My cousin’s husband has to travel a lot for work. A group of us were talking once when he gave his philosophy of airport travel: It’s all in how you choose to perceive what happens. Missed a connecting flight? Had an electric razor confiscated in security? Experienced any of the multitude of things that can go wrong? You can either be an adventurer or a victim.
I always think back to this when I fly anywhere now, as I did this past week to visit my parents in their temporary winter vacation home just outside of Phoenix. Usually it doesn’t take much before I put myself in the victim category, but this time I decided to see the trip down as more of an adventure. I don’t have a problem with flying and I actually kind of like airports: Most of the time I have this drive that makes it hard for me to not be doing something while thinking of the next thing to do at the same time. But usually at an airport the only thing you’re supposed to do is wait, as long as there isn’t some domino effect of inconvenience knocking your flight schedule around, and thankfully that’s never happened to me. I figured as long as I kept track of my wallet and phone and iPod and boarding pass, I’d be good. After all, there have to be some upsides to trading in thirty-one degrees and freezing rain for eighty-two degrees and sunblock, right?
The trip to Arizona was uneventful in the sense that everything about flying went exactly like it was supposed to. I got out of Minneapolis on time and got to St. Louis in plenty of time to make my connecting flight since I had a cinema-length layover, during which I enjoyed some iPod and reading time. Listening to the vaguely critical social commentary of Muse turned out to be a fitting soundtrack for spending time in a heavily trafficked terminal. The day was going well.
But just before my flight began to board... they arrived.
I first saw the family in the terminal, a toddler boy and his pseudo-intellectual hipster parents who, judging from the insipid conversation they were broadcasting throughout the gate, were living a life that enabled them to constantly celebrate their excellence for having everything about life figured out by the ripe old age of twenty-seven. I could see these two sitting down in their favorite alternative coffeehouse and discussing the merits of having a baby as an interesting social experiment before committing to the familial path. I wasn’t excited about having a toddler on the plane, and was much less excited when they turned out to occupy the two seats beside me when we boarded. Albert Einstein once said, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.” I think a better way to illustrate the first part of this would be “Fly for three hours sitting beside a mother with a toddler on her lap and it seems like an eternal nightmare from which there is no escape.” It’s not a good thing when the overstimulated cries of a toddler running up and down the aisle of the airplane sound like someone trying to play the trumpet for the very first time. It’s worse when the same kid returns to his mother’s lap in the seat beside you. Her arsenal of organic snacks and hypoallergenic, anti-bacterial, brain-research approved toys did little to calm him. I have to admit I found it somewhat gratifying when she was reduced to letting him play with the empty airline water cup he had already spilled and knocked to the floor. For the record, the flight from St. Louis to Phoenix is almost the exact length of Dream Theater’s three-disc 20th anniversary live album “Score” recorded at Radio City Music Hall; the iPod was both my escape and my connection to the normal world until I rejoined it in Arizona.
And about Arizona. I’m curious: Was there some nationwide contest about fifty years ago to see which city could design the most convoluted traffic system surrounding their airport? Because if there was, I’m certain Phoenix would have at least medaled. The roadways leading from Sky Harbor were something like a surrealist would have imagined while suffering from a high fever. Luckily my cousin Kathy, whom I haven’t seen in at least ten years, had volunteered to rescue me and bring me out to where my parents were staying. On the way she gave me a landmark tour of her stomping grounds and took me to a Mexican restaurant with great food where half of the dining area was an outdoor patio. We had some good time to catch up, which was all the better for me since I was eating out in short sleeves and there were more insects in the air than snowflakes. And there weren’t even that many insects.
Something that struck me about the Phoenix area: Almost everything is colored in a shade of earth tone that would fall somewhere in the range between a severe maroon and a mild tan. I’ve never seen so many variations of brown. I’m pretty sure there are specific shades of brown that must be considered native to Arizona. It was difficult for me to tell if the southwestern themes in so much of the decor throughout Phoenix and its suburbs is legitimate cultural stamping or touristy snowbird labeling. And while I’m on the subject -- tangentially, at least -- exactly how many varieties of cacti are there?
Visiting my parents in their temporary vacation spot was a little discombobulating at first. When you visit someone in a home where you haven’t been before, you need to get your bearings about everything before you feel at ease: You have to learn how light travels in and out of the house throughout the day, you need to adjust to the sounds and smells of the place, you need to become familiar with the local landmarks and street names and adjust to a different rhythm. Your vacation isn’t at some resort where everything has been laid out for you, but you are being inserted into someone else’s life. This point wasn’t made any clearer than by watching my father spend so much time coughing and recliner-napping his way through the remnants of his bout with flu. I didn’t enjoy seeing him weakened from the illness and fighting to recover, but was heartened to see him starting to improve by the time I left.
I still had my mother and my aunt to show me around though, and my father would join us when he felt up to it. We took walks through the neighborhood, which was populated by at least as many dogs as people. We knocked out a few games of Scrabble and spent time sitting in the sun by the orange tree in the backyard. We had lunch at the Paradise Bakery, which is eerily like an parallel universe version of Panera. We went out for dinner one night at Organ Stop Pizza, which is one of the most unique pizza places I’ve been to since they have a guy playing requests on this huge pipe organ up on a stage throughout the evening, giving it all a carnival-like atmosphere. We also visited the Superstition Mountain Museum (is there possibly a cooler name for a mountain, by the way? I think not), which gave some interesting history on the mountain itself and the surrounding area. The guy running a small “general store” gift shop annex in one of the museum’s outer buildings -- he was easily in his sixties -- was talking with two customers who were also seniors. To illustrate a point in a story he was telling them, he nodded in my direction when I walked in and worked the phrase “...and then twenty-five year olds like this guy,” into what he was saying. “Whoa, twenty-five?” I interjected with amusement, but he just kept on talking. I was taken aback by this because (a) it demonstrated just how tragically outmatched he would’ve been working at an amusement park “I’ll Guess Your Age!” booth, and (b) whatever he was saying about twenty-five year olds was being said with derision, and he was lumping me in like I was one of those know-it-all little punks.
On the morning I left I took a shuttle back to Sky Harbor, where I spent three hours at the gate since my flight had been delayed. This gave me some time to notice a few things about airports that I hadn’t caught earlier. First off, the iPhones: In airports they are more ubiquitous than bottled water. I now believe it when financial reports say that millions of them are sold immediately after each time a new model is launched. Secondly, the televisions: They are NEVER turned on at whatever gate I’m departing from but are always one two or three gates down and are usually broadcast CNN. The big story being overanalyzed on all of them during this trip? The selection of Pope Francis I. The big story from the last time I was traveling through an airport? The Casey Anthony verdict. There has to be some irony buried in that comparison. Third, I learned that college students in Arizona don’t stay in Arizona for spring break. I know this because there were several packs of college girls wearing ASU clothing queueing up in the next gate over to depart for Fort Lauderdale. I think fell in love at least seven times.
Once the delay issue was resolved and the flight was underway, it was equally uneventful and considerably quieter than the previous one. I could tell when we nearly home by looking out the airplane window: The snow covering the perfect rural grid of southern Minnesota was only broken up by dark, random patches of interruption from tree lines or residences. The whole of the Earth below look like tiles used by incomprehensibly large beings in some kind of logic puzzle with a scope too vast to perceive all at once.
It was a slight jolt returning from eight-three degrees to thirty-eight degrees, but coming back home felt right. As far as vacations go it was a bit too relaxed to be called an adventure, but I was just fine with relaxed when it came to a break between two trimesters. And at least I managed to get through it all without ever falling victim to anything.
Except for that noisy little kid from St. Louis and his parents....
