Airplane Mode
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disclaimer: I wrote this blog on Friday, during my last flight, but have not had consistent wifi for a few days. So, here it is, late but ready for you!
I’m floating miles above the ground. From up here, surrounded by the shifting blue hues of the sky, I can see layers of clouds drift far below and above our plane, leaving space for empty sky to stretch between the layers. The ground, riddled with the natural creases of mountains and hills, lakes and rivers, and plots of fields, looks the way a Settlers of Catan board does, though this ground is crisscrossed by a long strip of highway and the winding pattern of country roads.
I’m somewhere between endless Texas and wild New Mexico.
Getting from Point A (Marseille airport) to Point B (Alburquerque airport) has taken an extra ten hours or so, due to a cancelled flight. So from Thursday morning to Friday morning, my life has been stuck on Airplane mode.
During the flight from Marseille to Heathrow, London, I talked to a French man who designs helicopters for a living. We compared notes on Marseille. He told me about his extensive travels through Asia and Europe, and I told him about Peru, one of the places on his travel to-do list.
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My brain was more stuck in France than I thought it would be. I didn’t realize this until I stood in the security line at London. “Bonjour” kept automatically jumping out of my mouth when I walked up to the airport workers. I had to keep switching my “merci” to “thank you!”
During the flight itself, all 9 hours of it, about 90% of the passengers (including yours truly) picked out movie after movie from the surprisingly diverse and updated in-flight selection. Around 1 am for my still-in-France brain, the flight attendants came down the aisles with small tubs of rich chocolate icecream. Best midnight treat to have while 35,000 feet in the air.
By tuning into classical piano, sliding as far down in my seat as I could, and stretching my legs completely under the chair in front of me, I managed to sleep for an hour or two. An accomplishment, really.
After we landed, I walked into the Dallas Ft Worth airport, surrounded by drowsy fellow passengers who were still wrapped in the soft gray airplane blankets.
I love the DFW airport skylink (a.k.a. sky tram) which wraps completely around all the terminals. I rode it for 20 minutes trying to reach my terminal. But I didn’t mind, because I no longer had any concept of what time it was. Rain slid down the tram windows, blurring the lights outside that illuminated the wet, waiting planes.
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Once I tracked down the flight schedule screens, I saw a blinking red “cancelled” next to my flight number. I checked the number three times and kept rereading the “cancelled” as if it might flicker back to “on time” if I stared at it long enough.
No such luck.
So I traded in $3 for a waterbottle, and stood in the American airlines customer service line for the next 3 hours. You know it’s a long line when they start handing out free drinks and chips. I listened to music and read, waiting my turn to talk to the unfortunate customer service agents.
All the airport employees who I met were very friendly and patient, considering that their job description is to deal all day and night with disgruntled and exhausted passengers. I’ve learned that if you take the time to look someone in the eyes and smile, they’ll almost always smile back.
After a five minute talk with an agent, I walked away with a new ticket in my pocket and a $12 food voucher (which is double what my college student budget usually lets me spend on a meal).
I was so glad that I’d been stranded at this airport, because our family friends, the Jordons, live only 20 minutes away. Less than half an hour after my flight had been rebooked for the next morning, their blue chevi pulled up outside the airport. In the words of the American airlines agent I talked to, “It’s a good thing to have friends in town.”
Although completely unplanned, I was glad to see the Jordons and spend a few short hours with them. When people ask me where home is, I provide a variety of answers, usually along the lines of “Peru/Florida/New Mexico.” But in reality, I feel at “home” in a number of places around the world.
Ever since I was a kid, I’ve felt at home with the Jordons. For years, every time we were in the United States, my family found some reason to intrude on the Jordons’ hospitality.
So when I walked through their back door, my heart felt immediately at home. I remembered the exact layout of their house, the pictures on the fridge and wall, the decorations. I looked around the living room and felt the deep comfort of having layers of memories rooting me to one place.
That night, after a quick and much needed shower, I walked over to the bed, and realized I didn’t have my phone. I searched through the room three times (did I mention my brain had gone MIA a few hours before?) My thoughts were fuzzy, but I used the light of my laptop and tiptoed around the living room and kitchen, trying to track down my phone. I came to the pathetic conclusion that I must have left it in the truck.
Which is not a big deal, except I knew that Uncle Keith would leave for work early in the morning, a few hours before we did, and there was every possibility that he would take the truck (and my phone) with him to work.
I tried to sleep, hoping that I’d wake up before he left. I shouldn’t have worried since my brain turned back on by 2:30 a.m. Around 4 a.m., I stole one of the books from my room and curled up on the couch in the living room. With a fuzzy blue blanket tucked around me, I read about the history of Arabs for the next hour.
When Uncle Keith did come out, having no clue that I was there, I whisper-yelled, “Hey! Uh, it’s Janise. I was stranded at the airport so Aunt Suzy rescued me.” This was a surprise, because obviously he was not expecting a random girl to be sitting in his living room at 5 a.m. Sure enough though, my phone was innocently chillin’ on the backseat of his truck.
A few hours later, after talking over cups of hot tea, Aunt Suzy and Ryleigh drove me back to the airport for my 9:10 flight to ABQ.
That morning, I felt joyful, knowing that in only a few hours I’d no longer be thriving on “airplane mode.” I went to the airport Chick-fil-a to use my voucher for breakfast. At the counter, I asked, “Could I have the Egg White Grill menu?”
The guy behind the counter burst out laughing. “The menu? You want the menu?” He kept laughing and said, “That’s so cute! No one has said that before.”
I glanced back up at the menu options. “Oh, I mean, can I have the meal?”
He was still grinning at me as I finished my order. I asked how his day was going and he said, “Well, it just got a lot better with your menu comment.”
I laughed. “Actually, I have a little bit of an excuse, I just flew in from France and that’s what we call it there.”
He told me how he’d always wanted to go to Europe, especially Italy, which is high on my travel to-do list. I would love to roadtrip Italy and see more of the countryside and small towns.
But for now, I’m going to enjoy this time I get to spend in beautiful New Mexico. I may no longer be in picturesque France, but every day will still be an adventure…
…even when I’m not on airplane mode.
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