Book Review: Said Sayrafiezadeh: "Brief Encounters With The Enemy"

Soooooo…...we are taking a brief break from “The Irish Blatherings” for a standard Diner Review, Book Review.  I am reading more books this year in an effort to be a better person.  I mean, you got to try something, right?  Anyway… I really like a good short story.  But frankly, the New Yorker prints a good one every week and a great one about once a month and I cannot keep up with those so it is rare that I buy a collection of short stories.  This one popped up in a nice review in The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/books/review/said-sayrafiezadehs-brief-encounters-with-the-enemy.html?_r=0

Like it or not, the times still has the best consistent book coverage.  Everything Amazon does is by algorithm now and I really like a good book review.  Anyway, I bought it and it sat on my shelf but in my new, reading disciplined mode I finally go to it and I was pleased to do so.  While writing this I am slightly distracted as my Billikens are down by 7 with 8 minutes left against Duquesne.  They keep turning the ball over… now down 9.  But I digress.

This was a really good book.  It is a series of 8 short stories, all from the perspective of 20 something males.  They are all in urban or suburban environments in a country…

Preparing for war,

At War,

Post War.

A country where it is unnaturally cold in the summer and unnaturally hot in the winter and unnaturally hot in the summer.

Where even in the midst of war on the other side of the world… there appear to be no great jobs, even as factories reopen.

A country where everyone “supports our troops” and flies the flag… though no one appears certain about where the battle is or what it is for.

The men are struggling to find their place and they all run into old associates from high school and there is much comparing of notes and taking stock.  There are frustrated relationships and undercurrents of possible violence but… every story is so tightly written that they all seem kind of like page turners with you wondering what is going to happen next.

This guy… this Said Sayrafiezadeh (there is an umlaut in the first name...over the i, I think.  Why would I read a book by this guy?  because he has an unstoppable control of the language and excellent timing and pacing in his stories… which tend be sedentary… but…(hard to explain)...beautiful.  I would like to say the stories are about winners and losers but it is more a series which instead of being about winners and losers, is about people who are barely holding on...and losers.
Spend the money and get out and buy this one.  He teaches in New York and I think he is going to write a lot of good things.  I will go pick up his first book “When Skateboards Will Be Free” and I will report.

Irish Blathering: The Cliffs of Moher

Soooo… while in Galway I headed south to The Cliffs of Moher.  Driving there was an interesting nightmare but that has been previously recounted.  Beautiful countries and picturesque little towns all with one to five pubs.  A frightening drive but a beautiful one but what was I risking my life to see.  I could blather on about this but sometimes brevity and just shutting up is the way to go.  Read this website which tells you more about the cliffs, more eloquently than I ever could.

https://www.cliffsofmoher.ie

When I scrambled up the steep path to the top of the cliffs to get my pics… an apocalyptic storm was rolling in and it was… majestic.  God is Great...all the time.

Irish Blatherings: Driving in Ireland...for the Ancient!

Sooooo…. whenever you travel anywhere there is the question of….how am I going to get around?  There is walking.  A lot of people do that.  There is public transportation (every other civilized place in the world has advanced train systems) or… you can rent a car.  Why rent a car?  Because I am a Becker.  Beckers hate tours, have short attention spans and like to look around, come when they want to come and go when they want to go.  Now my wife, surprisingly backed the idea for me to rent a car saying, “you would not be happy without a car”.

So I got online and found that it was about as easy to rent a car in Dublin as it was in America.  So I landed in Ireland, collected my daughter and headed for the rent a car booth.  The European partner to National Rent A Car.  Perhaps Hertz or Enterprise would have been a better choice.  After declining a manual transmission and more stupidly GPS I ended up with a beat to shit Renault.  It had a 100,000 Kilometers on it and based on my rudimentary understanding of the metric system (remember when we were kids and they told us it was just a matter of time till the US adopted it?  HAH!) I think that means it had 60,000 miles on it.  The guy at the place with the actual car meticulously marked down all of the dings of which there were a lot.  Later I would be grateful that I had not got something gleaming and new.

