air travel

Leaving Cedar Rapids


Northwest in and out of Cedar Rapids has proven to be the riskiest leg of any trip to Dubuque. Perhaps it sits within a vortex of evil and goat sacrifices are required? More likely it is just a crappy airline. Airlinks to regional hubs are not high on the priority list of any airline. People in the fly over states are well and truly gripped by the balls when it comes to choice and convenience where air travel is concerned and the airlines know this quite well.

 

Arriving at the airport we felt fairly confident. The boards were reading that our flight was on time. It wasn’t pouring rain as had been threatened, and we had all the check on/carry on sorted and duly packed. At check in counter however we were greeted with the sadly predictable news that our flight was delayed an hour and a half, which put our connecting flight to Edmonton in jeopardy. Even worse, and pathetically less surprising, came the revelation that should we miss the connection, we couldn’t be accommodated on another flight home until 9:30 the following night. Welcome to Hellmouth.

 

Rob, of course, was unperturbed. Nothing about the indignities and sheer clusterfuckiness of air travel ruffles him in the least. He operates on the premise that since the world is populated mainly by stupid people, we should be more emotionally jolted by those things that do work and are fouled up. Shit happens most and anything else is a really good day. Since flying makes me nervous and, as I have mentioned, I am disturbed on a deep physic level by the TSA and all the other pseudo-fascist state things that masquerade as “protection”, any extra time “in the system” as Rob has dubbed it does not make my day.

 

We held back from going through security for a bit after the news, and I took Katy to the restroom for the third potty stop before boarding. It’s just easier to empty her out in stages. While we were in there someone several stalls down began moaning, groaning and god-damning the Lord before announcing to, the Lord I presume, that she had “diarrhea god-dammit”. Pretty sure that the Lord needed to hear that bit of information as much as I did. Yeah, I couldn’t get us out of there fast enough. Judging from her old lady from Phoenix attire when I spied her exiting not long after us, I imagine that her gastrointestinal distress was diet related because if she is anything like my folks (and she looked a contemporary except my mom’s attire isn’t as garish) her tummy is a dumping ground for any and all types of carcass, starch and refined sugars. However, on the off chance she was carrying some new variation of bird flu (vortex of evil, remember?), I wanted us washed and away when she emerged to – hopefully – wash her own hands.

 

By the time we cleared TSA ,where a guard actually gave Katy a dime (I know what you are thinking but clowns look friendly too) and got to the gate, our plane was know 20 minutes less late. We snagged a table near the only restruant/gift shop/newsstand/got you by the short hairs if you need anything shop, which was nice because there aren’t a lot of those (tables) to be found anywhere in most airports and we enjoyed the free wi-fi (vortex of evil, Carol Anne, stay with me and do not go near the light). As the later arrivals to the concourse arrived we received more than a few dirty looks for our comfy table. Mostly from old women. People of the “greatest” generation have a more acute sense of entitlement than any teenager I have ever known.

By the time we hit Minneapolis we were barely late at all. As Rob pointed out, our pilot from Cedar Rapids was “one with the plane” and we made our connection easily. On the flight, Katy slept and Rob and I finished the film Failure to Launch which not so ironic to us anymore, turned out to be a movie about a widower who was having trouble moving on and allowing himself to love again. We don’t even try to find these films. They just come to us. Was the world so loss focused before? We were so clueless then.

 

Customs in Edmonton was a breeze. One moment of pause when the officer asked Rob if he was Katy’s father. I had to tell him that Katy’s father was dead but fortunately didn’t have to pull out the death certificate to prove it. It’s always nice to not have to prove it.

 

2AM found Rob and I snuggled up, passed out from exhaustion in our own lovely king-sized bed. Home.

Coming Home


Even without a black cat sighting, our trip back was a tad bit trying. Neither Rob nor I managed to get more than a few hours of sleep Saturday night despite the fact that we were both exhausted. I don’t know if it was just the preoccupation with making sure all the details were in order or just the stress that occupies air travel generally these days. I was worried about crossing the border since my status is not yet official.

