You Can't Make Mistakes.

Nightmare night

Since you last heard from me, I have been lost in the bellies of various airplanes and then was delivered into the hungry maw of homeland security.extra It’s been real, and it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun.

Our flight out of Heathrow was delayed, which I somehow knew instinctively. Something always has to go wrong at Heathrow. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be Heathrow. What I wasn’t banking on, though, was “scheduled maintenance” which would delay us for 3 and a half hours.

Now, I would think that if you were going to schedule maintenance on a plane, you would schedule it for a time when said plane wasn’t about to taxi. This is not how it is done, however. Once we all boarded the flight, it was really quite pleasant. There was really no one on the plane: it was mostly empty, which meant that each passenger got at least two seats and loads of leg-room. Sweet. The crew was funny too. They didn’t give a shit since there were so few of us, so it was very laid back. I got some much needed sleep finally.

When we arrived at Dulles, however, it was a different story entirely.

We were first ushered onto the weird Dulles airport shuttle thing. It’s like a really uncomfortable waiting room, with tightly packed seats, except that the whole thing moves and changes levels depending on where it is and where it needs to go. It is a creepy prelude to the nightmare that Homeland Security/Customs and Border Patrol will then inflict.

You can imagine that I was really looking forward to the body cavity searches that I would be receiving, having just lived in North Africa for 8 months. I have to say, they took it easy on me. I think that the guy who questioned me was a rookie though, he didn’t really know what to ask and just seemed kind of nervous.

I did get extra-special service though—not the ultra-special, wait in a room for hours and hours and then be body-cavity searched version though. They just wrote in huge letters all over my form and then sent me off to a special line with all of the Latinos, Arabs, and anyone else who was brown. I was the only white guy. It was nice. Made me feel at home again, like in Cairo.

So I get to the front of the line finally and the guy that got stuck with me was alright. He was a little green, but friendly—and thorough. He aksed me question after question about my program, my teachers, how I met my tutors. My favorite was when he caught a glance of the load of Quranic studies books and asked me if any of my studies were of a religious. He was, of course, hoping that I would slip up and admit to having been drafted into the ranks of some extremist group.

I haven’t, by the way.

I said “Yes, I’m a religionist by training, so I study the religious texts as well.”

Then finally, after having decided that I was not going to be a threat to our great nation. I was allowed through, back onto American soil.

Thankfully it was really late, so my plans were shot, and I decided to just wait for my flight to come up in wee hours—now swiftly approaching.

I tried to find someone to take my bags off me again, but no one was at any of the desks for Northwest Airlines, so I had to schlep around the airport with 60 kg of luggage, desperate for a coffee.

I thought that was bad, until the time came when I could check in for the connecting flight to Detroit and woman decided to charge me for my bags. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Apparently,even though I had just come 10,000 miles with these heavy bags, now I had to pay $50 to get them another 500 miles home. She said she couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t been charged in the first place as she had never heard of an airline with a 30 kg weight limit before (both Virgin and British Airways have a 30 kg weight limit, FYI). Bastards. It’s just an example of a sinking American carrier scheme to get a few more nickels and dimes.

It’s amazing how I didn’t have any troubles with airline employees until I landed in the United States. Surprise, surprise.

But I’m better now, I just found Vitamin Water in the airport while waiting for the flight. It went well with the rest of my Xanax. I’ll have a nice relaxing nap on the plane.

1 down, 2 to go

I am sitting here at London Heathrow waiting for my flight back to the States. There is no free internet in airports anymore, and since I figured that it would be nice to have access while I was in the airports today, I purchased some time on some hotspot service that will work Stateside as well.

And so, we have our first ever blog post from the airport. Nice.

Cairo was great this morning. It was nice to drive through the city just after dawn. There was no traffic and the city is really pretty at that time in the morning. I was also in a pretty decent mood because, for the first time in my life, I packed several days in advance—rather than several hours. That was a great idea. Usually I wait until about five minutes before I am supposed to leave to panic and jam stuff into cases. I have loads of books, though, that I am returning to the States with and I wanted to ensure in advance that they would all fit. They did, perfectly. I had two bags that were exactly the max weight limit. Sweet.

The flight this morning was alright. I got some sleep: a blessing since I didn’t sleep at all last night because I had to leave so early.

I had the misfortune of being seated in front of the two loudest and most boring wankers on the plane, though. They were a young Brit and a middle-aged American attempting to trump each other’s traveling stories. Boring. They were both the types who have sort-of been everywhere, but they have never drank local water anywhere. These are people who refuse to use squat toilets—unless there isn’t another one for a 100 miles; never eat vegetables or fruit—because they may have been washed in local water; make even their tea and coffee with bottled water—idiots; and generally follow all of the information they find in guide-books as gospel. I call them: misguided tourists, on account of the fact that they are perfect fodder for (mis)guided tour companies.

