact makes me want to engage in a profanity-filled rant. My suitcases will not hold that little weight . . . Besides which, one of them probably weighs a full 15 pounds by itself. I own books that weigh 10 pounds. It's just not right. Moving on, we had to clear security next. It was, as usual, an enormous hassle. The line was incredibly long and very slow-moving. We, of course, had to take off shoes, jackets, empty pockets, pull out Rachel's laptop from its bag within a bag . . . and then re-assemble ourselves instantaneously in order to avoid a traffic jam. We reached the gate just in time to hear the final boarding call.
We boarded amidst a crowd and found, of course, that there was absolutely no more room in the overhead compartments. Can someone explain to me what this racket is all about? Either luggage manufacturers are making carry-on suitcases that they know are too big, or airlines are using airplanes that they know are too small to hold everyone's carry-on luggage. Either way, everyone involved is a flipping 'tard. I turned around and asked a very irate stewardess what I was supposed to do. She said I could either go to the very back of the plane to stow my stuff (unacceptable . . . I'd have to be the last person off when we arrived) or I could check it.
I opted to check it . . . but I had to stand around for five minutes waiting for people to stop coming in so I could get back out with the two suitcases. Then, we sat at the gate for about half an hour after the final boarding call had been given, waiting for late connections so that other people could make it aboard. I have no objection to that practice, personally, having had a number of late connections myself . . . but why did they give a final boarding call if we were going to be there an additional half hour?
They showed Fantastic Four on the way down, but I slept the entire flight. Once we arrived in Guatemala, I bulldozed us through immigration, then sat for what seemed like forever waiting for the luggage. It seemed like most of our bags were about as separated from each other as they could be while still being on the same plane. Two of them happened to be right next to each other, and a very stupid young lady that was standing next to me refused to make room for me to get both of them off no matter how many times I said, "Excuse me." So, I proved to myself that, in fact, I haven't been gone too long. I knocked her over with the bags when I hauled them off. She wasn't happy. I didn't care.
We fought our way outside to where my family was waiting, got loaded into the van, and grabbed some supper from Burger King. I suddenly remembered that I hadn't eaten all day. We got home, everyone else went to bed, and Rachel and I watched "Mr. Monk and the Airplane" and laughed profusely.
Conclusion: Air travel is fast becoming the ever-loving suck of the world, but it's great to be back home again.
Posted by Jared at December 14, 2005 11:59 PM | TrackBack