The Cedar Rapids Airport isn’t very big. Small jets that contract with larger airlines mainly. Checking in set Rob’s teeth on edge within ten minutes of our arrival. The touch and scan machine they have at the counter was backed up due to a passenger who either couldn’t read or didn’t understand the concept of touch screen or both. For some reason we weren’t allowed to choose our seats prior to check in which is annoying beyond words when you are traveling with small children. The woman in question was one of those who was trying to hang onto the best years of her life and these years were clearly her twenties. She was wearing tight jeans, a leopard print shirt just as clingy and was so expertly balanced on 3 inch stilletto heels with an open toe that you knew she didn’t own a pair of flats beyond the cross-trainers she probably wore when she went to gym once a week. Too much make-up for 7:15 in the morning and a shaggish type hair-style that doesn’t really suit people our age. I say “our age” because she couldn’t have been much older than I am and was likely a bit younger but that’s what tanning beds actually do for you. Having just spent the evening before at my 25th high school reunion, I was a bit more conscious of my peers who put a lot of effort into staying young. Rob fumed openly at the woman, and I didn’t blame him. The more I watched her, the more obvious it was that she wasn’t incapable of traversing the seating situation. She was one of those women who had lived her life getting others, probably men more often than not, to do things for her. As she explained to the employee who finally gave up trying to explain it to her and just did it for her, she had paid a lot of money for this trip and she was going to sit next to her girlfriend but her daughter and son-in-law didn’t need to be near-by if that was too much trouble. It was then I noticed the young couple tying up the other kiosk. The daughter was obviously her mother’s clothing and hairstyle inspiration and she was browning herself to an older looking middle-age in her mother’s footsteps as well. The younger woman was also a graduate of the school of dumb blondes, pretending incompetence as her husband indulgently guided her through the check in procedure.

The jet we were taking was being boarded out on the tarmac. We don’t always take advantage of the right that passengers with small children have to board ahead of our seats being called but with the walk out and carrying the carseat to check this time, we did. On the smaller jets they are very strict about the one carry-on rule. Even purses are deemed carry-on which is beyond stupid as most women don’t travel with backpack size handbags and many of the purses these days are very small. Mine you might not even notice if you saw me only from the front, which is the angle the flight attendant first spied me from as I helped Katy on and we walked past the attendant and a long-haired passenger arguing about his carry-on. It appeared he had quickly moved his cameras to his larger carry-on and was folding the camera bag to stuff in the first bag as well but the attendant continued to harangue him. Until she saw Rob. He was carrying his computer case and wearing the backpack that the three of us share and which also contained my computer. The flight attendant seized upon the chance to force someone else to check a bag, having failed with Mr. Pony-Tail. Rob quickly pointed out that he did have one carry-on and was handling mine because I was taking charge of Katy. And that is when she saw my purse.

“A hand-bag is a carry-on and you cannot have two carry-on.”

So now I was blocking the aisle, which always makes one popular on any flight and Katy was getting ahead of me and the other passengers were looking on with interest to see if I would make an issue and likely get us ejected.

“Okay, can I put the purse in the pack?”

Thwarted again, and clearly unhappy about that, she replied, “Yes, because you can only have one carry-one.”

I suppose I could have gotten uber-technical and pointed out that there were three of us and therefore we were allowed three carry-on. If I had wanted to be a real smart-ass, I could have handed Katy my purse (she loves carrying it) and taken the pack from Rob. I wasn’t in the mood. I was tired and worried about getting through Canadian Customs and thinking a bit about my dad, whether or not I will ever see him alive again, and the woman was clearly one of those people who saw the world from her eyes only. Whether or not she would have been kinder if she had known my circumstances isn’t even relevant. The world at large is not equipped to deal with us all as individuals with needs and feelings. Sometimes, you just suck it up and shrug it off as best you can later.

I was most of the flight and a while longer in Minneapolis “shrugging” Brunhilda off. It wasn’t until I had a skinny chai from Starbucks in hand and finished reading the last thirty pages of The Other Boleyn Girl that I felt more like myself. When we finally hit Concourse C and Katy was happily making friends with the other children in the play area, Rob wisely sent me off to the Starbucks which was a bit of a walk. The walk helped a lot. The chai and a literary immersion got me the last little bit to my “zen” place. The man knows me pretty well.

