Departure Hall Tasted Plastic

Howard McGhee’s “Dusty Blue” album is precious.  It seems a glistening bauble there in the thumb-through list of album cover icons in my Spotify offers me up s choices.  It’s something to save.  Use with discretion.  “His version of the “The Sound of Music” is as alive with possibility, tethered by melancholy.  There is a long period of silence for McGhee after this 1960 release.

My legs are stiff.  The person beside me is reasonable but it is impossible not to feel pinned in after hours in Economy.  He’s shaking his legs.  Don’t do that.  He wants to talk.  I want to read.  I quickly signed in and “paid” for the full flight’s worth of wifi with my mileage plus points.  And I ate and napped and haven’t been back on line since.  It’s very fickle and they seem to blame “China Air Space” which doesn’t make sense though.  As am just as likely to get the service over China as I am over Russia or the Arctic.  

I bought a salad from Napa Valley something-or-other there at the airport.  I remember being impressed with the choices in the domestic arrival.  But this salad I got in the international departure hall tasted plastic, brimming with unwanted ingredients like corn.  The Southwest Steak Wrap I brought on board didn’t taste good.  The tortilla was thick and pasty.  I’ll pass on the United breakfast later this ride but am looking forward to some kind of proper dinner back home tonight. 

Traveling can take a lot out of you if only in as much as it buffets routine.  At home you can be up at the same time, go and do the same thing every morning.  A six-hour flight is a big interruption in a day.  A twelve hour flight interrupts two days.  The gym at one hotel isn’t as good as the gym at another.  When you’re on a friend’s couch there is no gym.  And all day there are meetings.  Every night there is a dinner.  The side rails guiding the routine track, fall off like scales that no longer seem necessary  and, the car can goes where it likes. 

Sunday, 11/04/18