First problem.  The steering wheel is on the wrong side.  You say “OF COURSE IT IS IDIOT!” But it provides a lot of problems.  Generally it is a problem related to:

1. Being old

2. Being accustomed to certain spatial relationships

3. Being old and deteriorating

4. Not dealing with change

5. Not liking change

6. Hating everything different or strange...pathologically.

So I try and get in the wrong side of the car… where my daughter is already sitting (I will do this approximately 3 more times while she is with me.  I walk around sheepishly and get in and we are off.  The directions are easy, out of the airport and then onto the M1 north to Balbriggan.  It is nerve racking and I run over a couple of curbs on the left side but… we get on the highway.  HEADING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.  I had always wondered how the drunks do this and now I was doing it sober, and jet lagged at 9:00 A.M. in the morning.  But I was handling it.

… heading north on the M-1.  Which lane is the fast lane and which lane is the slow lane… thinking...thinking...getting honked at...THE LEFT LANE IS THE SLOW LANE IDIOT!  So I stay there and as our exit approaches… I start moving over into the fast lane to exit the highway but of course...THE EXITS ARE ON THE LEFT TOO...IDIOT!  They tell me that as I am aging the plasticity of my brain… my ability to grasp and learn new things… diminishes.  It is always nice to be living in a proof of the theory.

So I swerve back to the left lane and make our exit.  Then the real nightmare begins.  4 way stops in Ireland are for sissies.  Instead they have Russian Roulette/Chicken game called “The Roundabout”.  The roundabout is basically just a way to kill foreigners.  My mind was able to contemplate it abstractly… in the same way as I might understand an Escher print.  I am supposed to merge and keep to the...RIGHT OR LEFT… I don’t know and then casually swerve to the left to get out of the penalty loop and proceed on my way.  This requires, since I don’t know my way, some combination of reading signs, making sure I don’t hit any of the other vehicles and listening to my daughter giving directions, saying “no not here!, (when i make the wrong turn) and occasionally hearing her shriek and seeing her curl up on her side of the car as I almost kill us by hitting a car, a sign, a curb or a cow.  Surprisingly this makes me tense and when I am tense...I drive even worse.

We negotiate several of these with a variety of fear and panic… and we finally hit town which is when the fun really starts.  I failed to mention that once you get off the highways (which are lovely) you end up on these scenic, rolling NARROW roads.  For some reason judging the distance between my car and the cars careening at me head on from the right is extremely difficult for me so I keep us far to the left.  We keep going off the soft shoulder because there is not real shoulder.  My daughter dies a little each time I do so but in fairness I am mostly only doing it when a car passes going in the opposite direction.  But we finally hit town where the streets get even narrower… and there are more cars… and stop signs… and...people.  My daughter keeps saying “you're real close to these cars” and doing that annoying flinching thing again. *CLUNK” my mirror clips another car mirror.  I drive on pleased I did not hit a person.  The roads are so narrow most folks have their mirrors bent in so… it wasn’t even my fault… too much… really… but there is likely an Interpol warrant out for me.  

Fortunately the hotel came up quickly after that and we decamped, checked in and… found out where the train station was to ride into Dublin.

***

The car sat… somewhat ambivalent in the hotel parking garage.  It had been difficult for me to negotiate my way into a spot after driving down one of the parking lot circular ramps ON THE WRONG SIDE...until someone coming up the ramp almost hit me.  Best leave driving alone and take the trains.  But the next night we were going to see a concert so I thought that since it would be late, I did not want to walk across downtown Dublin late on a Saturday night and wait for a train.  We could drive!  My daughter got directions while on the hotel WiFi (you see you cannot use your phone for maps in Europe unless you are a TMobile customer) and she saved the screen shots with the directions.  She got two sets, one for a nice gluten free restaurant I had read about and one for the Olympia Theater where we were to see a show.

