Montgomery, AL, Day 1

(The Alabama River at Montgomery. Very pretty!)

Snags, Storms, Dramamine: Rambling after a Night in the Airport

This week the airline I work for is sending me to help out at an understaffed station. I was handed a ticket for a confirmed seat (normally airline employees have to travel standby) and sent on my merry way -- right into a hellacious thunderstorm.

Or maybe it was a series of storms. I don't know. Whatever it was, it was bad enough to delay my flight out of Hilton Head to the point that I would misconnect if I waited, so I was swooped off to Savannah International, where I watched from the window in the gate as lightning ripped the sky and orange cones bounced across the ramp like tumbleweeds in a Western as I waited for the ground stop to lift.

And it occurred to me then that for the first time in a while I would have nobody looking to me for calm, no obligation to help carry baby items or change diapers on the go; my connecting gate in Charlotte was to be a mere five gates away, and I would not need a clear head to reach it. And yes, the flight, if ever weather permitted us to board it, would probably feel like competing in the XGames. So it might be a good time, I thought, to withdraw beneath a thick, snuggly mental blanket of dramamine.

I should add here that my experience with drugs is not vast, and

that there very well may be something out there that not only wraps the world in gauze but also compresses time. Alcohol does this to a degree, but it can also evoke nausea -- the opposite of what I was going for.

Anyway, if nothing exists to do this thing, someone could make a lot of money inventing it, because while dramamine thickens the liquid of reality to an unsplashing viscosity, it likewise causes time to flow like molasses, so that people who take it trade a terrible short experience for a mildly unpleasant long one. But like I said, flying solo with no obligations for a change, my sole task being "to arrive," the completion of which I could claim no responsibility for anyway, I said a few quick prayers, popped a couple chalky pills, and settled into a place where the idea of this sleek CRJ aircraft disintegrating over three or so southern states was merely curious rather than alarming.

The normally 45-minute flight lasted for about two hours in real time. We were put into one of those holding patterns around the airport and the plane wheeled around the city again and again as if attached to a mobile on a shaky crib. I became an old man in my own head during this period, which to me lasted anywhere from 35 to 50 years. Like Prospero I watched the storm -- commanded it to a degree, dispatched Ariel to harvest the flakes of the arcing white thunderbolts outside that traced and lit against the sky the wobbling scale that weighed a future where my daughter would grow up with me in her life against a future where I would be gone. Unblinking I sat and stared at the stacking stormclouds as bright, electric spiders spun their delicate webs in my eyelashes.

We must have landed at last, but I do not remember it. What I remember is the pandemonium. Charlotte airport looked like a refugee camp, with hundreds of haggard people clumped and piled and clutching their belongings everywhere. My connecting flight had departed before I arrived, so, glassy-eyed, I stumbled to baggage claim and stood in line at the help desk behind a man who demanded to know where his luggage was. The supervisor was summoned. The threat of calling the police was made. I stood in another line at the information desk, and when it was my turn a different man with a sweaty face shouldered me out of the way. No one seemed to think this strange.

I decided to find a bathroom. It was near the ticket counter, and I could hear arguments going on outside. More threats.

"Leave, sir," a woman said, "or I will call the police."

"You have an obligation to help us here. We were told to go to the services desk, and they told us to come out here, and now you have to help us."

"I'm calling them ..."

When I came out, three police were indeed on the scene. What was strange, though, was that they had sided with the passengers. Arms folded on their chests, they had apparently stopped the ticket agents from leaving, because the hotels by that point were full, and the taxis were overwhelmed, and with no further flights and TSA having shut the checkpoint to the terminal, there was just nowhere for dozens and dozens of people to go.

"Listen to yourself yelling at us," a male passenger told a ticket agent. "You're an animal. We've been all over this airport trying to get someone to help us, but you called the cops on us, and now the cops are trying to help us. So what now, huh?"

"I can't help you anymore," the ticket agent said. "My shift is over. I need to go home."

"WE need to go home!"

"You see this metal door -- it's locked. None of us has the key. We can't do anything for you now."

"But we don't have our things! Where are we supposed to go?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry."

