24 Hours on the Road and in the Sky

If ever there were a traveling scheme to make me happy to come home at last, these past few days have been just that. I sat thinking about all the legs of my journey back across the Atlantic, and realized that from Dublin to Atlanta, I was on the road for 24 hours, pretty much on the nose. A run-down:

5:40 a.m. : Struggle awake in the Dublin apartment where I’ve been staying. Stare in disbelief at the light outside, which has moved well past dawn already, because Ireland is on par, latitudinally speaking, with some parts of Russia. I dress and eat, and throw the last of my things into a suitcase and shopping bag. I don’t remember bringing this many T-shirts.
6:30 a.m. : On our way to the airport. The extending handle on my rolling suitcase has conveniently broken just the day before, which means I can either carry it — it weighs as much as a newborn Tyrannosaurus — or roll it along and grip it by the other handle, which involves shuffling along in a stooped position, like a caveman testing out a prototype for a rolling boulder. Suggestions that we get a cab are batted about, and discarded. We finally decide on the LUAS, a tram that runs next to the Liffey, and hop off at O’Connell Street.
7:10 a.m. : After a connecting bus, we hop off at the departures gate of the airport. Usually the place is quiet, and it takes less than half an hour to get a boarding pass and proceed through security. Today it’s a madhouse; for some reason, half the city has decided to turn out and fly on a Monday morning. We wait half an hour in the Q, and a dozen officials come by to check my passport and identification, at least three of them handing me a blue customs form to fill out. Non-American passengers are also given a tan questionnaire as long as my forearm with the words Homeland Security printed in imposing letters across the top. They are also forced to sing the national anthem (backward) and vault a gap in the floor where alligators writhe and snap. (They are not actually forced to do this, but from the intense expressions of the flight officials, it seems the possibility is just over the horizon.)
7:45 a.m. : We arrive at the desk, and the flight crew tells me they might be able to put me on a direct flight to Atlanta, instead of flying me through JFK. They give me a free breakfast voucher and tell us to make ourselves comfortable in the restaurant upstairs, and to come back in about half an hour.
8:20 a.m. : Because the attendant failed to scrawl a price allowance on the voucher, it doesn’t work, and we return to the counter empty-bellied. Amy and I have had a small disagreement on how much checked baggage I’m allowed on the trip. The shopping bag I’ve crammed with blue jeans and cargo khakis is too big for the overhead bins. We scramble at the last minute to convert it into something that will travel in the cargo hold without spilling or ripping to shreds, strewing my dirty boxers in a flapping line across the Atlantic Ocean. With the help of some packing tape and a plastic bag from the kitchen large enough to find employ in the new arrivals section of a local morgue, we manage to patch together something that resembles a Christmas present wrapped by a five-year-old. Proudly we convey it, along with the useless voucher, to the desk, where they inform me the Atlanta plans didn’t pan out, and the woman receives the voucher with a look of horror and apologizes. It has been an unforgettable part of the trip spent with someone whose importance in my life increases each day, and we hardly get a proper goodbye as the attendants whisk me through security so I can get to the flight on time.
9:00 a.m. : I go through immigration, and as the flight is about to board, one of the people from upstairs appears at the counter. She tells me that because I handled the voucher and failed Atlanta transfer so gracefully — I think she was exaggerating, they didn’t really take anything away, after all — they’re going to bump me up to business class for the six-hour flight to New York. I couldn’t be more surprised, or delighted. We get on the plane, and I’m treated to more complimentary food than I have ever encountered before on a single flight, and a seat that leans back, allowing me to pass out instantly, although I manage to wake up for the shrimp quesadillas they bring around in the middle of the flight. My companion is an older woman who tells me about her travels as a concert pianist. She becomes convinced somewhere along the way that I will leave everything I brought with me, including the small airline toiletries bag provided for business class fliers, and I patiently assure her that it’s one thing to misplace one’s wallet, and quite another to leave behind a jacket whose pockets are stuffed with seven paperback books, two Guinness pint glasses for friends, a crime thriller in hardcover, two DVDs, an apple, and as many of the plane’s free Dasani water bottles as I can carry.