I made a number of mistakes in not thinking this through:

1. I could have sent the maps to the hotel desk and gotten printed out.

2. I had not counted on the difficulties of traveling in a strange country with difficult to read street signs at night.

3. I did not count on the abject confusion and panic related to driving on the wrong side of the road, not knowing your way IN THE DARK!

I think you can guess that the driving part of the excursion did not go well.  And then, besides it being dark… it started to rain.  We never could find the restaurant.  Laura had directions in miles and I had a car that measured distances in kilometers.  There were perhaps 75 or so close calls before we finally gave up and miraculously found our way back to city center, found a car park (the silly Irish word for a parking lot) and found the theater.  

***

I did the smart thing and had several drinks at the concert because when you are driving home and you don’t know your way, nothing makes it easier than a cocktail or two.  

THE BEAUTIFUL OLYMPIA THEATER!

BRILLIANT!  We left and because we had tried to go the restaurant first we couldn't just backtrack the way we had come, although we tried… and we tried.  Now the Irish people are really nice but I must say as direction givers, late on a rainy night, they suck.  Between me being tired and still jet lagged and having a few cocktails… we were lost.  I clearly missed a turn or three.

Laura, also tired.  When tired we Beckers tend to get very passive aggressive.  That helped too.  I kept driving but had absolutely no idea which way was north which is where I wanted to go.  Epic fail.  Finally at one gas station a cabby gave me some directions to get back to the M-1 by going to the 3rd main intersection about 5 kilometers down the road.  I am absolutely confident that I missed it but from that we were able to find M-20 and follow the signs for Belfast which I knew was north and eventually… we got back to the windy road with the roundabouts but there was no traffic and we were just happy to be at home.

***

The next day I took my daughter to the Guinness Brewery and to Leopardstown Racetrack for a big race and then I took her back to the airport and I headed across ireland to Galway.  It was an easy pleasant trip although I missed my daughters company but it was fun streaming down the wrong side of the highway at 100 km per hour listening to Manchester United play a game v. Fulham F.C.  It was really exciting with Fulham having a 1-0 lead until the last five minutes and Manchester scores two goals and is about to win a much needed game until they get to whatever the injury time or whatever they add on to regulation and Fulham scored to salvage a tie and further damage Manchesters chances of remaining in the Premier League next year.  Heady stuff.

But then I got to Galway.  And it was dark. And I didn't know where I was going.  I was supposed to be staying in The Western Hotel in the City Center so I followed the signs to City Center Galway… and then hit a bunch of one way streets.  They also have a lovely pedestrian mall which i discovered as I almost drove through it.  But after stopping and asking a few folks and driving around the block four or five times I finally made it to my hotel and was able to park and get some food and plan for the coming day of driving the next day.

***

I woke up and had a nice Irish Breakfast and some tea and discussed my agenda with the WHEN YOU THINK “OH...IRELAND...THE ROAD SIGNS WILL BE IN “ENGLISH”

hotel receptionist.  She recommended that I drive north to Cong and see the Abbey and a friend had recommended that so I grabbed a brochure with a typical low quality brochure map in it and I was OFF!  Getting out of town with the traffic was a little bit of a challenge with the requisite amount of fear and confusion but finally I was headed north for Cong in a light rain swerving off the shoulder every time a car was coming the other way.  The Abbey at Cong was stunning.  It had literally existed for a millenium and been ransacked and torn down… before our country was even a consideration.  It is such a humbling thing being in the presence and walking and driving around something truly… ancient.  Because in the States if it is 200 years old we pretend to care but eventually we tear it down to make room for the strip mall.  There was not a strip mall within 50 miles of Cong.  

I drove through the town and then headed north and just drove and drove.  Narrow roads.  Rain and sunshine.  Rolling fields and just awesome, glory of God type beauty.  It was in so many ways and like so many beautiful, perfect, God sent things… humbling.  And with that kind of humbling, if you're lucky… there is also joy… and peace.  And tooling alone through western Ireland in a piece of shit Renault, fearing for my life at every turn… there was a bunch of peace to be had.  Piece and Peace.  Funny.  But I felt blessed and that is just not a feeling which most people get.  Might have been better with my wife, or with my daughter, or with my priest.  But I will never know and never need to because it was excellent with just me, and beautiful Ireland, and God.  Sometimes God just rocks!SERIOUSLY?  WHEN ARE YOU EVER GOING TO SEE ANYTHING LIKE THIS?