I didn't stick around to see how this scene played out. Sleeping spots on the floor were filling up. There was a nook just about as wide as my shoulders between the escalator and the plate glass window that was perfect; it was closed at one side and strewn with industrial building debris at the other, but crawling over that and wedging myself in, I found that not only could I not be seen, but that if I used my pack as a pillow anybody who wished to rob me in my sleep would have to scramble in, lift me up longways, and get my stuff out from under me -- all without waking me up.

A delightful spot, except apparently the escalator was broken and the repair guys would be fixing it all night with power tools. Not even the dramamine would drown that out.

The Stuff We Bring Back

When you're moving, as my family is, you become keenly aware of the things you keep, the comet tail of debris that follows you as you sail through your own little cosmos.

Our particular comet tail needs a trimming. The stuff we have will not all fit into the storage pod that arrived at our house. We must reduce our amount of possessions -- never a task I've found easy; I'm blaming the Lutherans -- among whose number I am counted -- and I'm not sure why. They seem, broadly speaking, a pack-ratty folk.

Anyway, we've had to start getting rid of crap lately, and I have had to design a sort of yes/no flow chart to allow myself to part with things, where if the answer is "no," it stops there and I discard the item, and if not I go to the next question. It goes like this:

• Is it my business to create a museum for the things I have while I am alive, as opposed to actually living?
• Am I so delusional to believe that anyone will ever create a such a museum for me one day?
• Would I even be interested in meeting the kind of weird people who would visit a museum like that?

and finally

• Is this old piece of crap the kind of thing I would want representing me in this stupid museum of my life that no one is ever going to build?

Very often, it gets to that final question. And, horrifyingly, sometimes the answer is "yes."

When that happens, it's almost always for one of two reasons. Either the thing in question came from somebody who "ain't wit us no mo" (this may include cool gifts from ex-girlfriends who still draw breath but are not, for obvious reasons, with me any more), or (BAM! tying it into the travel blog theme) things that either came from or accompanied me to faraway places.

Take, for example, the two cubic feet of Rubbermaid storage bin consumed by the souvenirs I brought back for Grandma, may she rest in peace. That stuff rebounded on me like one of Lord Voldemort's spells after she passed away, and I'm cursed with holding onto it all now.

Or the faded beige shirt with the horizontal green stripe across the chest and the stain from the lager I sloshed onto myself in London, for example. Or the battered copy of The Hostel Handbook from 2001, which rode around in my backpack for many a weary mile.

Or this ... this thing. A framed cover from a Maxim magazine I bought in Italy in 1999, a time in my life when stupid advice from misogynistic idiots and glossy photographs of sluts were very important to me. I still have this thing, though admittedly it has not been displayed since my wife came around. Yet somehow, even to this day, it has passed the aforementioned flow chart test and remained, hidden, waiting.

So basically, I have to get rid of it.
That hurts, too, because I mean, c'mon, I paid some people at the Hobby Lobby to make that frame for me, long ago -- but I'm sure that wasn't cheap. Not to mention it hung in pretty much every apartment I ever rented and was tolerated by every girl in my life for the past decade except the last. It's like a scar, in a way -- a part of who I am. Can I say that? It does the same thing a scar does in that it reminds me of a part of my past I'm not especially proud of, but it happened nonetheless, and I feel phony denying it. Like it or not, I was this guy.

And it came from Italy. What else did I bring back from there that I still have? Not the wine -- that's long gone. Seriously, all I've kept from that place is a few books. A compass. A bunch of shirts. A backpack. A ring. A bunch of patches. A flag. All the money I didn't spend. A hat. Tons of photographs. Three journals. A candlestick holder in the shape of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Okay, so I may actually be a hoarder.

In the end, however painful it was, I did toss that Maxim picture. And by toss I mean donate to Goodwill. Thinking I might buy it back.

Hilton Head Island at Sunrise

Still getting the hang of the podcast thing, obvs.

Not to mention we've had no Internet for a few weeks now. Moving. But I have a few moments of Internet access now, and I've been walking around with my microrecorder a lot lately, so here's some sound for you guys.

Oh, hey, also, unless you like beach noises like waves and gulls and stuff, this is going to be a big waste of your time. Just a heads-up. On the other hand, if you like beach noises, this is totally going to effing make your day.