The flight into Edmonton is about 2 and 1/2 hours. We were late taking off because the pilot waited for a few passengers whose connecting flight was late, but we still made it on schedule. There was quite a bit of turbulence early in the flight. The kind that reminds you of a rollercoaster. Stomach-dropping. I wasn’t afraid as much as physically disconcerted. I am keenly aware of motion. I can feel the floor move and the sway of buildings. Air turbulence might as well be an earthquake in terms of what I feel. Fortunately it passed quickly though the flight didn’t. If it is calm, I can write and even read a bit. Bumpy and I have nothing to do but wait.

In Edmonton, customs turned out to be a non-event, as Rob had said it would be. We did get booted over to the Immigration Office but that turned out to be a good thing because we were able to get one of the clearest explanations of my status and what we needed to know and remember to do that we have ever gotten from Immigration. It was worth the wait.

The kittens went a bit feral while we were gone but on the upside, they are eating kitten food now and we should be able to hand them over to their new owners soon. I had to make a grocery run and nearly fell asleep over my cart as I schlepped around the Safeway. But, by nine we were all ready for bed and the bags were unpacked, put away and laundry was half done.

It was a good trip, but I am so glad to be home again.

Black Cats


Just as we were nearing the airport yesterday, a black cat dashed across the road in front of us. Off to the right we could see a coyote paused in mid-chase in the ditch. A more superstitious person would have immediately jumped to the conclusion that the day was now a wash and gone back home to catch up on sleep before the sun came up, but though I did wonder idly about the possibility of our plane plummeting to the ground shortly after take off, I didn’t give the cat, or its hue, another thought until we landed in Minneapolis to discover our next flight was cancelled.

“Cancered?” my daughter puzzled. “Why was the plane cancered?”

Why indeed and since it was a company that contracts with Northwest, we will probably never have an answer, but there we were. It was not quite noon and our one o’clock flight to Cedar Rapids, Iowa was now rescheduled for 4:45. We suddenly had a whole lotta time on our hands.

The first order of business, after visiting the washrooms, was lunch. And, I don’t know if you’ve traveled by air lately but though there are a great many food choices from very fast to sit down and hand over your Gold Card, not a whole lot of it amounts to much more than fat and sugar and the inevitable tummy ache. For me, eating out is a quest anymore. Trying to find food that won’t upset my stomach or aggravate my allergies or even weigh me, literally, down is hard enough to do in the real world but in the confines of a TSA secure airport it is nearly impossible. Once you enter the terrorist-cleansed zone, you aren’t allowed out without penalty. That being that you have to run the screening gauntlet again and explain why you left too I would guess. I would also guess that being hungry for edible food won’t cut it as a reason.

After a search we discovered a food court on Concourse C with an Einsteins and a place that made fruit smoothies as well as Asian cuisine and an A&W. When we were all fed, we landed at the play area and settled with newspapers and Starbucks and made ourselves as comfy and at home as possible while Katy played. It was a little surprising to me how once we were fortified with reading material and beverages that Rob and I kicked back as though it were a weekend morning at our dining room table with tea and toast. I kicked off my shoes and put my feet in his lap, and we read and exchanged information of interest as we came across it. The hours passed. Not all that slowly. It was relaxing in its own strange way.

Flight time finally arrived. It was a small jet that left the gate on time but taxied in circles for so long that Rob finally asked me if we were going to drive to Cedar Rapids after all. Once up the time went by and when we arrived it looked as though we might still be to my folks at a reasonable hour. But the black cat wasn’t quite done. The flight had been full and, um, weighty. Some of the heavier pieces of luggage were removed from the cargo bins just prior to take off. We had taken the two hard shell suitcases with us. One had most of our clothes and the other the car-seat. The car-seat arrived with us. The clothes, as we were to discover after another bit of a wait, would be arriving in another few hours. Fortunately we did pack a change of colors and other essentials in the carry-on case. Still, it was past Katy’s bedtime when we headed out in a downpour to my hometown.

Today the luggage was delivered to my parent’s house and we managed pretty well without it. As I said at the beginning of this piece, if I had been more superstitious, I might have run for cover, but I really don’t think that black cats or the number 13 or any other mumbo jumbo has much to do with the mishaps that occur sometimes. Not that everything happens for a reason, but sometimes things happen for the benefit of others and we just get caught up by that. It’s not a big deal. I spent the afternoon with my feet in my honey’s lap watching my daughter have a grand time playing and making conversation with the children that came and went in that play area over the course of an afternoon, and honestly worse times have been had by us all.