I TOOK THIS PICK BECAUSE CORNELIUS MC GRATH RECOMMENDED IT!

The next day, against the advice of the hotel desk lady at the Western Hotel in Galway I drove south to Cliffs of Moher.  She implied that the weather was going to be somewhat “sketchy”.  I felt like she was totally disrespecting me as an American!  Seriously!  What could go wrong on narrow roads with rock walls 18 inches from your car diving 60 or 70 MPH (and God only knows how many KPH) through windy, undulating roads in weather that started at 50 degrees, dropped to 26, and rose back to 53...all in 4 hours of driving?

It was… a glorious nightmare!  I saw all kind of things.  Beautiful blue skies.  Rain.  Snow. Sleet.  Ice.  Beautiful skies.  ICE,  Cars sliding into rock walls.  Busses moving sideways down narrow roads towards me.  Beautiful sunswept rock breathed with the Atlantic crashing against the road I was driving on and soaking my poor, freaked out little car… and it’s driver.  It was an awesome trip.

I headed south from Galway into the County Clare. The County Clare was flooded.  I knew this because it was all over the news.  On my car radio and on the TV and in the papers.  Politicians were being crucified and the suffering was dramatic and the people were outraged and I was driving down into the northern reaches of it.(what was really amazing to me upon returning to the States was that no one here was aware at all of the suffering that was going on in south Ireland and south England.  This huge Katrina like disaster with 100,000 or more households displaced… was not even remarked upon in the states.  It reinforced what a huge, protected silo I live in where if it does not affect my drive to work….fuck it.)  

THIS IS WHAT A CAR LOOKS LIKE WHEN IT HITS ONE OF THESE 1000 YEAR OLD ROCK WALLS…. THE WALL WINS!

But Clare County was flooded and I was driving into the northern reaches of it to see the Cliffs of Moher.  And it was frightening.  60 miles took about two hours and I saw 5 different accidents in snow, rain and ice.  But I lives, driving the wrong way, slowly, but like an American! With only a modicum of fear.  The quickest way there was a windy road that would be beautiful in any case but for me was covered by a fresh snow and it was breathtakingly gorgeous.  The type of beauty which humans are not meant to witness from their awful beaten up Renault but which was right with me every mile… or kilometer… whatever.

The cliffs when I got there, after driving through ten beautiful villages were awesome.  After driving through the apocalypse I arrived during beautiful clear blue skies and 60 mile per hour winds and made my way to the top of the cliffs where I got to watch a maelstrom flow in from the Atlantic until I was admonished by a park worker that I was an “IDJIT” (I believe he meant idiot which sounded correct) as a needle like 60 mph rain poured in on me from the cliffs.  It was painful and...awesome.

THE CLIFFS OF MOHER!

From there and I have to say, the best part of my driving tour, I headed north from the park,staying off the main road and along the coast and saw some of the most beautiful Atlantic, stone beach landscapes that I could have imagined.  Sadly I was too busy attempting to stay alive that I could take no pictures but…. it was awesome.  I  headed back north to Galway along the coast, looking at Galway from across the bay and in the ocean spray and was frightened at the prospect of an additional 40 miles of driving on those unnerving, twisty, slick, stone walled, frightening roads… and i was profoundly grateful that God would allow me the chance to die alone in such a beautiful place.  God is good, all the time.

I RETURNED TO GALWAY IN A RARE, BRIEF, SNOWSTORM IN IT’S PEDESTRIAN MALL

Irish Blatherings: Dooblin!

I AM NOT CERTAIN BUT I BELIEVE LAURE BECKER WAS HAVING A MARGARITA... IN IRELAND!

