I took my wife to the airport yesterday, very early in the morning. (Why does everyone insist on flying at o-dark-thirty?) We live in Spokane, Washington, and she was on her way to Washington, D.C. for some business meetings.All I can say is, I'm glad it was her and not me. I'm not all that crazy about Washington, D.C. myself, and I'm also a chronic fearful flyer. But neither of those, really, is the point.
It's not news to anyone that air travel seems to be getting more unpleasant every year. Yes, 9/11 has had much to do with it -- all that extra security hassle, the possibility that you might be selected out of the line for a special pat-down, and those TSA drones, some of whom are definitely of the "give her an inch and she thinks she's a ruler" school. You know the ones I mean, the ones who obviously get a woodie from barking orders at people.
But that's not the whole story, either. Once upon a time, (it was before my time, that's for sure) air travel was a genteel experience. My late mother was of the generation that saw the transition from rail travel to air travel, and in the 1950s when that transition was going on, people treated getting on an airplane as something of a special occasion -- they even dressed up to fly. Can you imagine such a thing? Look around an airport terminal today. There's a guy checking in what looks like a box of plumber's tools. There's a girl wearing her sweater inside out. There's a guy in flip-flops, with a backpack on his back and a pair of skis under his arm. There are two kids, one with green hair and the other wearing a faded Metallica T-shirt, their iPods clamped to their heads, dead to the world, eyes glazed as they wait in the endless line for check-in.
Yes, the quality of life in the air has definitely declined. You shoehorn yourself into that economy-class seat, your knees against the back of the seat in front of you, just in time for some guy with a carry-on bag the size of a Volkswagen Beetle to shove his belly into your nose as he in turn tries to shoehorn that monster bag into the overhead compartment. Then you have to unfasten your safety belt and squeeze back into the aisle so he can climb over your seat and get to his.
Then you get to spend an hour, or two, or five with your arms practically pinioned to your sides because that's all there's room for. When the plane hits turbulence (which in my experience always happens at the very moment they've put that tray in front of you with the tepid coffee and the peanuts) you don't even have room to panic. The person in the seat behind you has the music on his headphones turned up so loud it sounds like he's running an electric lawn edger. The woman across the aisle from you is travelling with two toddlers engaged in a screaming contest. (They'll scream until final approach, then, when the plane touches down, they'll both be asleep.)
And as if all of this weren't enough, this current travel season we're in the middle of has been making headlines for its bad weather. We all saw the pictures on the news not long ago of Denver airport locked down by a blizzard, people sleeping on the terminal floor using their carry-ons as pillows, stuck in limbo like Tom Hanks in the movie The Terminal somewhere between Los Angeles and Atlanta, where they've already missed Christmas dinner at Aunt Irene's. And the horror stories, the tales of outrage. My favorite was the man who told the TV cameras that one of the airlines had instructed its counter personnel to remove their ID badges so that irate travellers wouldn't know the name of the person they were talking to, and could not, therefore, make specific complaints about rudeness or unhelpfulness. Welcome to the service sector, 21st century style.
For all of these reasons, I was glad to be the one driving the car to the airport. I was glad to be carrying the to-be checked bag into the terminal. I was glad to be standing in line just to keep Valerie company and then bestowing the see-you-in-a-few-days kiss, safe in the knowledge that while she would momentarily be joining the Corps of Flying Sardines, I would be returning to my warm little bed to recapture some of the snooze-time I'd lost by getting up at 4:30 a.m. to see her off.
It had snowed the night before, Interstate 90 was icy and the mercury was hovering around 18 Fahrenheit (minus 8 Celsius) as I drove Valerie to Spokane Airport in the dark. There was a bit of a breeze at the airport as well, which made that 18 degrees feel like, oh, maybe 7? (Minus 14 Celsius?) The airport was remarkably busy for 5 a.m. -- where were all these people going so early on a frozen Thursday morning?
And then came that little touch of the surreal that so often attends airport terminals, especially in the wee hours. I immediately noticed, queued up among all the parka-and-wool-cap wearing winter travelers, yawning, scratching themselves and oh, yes, even at such an hour, blabbering witlessly into their damn cellphones, one guy wearing shorts.
Where do these people come from? Did this guy just get off the interplanetary space bus from the Planet Gelato, where 18 Fahrenheit with a wind-chill of 7 is reason to bust out the Coppertone? Everyone else in this terminal looks like they're getting ready to go skiing; this guy looks like he's about to step off the Pacific Princess in Acapulco and go order a Mai Tai with an umbrella in it.
"What's up with that guy over there?" I said to Valerie. "Is he kidding with those SHORTS?"
"Maybe he's going to Miami, or the Bahamas," my wife offered.
Well, okay, fair enough. People do sometimes dress for their destination, not their point of departure. By the way, I did this once, in reverse and regretted it. I dressed -- and packed -- for my point of departure, which happened to be Cote d'Ivoire, west Africa, and not for my destination, which happened to be Washington, D.C. The month was March. Result: I arrived in D.C. with a suitcase full of shorts and muscle shirts to find that the east coast had just been hit by a blizzard and I was up to my expectations in snow.
Maybe this doofus was bound for tropical climes and figured why bundle up if he'd just have to take the heavy stuff off when he got where he was going?
He and Valerie were in two separate lines, and reached the baggage check-in counter at the same time. Both chose to do the automatic check-in thing, sticking the credit card in the little monitor and having their boarding passes spat at them by a computer. As Valerie was in the process of getting hers, I glanced over at how Mr. Shorts was doing.
Imagine my surprise when I saw what came up on the monitor screen. His name, Seymour K. Doofus, his POD, Spokane, Washington, and then his destination.
Buffalo, N.Y.
As soon as I got Valerie away from the ticket counter and we were walking to the security gate where we would have to part paths, I whispered to her (in a stage-whisper), "The guy in shorts is not going to Miami, he's going to Buffalo! Does he know something about Buffalo the rest of us don't?"
"Maybe Buffalo is having a January heat-wave."
Well, the east coast has seen higher-than-normal temperatures in recent weeks, but my reading and hearing of the news indicated that it had already ended, and more normal winter temperatures had returned. Perhaps it had been 65 degrees in Buffalo the week before, and this guy just hadn't gotten the memo that Old Man Winter had moved back in. Maybe. But in the age of the Internet, not likely.
I kissed Valerie goodbye. See you Monday. Then I walked back to the car.
"How are you today?" the parking attendant asked me when I stopped to pay for parking.
"How am I? I saw a guy in the terminal wearing shorts, and he was going to Buffalo."
Back out on the highway, headed back to Spokane, I said it again, out loud. "There was a guy in the terminal wearing shorts, and he was going to Buffalo."
And I was going back to bed. I think I got the better end of that deal.
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