it’s just that i don’t really care about it one way or the other.

there’s nothing interesting to me about airplanes anymore. they were neat when i was a kid, and my dad (who had a pilot’s license) would take me and my mom on short trips in a little twin-engined cessna so we could go out for breakfast with friends in decatur. but that was with a plane i could actually, you know, see the outside of. commercial air travel is sort of like a really noisy elevator. you get herded into it, the doors close; some time later, the doors open up again, and you walk out into a different place. meh.

i’m not scared of air travel. although, by rights, i probably ought to be — if man was meant to hurtle through the skies at 35,000 feet at 600 miles per hour, we would have been born in levitating tuna tins. since we weren’t, i am forced to conclude that this is a freak occurrence, permitted only by our incessant meddling with That Which Man Might Ought To Probably Not Meddle With. also known as physics, a particularly frightening branch of magic that i prefer to keep at arm’s length, or best yet, forget about entirely.

besides, i figure that, really, if it all goes to hell and i’m in an airplane hurtling to my death, apart from the screams of those around me, it’ll at least be a quick and merciful end. better than a car accident or stroke, anyways.

i’m not particularly annoyed by being on an airplane. i get bored, yeah (especially on days when i (a) run down both laptop batteries, (b) knit until my wrists hurt or i run out of yarn, and (c) forgot to bring a book so i have to (d) resort to reading Sky Mall for entertainment). i get restless at being trapped in a seat, unerringly behind someone who is physically incapable of not bouncing his or her seat back and forth until it practically smacks my head. i get envious because everyone around me is happily sleeping and i have forever been unable to sleep on airplanes, even long transatlantic flights. usually i just treat it like i treat any other boring situation: surround myself with about six options to entertain myself so that when i get tired of one i have another, and i’m never sitting there staring at the wall going “why didn’t i bring another book, goddammit.”

air travel is uninteresting and ungracious, and so far as i am concerned the only thing it has in its favor is its speed. sorry, pilots and airplane fangirls; i’m just not all about the romance of the flying tin can, i guess.

honestly, air travel just means one thing to me. and that one thing is: airports. i actually do hate airports. there are always too many jackasses having conversations in asinine places (listen, jackass who nearly caused a four-person quite literal pileup today: the correct place to wait for your friend to get off the peoplemover is farther than four feet beyond the end of the peoplemover.), oblivious to people trying to maneuver bags around them. too many lines. too many “put boarding pass away, get boarding pass back out, put boarding pass away” opportunities to lose said boarding pass. the coffee’s too hot, too overpriced, and too not good. none of the departures boards have my flight conveniently displayed in such a way that i can read it while walking without stopping (meanwhile, the people flying to Roanoke get a mention on every monitor). the bathrooms are armed with attack toilets, and there is some idiot hogging the entire sink vanity with her makeup case to fix her hair so that i can’t wash my hands and get the hell out of there. the seats all suck, and nobody ever has usable free wireless or power outlets for my laptop. airports actually are hell.

the ninth circle is chicago’s very own o’hare international. i got off the el this morning and it was like i’d stepped into a home depot closeout sale. it’s under construction, apparently. i think they’ve ripped everything out but the flooring and the baggage carousels. you’d think that it would be hard to make o’hare worse than normal, but let me tell you guys that chicago has put forth its very best effort and really come through for you on that.

but i may be projecting a little bit. you see, i actually missed my flight this morning.

now, into every traveller’s personal history, a few firsts must fall. the first commercial flight. the first of your baggage the airline loses. the first flight through scary-ass thunderstorm. (if you’re really lucky, you take care of all three of those at once!) the first time you realize, while the plane taxis to the gate, that your cell phone turned itself back on in your pocket at some point, and you worry that that turbulence over colorado was your fault. the first time you disobey your own thrifty “i’m not paying THAT for a domestic beer” sensibilities. and the first time you trip the shrieking child that won’t quit fucking running up and down the aisles, causing it to break its jawbone and spend the rest of your flight back from heathrow in blissful relative silence as its cries are muffled by the swaddling around its face. (or maybe that was just a happy dream.)

and of course the first time you miss your plane.

this was my fault in that i made a poor decision, but not my fault in that i slept late or something. no, i did get out of the house a little late but it mostly ate up my “stop and get coffee and something for breakfast on the way to the el” time. it all started out when the el was really, really slow. i waited quite some time for a train to even get there, and then it’s a 45 minute trip out to o’hare on a good day. for my 0916 flight, i arrived at o’hare at about 0850. i definitely should have taken a cab.

then came the fumbling around trying to find my terminal + going to terminal 2 instead of terminal 3 + the mile-long walk to get wherever the hell i was going + the fuckheads making it impossible to navigate around their ill-placed conversation locations + you must e-check in 40 minutes before your scheduled departure + oh of course the one time i am late you fuckers are on time + wait in line for check-in with an agent = got to the agent five minutes before my scheduled departure. i said “hi, i’ve got a reservation on the 0916 to san diego, but i guess that’s out, so what can you do for me?”

it turned out there was an eleven o’clock flight, which was not booked up, so all i had to do was sit around gate K9 and kill a bunch of time. still. airports are hell. it should not have taken me practically half an hour to get to check in. maybe if o’hare wasn’t being demolished things would be different. maybe if o’hare wasn’t the crappiest airport ever i might have made my flight. at least i wasn’t flying united so i didn’t have to go through the psychedelic tunnel of love. i feel fairly assured that that would not have improved my mood.

on this end of things, i do like the san diego airport. exit the jetway, follow the signs and walk a couple hundred yards to baggage claim, go down one escalator, pick up your bag, walk outside and catch a cab. it’s only about a thousand times better than o’hare. plus, they have palm trees here too, which completely outrock anything o’hare’s got going in the landscape design department, assuming o’hare actually has anything for landscape design other than chain-link fencing, shuttle buses from long-term parking, and the tram.

i was disappointed, though, that apparently the airline i chose have cut back, and no longer offer food service in-flight. even for an 1100 CST – 1300 PST flight — i.e., lunchtime no matter what time zone you’re from. we got soft drinks. allegedly there were snack boxes with crackers that one could buy for $3, but none were offered and i wasn’t interested enough to ask, despite not having had the sense to bring a lunch onboard other than an apple and a Mountain Dew. oh, sure, there was a McDonald’s directly across from my gate, but i did not want McDonald’s and that was pretty much it unless i was going to raid the Starbucks pastry case. which i also did not want. so, i sat on a four-hour flight foodless and starving, while the guy a seat over from me ate McDonald’s. i don’t care how much i don’t really miss fast food, when you’re hungry, that french fry smell can drive you to murder.

or, you know, so i imagine.

*inocent whistling

but i made it, and because i was such a good girl and ate my veggies at supper and brushed my teeth before going to bed, it’s going to be six whole days before i have to enter an airport again. so, that’s good.