Soooo...I arrived at the beautiful Dublin airport to meet my daughter.  It had not been a bad plane ride over once we got on a new (unbroken) airplane.  On the trip over I was sitting with a very pleasant guy who lived in Dublin who as he was telling me about (it was 90% unintelligible to me because of his accent and because I am old) Dooblin just kept saying it like that and so… so did I.  I originally was supposed to arrive an hour before my daughter who was meeting me there from Cambridge but with my flight delay I texted her and she said she would find me.  I cleared customs quickly and easily and when I came out, she was not there.  Moments like this are when I realize that my wife does everything and that I am (at best) a parasite that lives on her gifts for organization and planning.  Conversely my daughter is half me.  We were going to meet each other.  How hard could that be, in a foreign airport… where your phones don’t work?  My first temptation was to call my wife… she could sort it out from 5000 miles away...right?  I turned on my phone hoping against hope for free WiFi and VIOLA!  I texted her.  She was in the wrong terminal at arrivals.  She found me in 5 minutes.

We went to get our rent a car and ended up with a slightly used Renault.  I had the sense to get an automatic transmission figuring driving on the wrong side of the road would be challenge enough (which, by the way I was correct about).  My daughter had been responsible for making our accommodations (when it was clear i would not be) and she sensibly found us a room for about 100 bucks a night which I didn't think was too bad.  What she had not realized was that it was as far from Dublin proper as say… Chesterfield is to downtown St. Louis.  Oh well.  We were staying in a place called Balbriggan which I quickly stopped trying to say, instead referring to it as Bilbobaggins.  It was 20 minutes from the airport and I will once again defer to another time to describe driving there which for my jet lagged ass could best be described as…”horrific” and for my poor daughter…”more so”.

We finally screamed in Balbriggan with my mirror clipping the mirror of a parked car.  I was of course pleased that the thump was not me hitting a warm body.  We swung into the garage attached to the hotel and garages are a challenge just like the road because you must… keep to the left.  But we parked and found our way into the hotel which was pleasant.  Were able to check in quickly and I was able to grab an Irish Times and we retired to a reasonably comfortable adequately priced room.  It would be a fine base of operations.  We discussed the options for getting to Dublin and we were assured the train station was a 5 minute walk and so… we were off!

BILBRAGGIN BEACH

Walking to the train station we purchased tickets round trip without incident.  One of the interesting things about Ireland is that unlike England they have adopted the Euro.  I had the foresight before I left to go to US Bank in Clayton and get a couple of hundred dollars of the currency which is always worth more than a $1.50 but less than $2.00 in my limited experience.  You can use most ATM cards to get dollars but there are fees involved and there is always something to be said for landing with walking around money.  The train station in Bilbraggin is on high ground looking down on a huge beach which is kind of in a bay which leads to a little channel.  Tide was out and there were a bunch of boats just sitting on the ground in the dry channel.  In Europe, the trains run on time and ours showed up pretty quickly and we hopped on and headed south.  The train tracks had a reasonable amount of time on the coast where I guess you overlook the “Sea of Man” which in retrospect seems rather pretentious or perhaps even ominous.  In any case, a lovely train ride, 20-30 minutes landed us in Town Center.  Both cities I was in identified the downtown area as “Town Center” and signs would direct you there which was helpful in each case.  Laura had found us a map and since our phones didn't work she was our navigator.

I had forwarded to her the name of a well reviewed Celiac Friendly restaurant and we made towards to for a late lunch.  The Millstone.  It was excellent and I ate some delicious fish thing and then had piece of beef which was represented to me as a Hereford steak.  Hereford Beef is very big and well advertised in Ireland but generally I would say their meat sucks.  I might hate the idea of factory farming, antibiotics, Monsanto,  and what not but we have unbelievable beef in our supermarkets and restaurants, well marbled, properly fatted and delicious.  I did not find the same to be true in Ireland.

Then we walked.  What a nice, beautiful, friendly, attractive interesting town.  Once again speaking some semblance of English is awesome and we were able to ask stupid questions and get patient answers.  Even though the iPhones did not work we could use free WiFi in abundance to look up and find our way to our next stop.  Over the two days we visited a lot of places.

