Airports

"When I was very young, and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.  When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.  In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job.  Nothing has worked.  Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.  The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.  In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum.  I fear the disease is incurable.  I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself."  - John Steinbeck, 'Travels With Charley:  In Search of America'

In three days I'm leaving again.  I'll do laundry on Monday afternoon, pack Monday night, toss last-minute toiletries into my suitcase Tuesday morning after I use them.  An hour's drive west along I-70 will put me at Lambert Airport in St. Louis.  After a quick detour and a dash to change planes in Albuquerque, I'll touch down in Phoenix.  I'll hop the shuttle and be in Flagstaff within twelve hours of leaving the house.


Moving about the country - and the world - is so easy these days.  Sure there are annoyances that come with air travel:  the long lines for the TSA security checks, the enhanced pat-downs and invasive scanning machines, the crowded planes where you're forced into situations with strangers that are so intimate your grandma would blush.  But seriously.  Even with all those marks against it, there's no other form of travel so simple, straightforward and fast.


I like airports.  I'm one of those nerds that gets apoplectic if I'm not at the airport exactly two hours before departure time.  I rush impatiently through the lines to get my suitcase checked and have my person and carry-on possessions scanned.  


Once I've passed into the captivity of the modern air terminal, though, I'm left with an hour or more to do exactly what I please.  It's the absolute best form of free time, devoid of demands other than showing up to get on the plane at the appointed time.  I take a deep breath and turn off the thinking part of my brain.  I grab a leisurely espresso or snack, people watch, read, write, browse the magazine racks, or stare out the windows.


And yes, I did say I check my luggage*.  Part of the fun of air travel for me is getting on and off the plane with the absolute minimum of effort.  I waltz into the terminal, hand my suitcase into the care of the airline employees, and move along unencumbered.  I love not having to schlep my crap to the farthest reaches of the airport.  I get a perverse pleasure out of smugly watching from my window seat while everyone else crams their stuff into those inadequate overhead bins.  And when I arrive at my destination, I love slipping off the plane empty-handed while those same people are struggling to remember which bin their bags are in.


*For the record, 99% of the time I travel on the one airline that still doesn't charge you extra for checking bags; if I'm on a different airline I suck it up and shove my bag in the bin with everyone else's.



And don't get me started on the people-watching opportunities in the baggage claim area.   I make a game of seeing what strategy people adopt when waiting for their luggage to appear:  Do they hover around the opening where the bags come out, or stand elsewhere?  Do they stake their claim right next to the carousel, or horn in at the last possible second when they realize their bags are about to pass them by?


When I was growing up all of our family vacations were road trips.  Travel by car (sans air conditioning), with parents and three other siblings, usually pulling a camper, was hot and tedious and slow.  Perhaps it wasn't as tedious as the horse and buggy days must have been, but at times it didn't seem far off.


Once in a while as a special treat (and, ultimately, because it was a great source of free amusement for us kids), my parents would take us to the airport in the city we were visiting.  We never flew anywhere; we just went to gawk at the airplanes and people watch.  This was during the glorious 1970's when anyone could meander around the airport and visit all the gates - no tickets, boarding passess, or excuses of any kind were required for being there.


We went to the airport in Denver once, just to see the double-decker Boeing 747s take off and land.  I was maybe four.  


The time that really sticks with me, though, is when we went to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.  I was in fourth or fifth grade.  I had a vivid imagination that tended toward the romanticization of absolutely everything.  As we watched the planes taxiing along the runways, I was immediately nostalgic for places I'd never been, things I'd never done.  Dark, exotic places that were completely unlike the tiny Midwestern town I grew up in.  To me, each of those airplanes signified a hundred different dramatic leave-takings and ecstatic arrivals where loved ones swept you into their arms and cried with joy at your return.  Just like in the movies.


Inside, we strolled through the international terminal.  I'd never seen so many people from other cultures and countries anywhere, much less in one relatively confined space.  I spied an Indian woman in a brightly colored sari.  To me she was the height of elegance and poise, with her one brown shoulder bare and her gold slippers.  


At that moment I became acutely aware of the greater world outside the rural town where I lived and the US itself.  Not just as an abstract concept experienced vicariously through others, but as a reality I desired to see for myself.