Day 1 of travel

Day 1 of travel was November 25th. Driving off with my backpack and carry on suitcase.

Ron and I like to travel light. We got to spend time in Las Vegas with family, and to drop off our car. We spent the night in a hotel near the airport and then arrived at the first airport by 10am. We flew off to Miami, with the classic screaming baby. A first, of all the travel. The kind that pierces the ears of the entire trapped population on board. It was almost like a sitcom. I didn't care. I wasn't responsible for the child. My heart went out the mother, she was close enough that I could hear her frustration. Then got a connecting flight to.... Sao Paulo in Brazil! I didn't know that was the plan until we lined up for boarding in Miami. If you are reading this and you know my husband Ron, he insisted that we were going to Mexico. Even producing false tickets in an email. Hahaha. I knew it wasn't Mexico, I could only guess what the real destination was.

Another 8 hour flight. Whoosh. The good part is that we had an entire middle row of 4 seats to ourselves. Taking off at midnight, because it was delayed because they got us all loaded onto a plane and then decided that the plane had issues. So we all tromped back off and they found another plane.

I remember staring at the people as we waited, wondering what got each person to the point that they were also about to fly to Sao Paulo that evening. I assigned them stories, and then wondered if anything that I conjured up came even close the their reality.

Sleeping on a plane is always a strange challenge. Either I can't stay awake when I want to (Ron always gives me the window seat), or I can't sleep when I need to. It is even further complicated by wearing a mask. It was quite awful to have to wear a mask for such extended periods of time. I felt muzzled. When I started to feel stressed I would just hum. With limited people and wearing a mask, no one could notice I was humming over the deeper hum of the engines. It seemed to help, it would make me smile eventually.

Wearing a mask won't keep me from traveling, but if they end up requiring proof that I have received the covid-19 vaccine... then I am done. 

I wrote on the plane: I'm not terribly claustrophobic, or should I say that I am reasonably cautious when warranted. I can even handle a bathroom on an airplane. But I avoid them as much as my bladder will allow, there is only enough room to step inside, almost into the edge of the toilet before turning and locking the door. But I was considering going to the miniscule cramped room just so I could take my mask off for five minutes and take some deep breaths. I asked myself: why am I wearing this piece of cloth? If I don't wear one I am both shamed and punished. Yet it is acceptable to take it off to eat or drink during the flight. It makes no sense. Everyone looks like a doctor or a bandit. I get through this by pretending I have a scuba mask and mouthpiece. I practice the hardest part of diving: for me it is remembering to inhale through my mouth and exhale through my nose. Except now it's not my mask that fogs up, it's my reading glasses. And the occasional barracuda has two legs, and is much harder to distinguish in passing.

 

I don't know if you can see it in the picture below, but in white writing on the top left side it says Cedar City.

I love how on the longer flights you can watch the map. Where are we? How much longer? It helps me to know the answer to these two questions. The first flight was four hours long. The second flight was 8 hours long! It is a strange kind of temporal distortion, the time that we left does match the amount of time we are in the air. I can't look at a clock and figure out what time it is. When I say "it's been a long day!" I really mean it. The time zones are what throw me off every time. It can be good though, to throw time out the window and try to measure my life in other ways.

Time is not fun when it starts to resemble an algebra word problem. Yet... I am a time traveler. I got up at 7am in Las Vegas. But really it wasn't, it was 8am where I live in Cedar City in Utah. The clocks were telling me a fib. Then I didn't eat a breakfast so it didn't feel like the morning. Then I didn't eat a lunch, got on a plane at "12:30pm" and two and half hours later it started to get dark. We went from Mountain time to Pacific time to Eastern time, and that's not even where we will end up. I am trying to be in today. I am living in yesterday's tomorrow. Did the day start at midnight? Or did it start when I woke up? My day will not be 24 hours long, how odd is that?

 

Being in a plane definitely challenges my perspective of life. For this trip we were in the middle of the plane, so this was the only view I had, plus it was mostly flown at night.