From my perspective they had great shopping. For me that generally means Cigar stores ( for Cubans) and cheese mongers (for all varieties of cheese).  We did not want to do too much on the first day so we just bummed around.  We walked by the Olympia Theater where I was unable to get tickets for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros on line.  We walked in and the nice lady behind the window said “we just had a cancellation” and were able to grab two tickets.  Better to be lucky than smart.

We made our way across town to the Jameson Distillery.  It is a lovely, touristy place.  Being tourists we looked in the gift shop and then we took the tour.  Now I don’t know what experience you have with distilleries but as a veteran of the bourbon trail and having spent a few weekends in Lexington and Frankfort…. distilleries are all pretty much the same and even though there is some slightly more than rudimentary physics involved all distilled beverages are made in pretty much the same way.  Jamieson, we were quickly, and then repetitively told, was “triple distilled”.  Every distillery has a wistful story about the product that is lost through evaporation when manufacturing their product and here is was “The Angels Portion”.  In Kentucky that share belonged to the devil.  We did a tasting which was a nice affair and did nothing to particularly enhance my love of Irish Whiskey.  I did learn one thing and that is that Irish Whiskey and certainly Jamiesons the grain is heated with a smokeless source, formerly anthracite and now natural gas.  Scotch, tastes like smoky scotch because they roast the grain with peat and that produces a lot of smoke.  It was a fine way to kill and hour or so.

We called it a day and headed back ready for a full day the next day and we got up and had an Irish Breakfast (sausage, eggs, pudding, tea) at our hotel and headed back to town.  Now I always like to look in bookstores wherever I go and so with the help of Google I had located a few of them.  I believe that sooner or later they will all cease to exist so… I go and pay homage. Chapters bookstore did not disappoint.  I like to collect foreign first editions of my favorite authors but alas, they were not in the offing here either in their new or used section.  Still, it was a nice massive place with a great feel and my daughter milled around patiently more or less.
A BAR IN TEMPLE BAR

We got lost and turned around more than once but found a gluten free pizza place for lunch that was nice and then found a beer (also gluten free) for me in the Temple Bar area.  Temple Bar is confusing because it is an area, a hotel, a bar, a hostel and so a lot of things are in “Temple Bar”.  So we drank a little and I got speak at length to a bartendress who essentially convinced me that I needed to spend the second half of my trip in Galway.

That night we went to the Olympia see the concert.  Despite it starting late due to a power outage it was a great show.  The Olympia is just a gorgeous two balconied, intimate venue and it was a great end to the night… other than the fact that we got badly lost driving back to Balbriggan.

The next day we made the obligatory pilgrimage to Guinness.  Now I cannot drink beer anymore and I still have a loyalty to St. Louis beers from when Anheuser Busch was still “our” beer and more recently to Schlafly which is now “our” beer.  But everyone said we had to go, if nothing else for the view of Ireland from the 7 story tower shaped like…*deep annoyed sigh* a pint glass.  We looked at the gift shop, heard the beginnings of the self guided tour and blew through 7 floors in about 20 minutes.  The Anheuser Busch tour puts it to shame and even the Samuel Adams tour in Boston was far superior.  Beer, like spirits is pretty much always made in the same way but like the “triple distilled” Jamiesons and the “beechwood aged” Budweiser, Guinness thing is that their barley is roasted. *yawn*.  The tasting room up top though was awesome and the view spectacular.  I sipped my water and gave my daughter my beer ticket so she could have two.  I did have the blessing of watching an experienced server put their logo in the froth on top of a glass.  You should go and skip the tour.  Just take the elevator straight to the top.  It is a no brainer.FROM THE GUINNESS TOWER
THIS IS THE PATHETIC GUINNESS VERSION OF A CLYDESDALE!
We visited St. Patricks Cathedral and the Irish Gallery and the Irish Library.  I could wax poetic but really we blew threw them as only Beckers can without paying a lot of attention but just trying to take it all in and check it off our list.  That is a stupid way to visit such brilliant, ancient historical places but, we are what we are and in the end I was in Dublin, hanging out with my daughter and didn’t really give a shit about where I was at.  It could've been Gary, but I was happy it was Dooblin
ST. PATRICKS CATHEDRAL

Irish Blatherings Part Two: International Air Travel For Grumpy Old People

Soooo...flying.

