What's Old is Old

Only very rarely will anyone tell you about the air travel experiences that were nice. This is not one of those occasions.

Yet another long flight to the desert. Yet another opportunity to be crammed into cattle class, elbow to asshole with the masses yearning to breathe free. I'm only starting to recover from it.

Cairo called, just one more time, so I packed my bags and headed eight time zones east and fifteen degrees south. This time, I thought to route myself through JFK, an airport that I hadn't been to in forty years, an airport netorious for delays, an airport in ghastly New York City (where the trash in the Hudson is so thick you can float a jetliner on top of it). The biggest thing was that this route would eliminate one stop and about three or four hours off of a 26 hour travel day. It was an easy sell.

The first leg was on some 70 seat regional jet with, as near as I could tell, 70 passengers. Fortunately, it's less than four hours to the east coast from home, and a short first leg is always simple. I was a little worried about changing planes in a new (the first time in forty years might as well be new) facility, but it worked out alright. As it turns out, my departure was two gates from my arrival so, to the best of my knowledge, JFK is some tiny regional airport with half adozen gates, sort of like Great Falls, but with a different smell.

The second leg was packed to the gills, but not overly smelling of fish. I had an interior aisle seat, thankfully adjacent to a small child who spent her flight sleeping on her mother's lap, leaving me unopposed in the battle for the armrest. The real trouble was the major turbulence, violently shaking the plane with little (but mostly no) warning. We'd be cruising smoothly, and then get hit with huge jolts, disrupting the galley, causing some passengers to shout in shock and alarm, and resulting in folks racing down the aisle to the relative safety of their seat belts. Half a dozen instances, probably, of the violent stuff, but easily an hour of shaking and shimmying out of twelve in the air.

I love to fly. I love to fly. I love to fly.

I arrived in Egypt completely jet lagged and fighting a virus that robbed my appetite and sleep for the next three days, leaving me barely able to work (three days of meetings) and having little energy between meetings. By the end of the third day, at least I wasn't spending all of my time in the head, and had some hopes of making it home in one piece, just needing to survive a twenty four hour travel day.

The hotel shuttle to the airport was late, but arrived eventually, then dropped me off at the wrong door to the terminal, so that I had to walk a kilometer and a half to the first security checkpoint. At this stage in Cairo, they ask for your passport and ticket, and I'm usually a bit concerned in that I have an e-ticket, but the dude accepts my itinerary instead, and I'm off to the Delta counter, where they check my passport and itinerary again, before sending me to wait in line, where an airline employee (or Egyptian national security agency employee, I really can't tell) says to me, "You look a little nervous today, sir."

Shit. Do I? Could it be that I've felt like crap the past three days? Could it be that my flight here was shit? Could it be that Israelis are dropping bombs less than two hundred miles from here? Could it be that I really don't like to fly? Of course I'm fucking nervous today,... sir.

"Well, I have been feeling under the weather the past few days."

Approaching the ticket counter, they need my passport and ticket again. A skinny airline employee (or,...) can't find me on his list. "Is Palmer my family name, or is Alan", was the first in our game of twenty questions.

I really should get a new passport. I think I have the last of the old style documents, with a glued on photo and perforated number, that was issued in Kingston eight or nine years ago. It never fails to confuse the TSA (who are morons). I will often get asked what it is ("A valid United States passport"), or if I have any other identification ("I have given you a valid United States passport"), or if I can step to the side and wait for a supervisor.

And it's got additional pages added a little sloppily by the Baghdad Consulate full of interesting visas, which cause many inspectors (including the skinny guy at Delta) to start asking pesky questions. "What hotel did I stay at? How did you get here from the hotel? How long did it take to drive here? What is your address in the United States? Do you have any other identification?"

Just get me on the plane.

Short story longer - there are additional ID checks at the ticket counter, immigration, departure lounge, and departure gate and then I'm on a mostly empty plane headed west. I even get an exit row to myself, but there seems to be little insulation in the emergency door, so the minus seventy degrees outside quickly works its way into the occupant of seat 22A, who moves into seat 22B, which is under the additional ventilation installed next to the head. I finished the flight wearing everything I owned, including a stocking cap.

New York to Minneapolis was uneventful, although I spent the second half of the flight standing next to my seat, having sat enough for one day, and too tired to ignore the fact to sleep. I just reminded myself of the toasty warm limosine that would pick me up at the airport, with it's cavernous back seat perfectly suited for a forty minute snooze.

Little did I expect. However, I received the most talkative driver I've ever had with this company, who couldn't help but turn to me as he talked, which turned the car into the next lane, to which he would correct his path, again and again.

All told, a fine business trip, but a crappy trip, nonetheless.


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