Realization: A sunrise isn't very cool when it's just sounds. Something gets lost. Good thing I took a picture, too. Very nice.
I've long had a thing for sunrises, maybe because I've never been good at getting up and seeing them. On the rare occasions I've seen them -- and the even rarer occasions I've seen them when not stumbling home from some ridiculous night -- I've usually enjoyed the hell out of them in a really profound way. The first time I saw the Grand Canyon was at sunrise, and let me tell you, when those first splendid rays crested the ridge and splashed gold and scarlet across the purples and grays of stones and sky, I pretty much lost my shit. I got it all on video, too. And that all-over swell double rainbow feeling didn't wear off fast, or not fast enough to prevent me from splicing some of the LOTR soundtrack behind that footage when I got home and totally losing my shit all over again when I watched it in my apartment.

Oh yes, my friends. I had that kind of time. Sadly, it seems I've misplaced that file.

Anyway. So, good places to see sunrises ... let's have 'em.

(My First Attempt at Podcasting) Listening Walk #1

The Airport and Sense of Place

Say you land in ATL, and, God help you, you have to catch a connecting flight.

You go barreling through the terminal and ride on those train-shuttle-things and finally come screaming into the gate area just as they're about to shut the door. You run down the jetway, panting, pouring sweat, crap strewn in a trail stretching three miles back because you left a zipper on your carryon open ... but you make the connection and you're gone.

So ... do you then get to count Atlanta as a place you've been? I'm guessing not, because you never left the airport. You didn't actually go into Atlanta.

But what about the state of Georgia? ATL is in Georgia, after all. Do you count it?

I'm interested in how we understand something like an airport in terms of a place. Is it a place unto itself, or more like a membrane between places -- something that we pass through to get to somewhere else?

The airport where I work is small -- nothing like ATL. It has just four gates and one commercial carrier, which operates a fleet of 20-something-year-old propeller planes. The sight of one of these aircraft causes many passengers to stop the boarding process to take a picture, like they think they're climbing onto a vessel out of the freaking Smithsonian.

It's my sixth (count 'em) summer working at this airport, and maybe that's made me a little biased. For example, I don't feel the sense of disconnectedness that washes over me in other airports. On the contrary, I find the smell -- a unique potpourri of heavy ocean air, jet A fuel, hot cement, and pine -- familiar, almost comforting. The sounds, a symphony of sea crow caws, cricket chirps, frog croaks, and the intermittent screams of small jets from the general aviation side across the runway, are familiar as well. I've seen, smelled, and heard this place at all hours of the day. I've slept on the equipment (we used to be allowed to do that, between flights (new management put a stop to that awesomeness) and woken up to droning cicadas as well as droning turboprop engines.

Airports, generally, are outside the community both geographically and figuratively. They're set at a distance from towns because they require a lot of room and create a lot of noise. And they're often at odds with the citizenry because they demand things. Case in point, the long, bitter, ongoing battle between the airport where I work and a local church. In a sense, it seems that to back the airport is to oppose local history and culture, and probably to trample on some of that Constitutionally protected "right to worship" stuff, as well: "Our Father, who art in heavVVVVRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOMm evil. Amen."

But today my airline colleague showed me where some blueberry bushes are, off to the right of the ramp next to where we park the out-of-commission tugs and carts. Apparently some of the crew have been tending them for years, watering them with the hose from the equipment garage. "I've been eating these since last summer," he said. "Whenever we get a break between flights, I come and get a handful -- they're good for the heart, you know."

The blueberries had only just started to ripen, and hanging on the bushes were scores and scores more. The few dozen we picked and ate were sweet, syrupy, and hot from the midday South Carolina sun. Some were split apart, others stretched taught. I fiddled the seeds out of my molars with my tongue as bags poured out of the chute.

Now, in a way, I've tasted the airport, too. Another of my senses became engaged, and I felt even more connected to the place than I already had been.

Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?

With summer 2011 officially kicked off, as of yesterday's solstice, now is a good time to ask where everybody's traveling this summer.

Does anyone have any cool trips planned?

(That is an annoying white rectangle, it's true. But taking it out is not worth losing this baller clip art.)

Anyway, back to what I was saying. Where are you going? Or, since my internal calendar and yours are wired for life to the rhythms of the grade school year that plops the 4th of July at the "summer's halfway over" point, where have you already jaunted off to, leaving you to sit behind your computer and gaze wistfully all day a rockin' awesome vacation photo set as your desktop image?

Finally, if you haven't skipped town yet and aren't planning to, why not?