Home Again, Home Again

Good Morning -

We had a fantastic rain last night, so everything right now is sparkley and hydrated - a rare situation in the desert, to be sure.

As I mentioned in yesterday's story, the day was all about traveling and recovering. My flight left San Diego at 6:30 a.m., which had me at the airport at 5, which had me calling for a cab at 4:30, which had me up at 4 - a.m.

I realized the night before that how someone handles an early morning says a lot about them as a person. Faced with a 4 a.m. wake-up, some would choose to stay up all night, some would go to bed extra early, and some would carry on as normal. I am of that third set - I have no desire to stay up all night (sleep is too, too precious), it feels punative to make myself go to bed early, and I'd rather just do my thing and accept that I'll need a nap later the next day.

I had done a good job the night before of packing and organizing my stuff, so there wasn't too much to do in the morning and all of it was rote - brush teeth, apply deoderant (I think I may have done this twice, which is better, I think, than not at all), get dressed, etc.

Once at the airport, I was faced with an absurdly long line (considering the time). While I was waiting to check myself in, a clearly drunk man carrying a car first aid kit and a Naked Juice stumbled past, then stopped in front of me and said, "Whoa - you look angry. Are you angry?". Not wanting to engage, I ignored him, to which he said, "Whoa - you're giving off some bad vibes. I don't want to stand next to you." I suppose this is what one gets when one mixes California with lots of booze - slurred talk of vibes and feelings.

Happily, at that moment an employee came and said that I was in the international departure line (there was no sign saying as much - of course, with my 4 a.m. eyes, there could have been flashing neon saying, "You're in the wrong line - step to the right" and I might not have seen it) and directed me to domestics. Unhappily, the man was also moved to the check-in station next to mine. Apparently the employees can't enter the information for a person, so she had to tell him which buttons to hit to find his reservation. Needless to say, this took some time and patience.

They couldn't find it, so he was passed on to another woman, who asked for ID. Digging through his wallet, he came up with various credit cards, a Blockbuster card, but no photo ID. As I was waiting for my baggage tag to print, I learned that he was headed to the Virgin Islands, and that his flight was yesterday but he had been removed by the pilot for either being drunk or touching someone's breast, and rebooked on the flight the next day.

What do you do with someone like that? Send them back to their hotel to sleep it off again (clearly he's not in sleeping off mode, though)? Call Traveler's Aid? Call the police? A social worker? Without ID, he wasn't going anywhere, and as long as he stayed sloshed, he wasn't going to be in a place to get a replacement ID.

I don't know how his story ended because I got my tags, moved through sercurity and set myself up for the long wait at the gate. I used to be smoker, so this time was formally filled with strategic, well-timed escapes back outside to have one last smokey treat before boarding. Now, I just sit and wait at the gate, mumbling grumpily to myself about how air travel has changed so much for the worse.

To help with the waiting and ease the grumpy mumbling, San Diego airport has big black wooden rocking chairs at the gates (or, at my gate, anyway). I gently rocked myself to dozing until boarding and then it was a quick flight to Phoenix, a walk through a super-crowded terminal, more boarding, and an even quicker flight (21 minutes from wheels up to touchdown) to Tucson.

My partner wasn't due in for another 4 hours, so I collected the car and headed home to unpack, reacquaint myself with the cats, and relax a bit before picking her up.

Once we were both home, it was a nap for me and a generally quiet afternoon and evening. I went through my San Diego posts and added hyperlinks to some of the information. In a weird google moment, my blog came up as a search result for a restaurant I was looking to link.

I was already to wrap this up and realized I haven't told you about the Virgen yet - it's Mona Lisa as a background (from the menu of the deli where we got our sandwiches for the beach), a strip of postcard advertising our hotel in Little Italy, and a bit from another postcard for the "San Diego" at the feet. All generally a sense of the trip - I wasn't necessarily ready yesterday to be back, so the Virgen is a lingering goodbye to vacation and cooler weather.

Since we were in Little Italy and since I'm not ready to be back at work, I'll say "ci vediamo presto" (we'll see each other soon) to the trip, rather than goodbye.

And to you.