Oh yah, and the American was a proper racist, which is always nice. There was an Egyptian woman sitting next to who displayed the same wincing patterns as I did when this dude excreted such gems as: “Well, Arabs are generally easily excitable, sort of infantile, really” and “The best experience I had in London was riding the regular train early in the morning and seeing all of the street kids. It gave me a real sense of London and the culture.” I’m sure it did, buddy.

Thankfully after about an hour of saying these loud things for an hour or two, they both shut their mouths and slept, until the end, when it was right back into the swing. Unpleasant bastards. Thankfully they exist all over the world. I just don’t like being captive at 10,000m with them.

I was a little sad leaving Cairo this morning. It’s dirty, polluted, crazed, busy, sometimes scary—but fun. Everyone talks to everyone as well. I don’t get that at home so much. It was weird leaving the flat as well. It is like I am just going to be back there next week, a temporary thing. Which, really, is the case, since we are going back in the fall. It is starting to feel homey.

I woke up the other night from a nightmare that this has all be a weird dream. I was panicked to realize—in the dream—that I had fallen asleep while taxiing down the runway in Washington, DC and it was still last September. I am not sure it the panic came more from realizing that I had to do all of this over again and not wanting to, or that it would have meant that I wouldn’t be able to parse what was real and what was not about my experiences.

Thankfully, I then realized that I was dreaming, and woke myself up. Still, though, scary.

So, now here I am. Not a dream-me, not a hologram—at least I don’t think so: the jury is out on this theory still—real-John, John of the real-world, sitting in an airport, blogging.

And now real-John is a bit hungry, and would perhaps like a beer with his lunch. Ciao for now. See you tonight, America.

[Update: I just finished a vegetarian English breakfast—complete with FAKEN—and a Guinness. I have consumed neither meat-replacement technologies or Guinness for nearly 9 months. They tasted like ambrosia.]

Not like you might think

I used to get nervous getting on planes.

I don’t really anymore. Years of conditioning myself to know how to feel on a plane by taking a pill or two and a pre-flight beer took care of that. I no longer fear the idea that the giant, heavy thing that I just sat down will force itself into the air and then through the skill of a pilot, a little luck, and whatever other unseen forces, land safely on the ground safely several hours later.

What I fear now about air-travel is threefold: delays, other passengers freaking out, lost luggage—in that order. I suppose that this is not unreasonable. I have been subject to all three in the past, though thankfully not all at once. My luggage was lost coming to Egypt once. I have been so delayed in the past that I have missed flights or had to run through the airport like a madman.

Don’t even get me started on other passengers. Top three worst:

1. Awful woman who refused to put her seat up on landing because the intercom had gone out and no one asked her personally. How could she have known otherwise?
2. Toy Daschund/Boxer stowed under the seat two rows ahead of me. His owner kept taking him out of the carrier so that he wouldn’t be scared. Seriously.
3. Little girl who screamed every minute or so sitting on her mother’s lap next to me. She would do this and then laugh riotously while her mother smiled sheepishly at me like it made a difference. I got her back by sitting there reading Arabic. It made her really nervous, especially when the—oddly—Egyptian flight attendant asked me about it and we had a conversation in Arabic. Ha friggin’ ha, lady.

Now the only variables which have matching values in these three different scenarios—aside from the obvious: on a plane, in a seat, eating peanut-replacement-salty-snacks because everyone has an allergy to peanuts now—is that these were all American domestic flights. And, all of the above-mentioned individuals, as well as their pets and children, were Americans. Hmmm?

These are all average, normal experiences.

Right before I am about to cross the Atlantic, for whatever reason, it seems like something weird, or awful happens right beforehand. In this case, it was the disastrous opening of the Heathrow Terminal 5. Who knew that it could have gone so wrong?

Luckily, I have a stopover at Heathrow this week on my way to DC. Superb. If, I’m really lucky, they will let me check one of my pieces of hand luggage at the gate, and then lose that as well. Then, they can ship all of it to Milan, and I will never see it again.

Maybe I should just take a backpack.

Anyway, these are just pre-travel jitters. They are easier to handle than the other kind. They all have to do with people, and can be rationalized. Fear of planes and flying, on the other hand, are more difficult to rationalize. I will take this type, any day.

I’ll still take a couple of Xanax, though.