Flying
It’s 8:25 Chicago time and I’m at 25,000 feet over one of the Great Lakes … Erie, I think. There’s a full moon shining through the window of the American Airlines EMD Regional Jet (known simply as one of those #^%^&% small planes to regular flyers) carrying us from Chicago to Hartford. The moon illuminates the lake below us a ghostly silver, and occasionally when the angle is just right, I can see its mirror-perfect reflection in a distant lake or river. Sights like this are one of the things I love about flying. Have you ever seen a thunderstorm from above, the lightning leaping from cloud to cloud, a continual light show, not the occasional flash we see from below? Or flown at night on the Fourth of July and seen dozens of fireworks shows from above?
When my career was in full bloom, I could count on flying, usually coast-to-coast, about once a month. And I always had a love-hate relationship with flying. For one, I hate airports … there is no place else on earth that incites my inner curmudgeon to such extremes. After all, an airport offers so many things I hate. Waiting … waiting in line … waiting in line with hundreds of impatient people … wondering if my flight will be on time … if I’ll make my connection … if I’ll get upgraded to First Class … if the two noisy little kids down the way will be in the seat next to me … or will it be the three already drunk, overly loud businessmen sitting behind me in the lounge. What I do in airports is pace … like a caged animal.
Things get better once I’m on board … usually. For one, for much of my career I had enough frequent flyer miles to upgrade to First Class … there’s nothing like a big leather seat and several glasses of wine to soothe the savage curmudgeon … unless, of course, the three drunk businessmen get upgraded, too. My Bose Noise Canceling Headphones are responsible for rescuing many a potentially disastrous flight. You see, I’m a hermit when I fly and my headphones not only block out the worst of the noise and surround me with the music I love, they tell anyone around me that this old guy is not available for talk, small or otherwise. Still, it seems that at least 25% of the time, there’s one headphone-piercing voice on board that drones on and on and on. Over the years, I’ve come to the conclusion that in spite of all the jokes about how much women talk, men are the worst offenders. The Grand Prize goes to groups of businessmen returning home together from some team-building conference, yukking it up over nothing funny. I’ve always found canned camaraderie hard to stomach. A very close second place goes to every fifty to sixty something man who finds himself next to a much younger woman who wants to talk and spends the entire flight … loudly … trying to impress her. I’ve always found obsequiousness to be one of the least attractive male traits.
No. I haven’t done it myself. Everyone gets the headphone treatment from Older Eyes, even my wife. Because for some reason, once I’m nestled in my seat and cloistered in my audio sanctuary, the curmudgeon is known to go to sleep. Being trapped in a place where I’ll go out of my mind if I don’t do something … with my music, my laptop and the grandeur outside my window … I usually find myself in a very creative, even spiritual state. I read, sometimes difficult spiritual material and sometimes novel I’ve been trying to get to. Today, I finished Property Of, Alice Hoffman’s first novel. I write. Sometimes when I was traveling alone, I’d miss my wife so intensely, I’d write her long emails that I’d send later that night when I couldn’t sleep in my hotel room. It’s nice to have her beside me on this trip. She’s reading. The moon outside my window is an oh-that’s-pretty … once … to her. Me? I’m listening to Diana Krall’s Live in Paris, peeking regularly at the full moon … and writing a post for Thursday. It almost makes four hours in airports worthwhile.
Tags: books, curmudgeonly rants, humor, marriage, music, travel
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April 29, 2010 at 6:58 pm
As much as you hate airports and have to prep yourself for a flight, it sure seems to serve you well. That last paragraph put me right in your place on that plane and it felt SO peaceful.