I have come to hate it.  With a passion.  I do not know when it happened.  There was a magical time about 15 years ago when I was flying all over the country taking depositions.  I was a TWA preferred traveler and I would walk up and they would take my ticket and light up thanking MR BECKER for traveling with them and asking if they could please bump me up to first class because they had seats available.

Only later did we figure out that this was a formula for a failing airline.

After that was 9/11. You could not longer walk to the gate unmolested and instead had to go through a security regime that was constantly changing, demanded long lines of people and succeeded in dehumanizing us...just a little more.

After that we lost being a hub because American bought TWA, lied to us (not that we could have done anything about it and told us they would keep St. Louis a hub, and promptly shut us down.  Looking back it was clearly the blow that moved us solidly out of the first tier American cities.  In my life we could always kid ourselves and say that although we were no New York, L.A. or even Chicago.  We were right there with the rest.  No more.  Arguably Austin Texas and Charlotte and Phoenix and Minneapolis are all more relevant than us.  We are the new Kansas City.  Oh the humanity!

I needed to get to Ireland to visit with my lovely daughter.  We were planning to spend the weekend in Dublin.  My wife used frequent flyer miles (these are relics from our American Airlines Master Card) and are at this point ONLY valid for international flying since the only sensible way to fly in or out of the Lou is on Southwest.  I knew I was flying internationally so I arrived an hour and a half ahead of flight time being dropped off by a co-worker.  I went to the American Airlines portion of the airport.  There was one huge line but people were going to kiosks and I followed suit, still waiting in line.  Using the counter intuitive machine it recognized me and I scanned my passport and gave them itinerary and then was told I needed to see a gate agent.

That line had 40 people in it and was not moving.  The employees helping at the machines spoke very little English (how does that happen?) One of them suggested I was rejected because I did not have a Visa for Ireland?  This caused greater panic, along with the line not moving.  My 40 pound bag was being kicked along and I looked at my tickets… which were US AIR tickets.  Evidently they are merging with American Airlines.  That line was very short and I am happy to announce that I shortly had two boarding passes and was headed for the security line.

The security line is so many bad things.  I tend to obsess about things I cannot change because I am of course, an idiot.  I do not know why the security line fills me with anxiety.  I am not (to the best of my knowledge) a drug mule.  I have not (no matter what my former partners might allege regarding an odd trip to Turkey) taken briefcases full of cash onto a plane.  Why am I so full of anxiety?  I think it is just the mere submission to authority.  Inflexible, all powerful authority.  I am 53!  I have a job.  I have raised children!  But I have to line up with humanity and treated like a suspected criminal, every time I fly.  All to “keep us safe”.  Granted, the terror instance of 9/11 would have been thwarted by the locked cockpits now mandated but we have to be criminalized and marginalized to “keep us safe”.  So I line up and it is always a long line.

You enter.  You read about the ban on liquids and sometimes have pictures of the proper size bag.  Often they have a nice display of liquids seized like heads on a set of poles as an example to the bad folks who might consider such a crime.  You wade forward watching the actual security lines ahead because this is just a line to wait your turn, so you can go get into another line.  When you reach the end of the first line you show your ID and boarding pass.  I have my Passport out.  It is a nice picture, at least 10 years old of me in a suit, considerably heavier than I am now and more substantial.  I am dressed in chili pepper chef pants which look like PJ’s because I intend to sleep on the transatlantic flight.  He takes a really long time to look at me, look at the picture, comment on how I am dressed and move me along.  Sometime they scrutinize my license.  Sometimes they make marks on your boarding pass which is...ominous.  But I pass.

