Airports have a funny way of bringing people together. People who have no commonalities, other than that they happened to have bought a ticket for the same flight and have seats next to each other, would have never crossed paths if it weren’t for this random series of events. Take, for example, my flight from Traverse City to Denver this afternoon at 4:30. After it was delayed a half hour due to pouring rain, we finally were herded on like cattle, baggage spilling out of the stowaways to the dismay of the stewardesses. I plopped down in my seat and scanned for who would sit next to me as more people were prodded onto the plane. A somewhat greasy man wearing a jet-black leather jacket with three wolves clawing through the embroidered moon on the back sat down in front of me, his long scraggly hair and body odor creeping over the top of the seat. Behind me, as my dad had predicted long before I got onto the plane, hopped two little children who proceeded to dribble their legs against the seat for the next two hours. Next to me sat a pleasant blonde woman who was white-knuckling the seat as we taxied out onto the runway.
“Don’t like flying?” I asked, trying to make conversation.
“Nah it’s not so much of the flying as it is the claustrophobia of these small planes. My next flight should be better. I hate these puddle jumpers.”
We got to talking and I told her about how I was heading to Thailand to study abroad for college.
“Oh where do you go?”
“Kalamazoo College…it’s a small liberal arts school down in Kalamazoo.”
“Oh no way! That’s where I graduated from in ’99! I went to Ecuador!”
I’ll save you the rest of her life’s story. No matter where I go though, the world seems to get smaller and smaller.
We landed into Denver at 5:59 and taxied into gate 89. I looked down at my ticket to LA…it took off at 6:15 from gate 44. Shit. I had fifteen minutes to make it to the door. All of my running over the summer came in handy as I sprinted the 45 gates along the moving walkways, rushing past baby strollers and absentminded tourists. The last few people were filing through the gate as I ran up, entirely out of breath. No more than two seconds after I got there, an Indian man clad in a business suit and red power tie sprinted up and sidled up along side me, the two of us wheezing together as we handed the stewardess our boarding passes.
“Shitty day, eh?” He joked as we started walking down the hallway to the plane.
“You said it.” I joked back. An announcement came over the plane’s intercom, announcing that the overhead storage was full for the plane and that the last few passengers would have to ride with their carry-ons on their laps. Turns out, the Indian businessman was sitting next to me.
“Good Lord. This shit would never happen with Continental,” he sighed, “Do they take credit cards? I need something to drink like it’s my job.”
I laughed. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they do. They have to at least take Visa.” We got to talking again, and I gave the abridged version of what I was doing, hiking around Thailand and whatnot. He began telling me his life’s story, coming from India at 22 to come work as a software engineer and working his way up to the senior engineer for a decent sized company. He stopped in the middle of his story to text his partner ten rows up about how hot the brunette stewardess was. When she came down the aisle with drinks, he bought two beers and slammed one down onto my tray table.
“I like you kid. You look like you might need this.” Considering I’m 19 and the last thing I needed for my 17 hour flight to Bangkok was to be dehydrated, I said he could have it.
“Alright! Bonus beer!” He proceeded to show me photos his last trip to Israel and India. It amazes me how friendly some people are. In comparison, the older gentlemen across the aisle gave us no less than nine death glares during the trip, one with particular menace when I asked him about his girlfriend[s] (jury’s still out on if there was a plural involved).
~~~
Now it’s 24 hours later, and I’m still on my flight to Bangkok with about two hours to go. My watch reads 4:25 PM, yet we have been in darkness for over 12 hours. I apologize if this post really has no direction…I’ve been running on a cumulative five hours of interrupted sleep. They’ve fed us three surprisingly American chicken concoctions, with the exception of some bizarre jello-like substance that had coconut in it and their offering of free wine or Cognac to drink. The reality of that I’m entering an entirely different culture is starting to sink in, particularly when the pilot comes on the intercom and speaks in what sounds to be like a completely fabricated language, followed by choppy English. The past 24 hours have been a rollercoaster of emotions, bowing out at missing home and my friends and then rising to extreme excitement with the reality that this whole trip is happening. This is the moving phase, the adrenaline phase. I’ll let you know when we stop.
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