1:30 p.m. : I arrive at JFK to find the place a madhouse. Every single day flight the day before was canceled due to bad weather in New York; I will find over the course of the next twelve hours that this has affected air traffic from here to Texas, because when an airport this busy catches cold, the entire country sneezes. I find a pay phone and wait in line behind a man who might have to cancel his honeymoon on a Carnival cruise line because of the flight debacle. I reach the pay phone after 45 minutes of waiting only to find that it isn’t authorized to dial the Atlanta area, where my parents are at work. It will be another hour and a half until I can check in for my flight, and get beyond the crush of people into the secured gate area.
3:29 p.m. : It’s the earliest I can get my boarding pass, and I sprint through the kiosk routine and go to the security line. They pull my jacket aside for inspection, and because they obviously have ties to dangerous guerrilla training camps, the handful of Dasani waters I pilfered from my business class flight all stay behind with a heavy-jowled man in uniform, who will probably drink them all before his shift is over. I kill time for my flight in the gate area, reading a few magazines, catching up with the news, and stopping to write a bit in an upstairs cafe. I find a bookstore and manage to thumb almost halfway through a paperback bestseller by the time I need to go board my plane, which is scheduled to leave at 9:20 p.m.
9:50 p.m. : But it doesn’t, and there’s a half hour delay before we get on. A flight to Columbus, OH was supposed to take off at 7, and people looking as tired as I feel slump in their chairs, staring blearily at the attendants working at the counter. They call the Atlanta flight, and part of the mad throng detaches to form a line at the gate. “What about Columbus?” calls a lone voice from the back of the crowd. Nobody answers.
10:30 p.m. : We’re taking off more than an hour late. The girl in the seat next to mine has been flying for more than thirty hours, having come from Barcelona, laid over in Frankfurt, and passed through one or two more airports for good measure on her way to JFK. She has several hours to spend at Hartsfield before her final connection to San Diego. Under such circumstances, I would be either unconscious with fatigue, or under enough mental strain that I would find myself trying to convince the pilot that I was the Queen of England, and capable of bestowing knighthood on any brave pilot with the means to charter a private flight home for me — to Atlanta, that is. (Perhaps I could say I was visiting Elton John, who lives in Buckhead.) I look over to tell the girl this in praise of her fortitude, and find she has fallen asleep. Moments later, I do the same.
12:20 a.m. : Inexplicable travel luck, or possibly plane engines adapted from extraterrestrial technology, brings us to the Atlanta airport ten minutes early, despite flight delays of more than an hour. I’m so road-weary I don’t notice the jet-way slam of the Georgia humidity, although I don’t fail to crack a smile at the sight of drug-sniffing beagles rolling around on their backs in the U.S. customs area. My baggage, which I sent ahead as soon as I got to JFK, has been corralled in a back room of the airport, which the guard opens. It’s a wasteland of waiting suitcases, stacked up on shelves five deep to the ceiling, and I hand over my claim ticket with an expression of despair. The guard calls over a tall, burly Israeli man and pats him on the shoulder: “This is Atlanta,” he explains. “Show us where this man’s bags are, Atlanta.” The man takes one sweeping glance at my ticket and walks straight to a corner, where both my suitcases sit, such efficiency that I nearly weep in gratitude, not even taking the time to wonder whether my savior was actually named Atlanta, or merely a personification of the city itself, possessed of the kind of familiarity one needs to navigate with poise and confidence a room packed to the rafters with look-alike travel bags.
12:40 a.m. : I notice that it would be five hours later in Dublin, 5:40 a.m., which means I’ve just spent an even 24 hours on the road. In the reflection of the sliding glass door, I mistake myself for a zombie conjured by movie magic. But none of this matters, because we are exiting the airport, and I am Quasimodo-dragging my suitcase up to the parking deck, and my father and I are in the car and on our way home.

When I started this post, I didn’t intend to write such a detailed itinerary of the trip. It probably made for tedious reading. Then again, try doing all this yourself, and you’ll see that I’ve given you the easy way out.

I spent my first day home relaxing, working off all the traveling stress. I started with a first attempt at cooking in some months, a batch of crepes (pretty good); listening to an entire Tom Waits concert posted on NPR’s All Songs Considered (very good – God bless those folks at the radio); spending time with my family (always good); driving miles through an apocalyptic thunderstorm to pick up fried chicken for dinner (absolutely terrifying, especially because European rain doesn’t come with any pyrotechnics); and wrapping up the evening in front of the television, something I haven’t done since January. It’s good to be home.

The software I’ll need for the documentary arrived right on schedule in the mail, and tomorrow, we’ll have some thoughts about my impressions of Final Cut’s express version, and a few remarks about the shape my work will be taking these next couple of weeks. To say I’m looking forward to it is a hopeless understatement.