Turns To Cold Barren Land

The seven o’clock flight would get you into O’Hare with thirty-seven minutes to make the connection.  Might work fine.  Might not.  What if I made it and the bags did not? There was an earlier flight, one hour to be precise that would give me that much more time for the connection.  Now I’m in a 4:49AM cab heading out to La Guardia for my 6:00AM flight, reminding myself it was the right thing to do. 

Uber makes me go down around the corner and as soon as he has my bags in a cop pulls up and starts asking the guy why he’s pulled over here? “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to pull over here?”  A woman is lecturing him from the squad car driver’s seat.  I can’t see her.  But I want her to shut up.  Just before I get frustrated the lecture is over, my driver is supplicant and we’re off.

“How do you want me to go?”  “Whatever is fastest.” Unfortunately he doesn’t really get the tip.  The BQE is largely empty at this hour but cars are passing my cab to the right and the left.  I make some quick assumptions about U.S. domestic flights, that they have the same time buffer as those in China: they won’t close the gate until 45 minutes before departure.  I have about eight minutes to spare as we pull into La Guardia.  My sister had warned me that it is going through a big new overhaul but at this hour, as long as I get through this red light . . . it’s manageable.  I check in without a problem.  They accept my overweight bags without any questions. 

I sail through security and head down the corridor to the United gates.  I’ll get a banana and a juice at this first place.  “Is there a Starbucks further down?”  “There isn’t a Starbucks anywhere in La Guardia”  “Really?”  There’s a story there, certainly.  It’s 5:40AM and it is still quite dark outside.  Everyone is cold and tired.  Why do I even want coffee?  I’ll head straight back to sleep.  It’s still early.  I’m still tired when I find a chair to sit in, in site of the remarkable brontosaurus fossil at O’Hare. 

Heading out from O’Hare I have a window seat.  The sun is certainly up now.  And intermittently I marvel as cold farm land turns to cold barren land and then the Rocky Mountains appear, less imposing for their height, standing in a line from thirty thousand feet above, but more for their force as a shelf.  They extend on like a wave frozen from molten.   There are clouds and turbulence over the great mountain range. I can’t see the pines on the hills any more.  I’ve decided to drive through with Sam Clemens and “The Innocents Abroad” and not put him down.  He’s built up all towards the arrival in the Holy Land.  I especially like his confrontation with the site of the crucifixion.  I marvel at how his salty skepticism is pinned up against the wall, held by that gritty nineteenth century faith.  The Sierras must be behind us.  It’s the long, remarkably well-housed plateau of Los Angeles we’re now crossing over.  I want more pictures as we drop down, lower, lower toward the green patchwork and the hills above Pasadena.