You then have the dilemma of which machine to cue in front of.  You look for families to avoid and people in wheelchairs.  You think you're smart but you are not.  There is no rhyme or reason to how quickly the lines move and TSA sees me, recognizes my anxiety and everyone in the line I have chosen is either a suspected terrorist, an idiot who has never flown before, or...just an idiot,  There are things we all should know by now:

1.    Laptops flat down in the bus tub

2.    Shoes off and in the bus tub

3.    Jacket off and in the bus tub.

4.    All metal out of your pockets (yes your change too!  That has some metal in it

too! IDIOTS!)

5.    Belt off and in tray

But the people in front of you always act baffled by the whole procedure.  I mean, I only fly a couple times a year but the itinerary really has not changed for a while.  They inevitably do not have their shoes off.  Are still wearing their belt, try to go through in their jacket, forget to remove their laptop from the bag...or ALL OF THE ABOVE!  I am grateful to not have a gun.  When it is my turn I walk up, smile and now walk into sometime type of tube which allows them to see all of me.  I spend a moment thinking about how sad it must be for someone to have to be seeing all of me.  I stand there the yellow feet are placed.  I hold my hands over my hand like a professional.  I walk through, expecting to be detained for additional searching.  Typically this happens because I did not sterilize my bag prior to the trip and remove things like… wine bottle openers.  Why are wine bottle openers in my laptop bag?  Why not?

Once through security I get to dress myself again with the other prisoners… travelers...whatever.  Now hopefully I have already eaten.  For some reason almost every airport but certainly Lambert has made an affirmative decision that once you are through that gate, the only thing you are entitled to is expensive prison food.  It is all bad.  Do they even have Chili's outside of airports?  I hope not.  Awful little sandwiches in plastic clamshells with brown lettuce on soggy bread.  Starbucks is obligatory for 3 dollar iced tea.  If you are gluten intolerant there is literally nothing to eat but the choices are so poor I have become grateful for this.

You go to the bathroom because you think it is intelligent to go before you get on the plane.  Your bowels after all, are not what they once were.  You walk into a crowded area where men wrestle with pull on bags which they to watch while they pee, and they pee while wearing their carryon bag over their shoulder.  Urine is everywhere.  The only bigger mistake is to go into the stall which is cleaned weekly.

Then off to your gate.  You are now totally at their mercy and this is where the arbitrary decision is made to delay and/or cancel your flight.  I used to think they only did this for me but I have compared notes and it seems to happen to almost everyone.  Because the airlines have gotten so much better at math they pack the flights and the flights that are not packed tend to get canceled.  So you move to another gate and wait.  Because you are in an airport there is no place to lay down.  This is of course to discourage the homeless people who in the past might have bought airline tickets, pushed their grocery carts through security and then hung out in the airport panhandling for a few weeks.  Seriously, why do their have to be armrests between every chair on a bench of chairs.  Additionally, why are their no outlets when everyone is traveling with a laptop and a smart phone? Why indeed?  I blame Obama.

Then they start to board.  The Southwest Airline cattle call has become my preferred way to board.  If you call 24 hours before you can almost always get into the B Boarding group and have a good shot at missing the middle seat.  Other “legacy” airlines insist on the boarding zones.  These are done on a nonsensical basis which guarantees the longest possible boarding but since you have a seat guaranteed who cares… unless you are one of the assholes who “doesn't check bags” because they “don’t trust the airline”.  You trust them to maintain a fly a plane so you will not be killed.  You don’t trust them with your bag.  Genius.  These people typically have their over large wheeled bag, another carryon bag AND their laptop bag.  SONS OF BITCHES I HOPE YOU ALL ROT IN HELL!  So these people care about when they board because it is imperative to hog up all overhead space and delay the flight as much as possible.  It is like they do it strategically.

I am only flying from St. Louis to Philly this flight and am grateful for the window.  I read the Wall Street Journal.  We take off and we land and I have an hour to kill at airport.  I find a bad Mexican Burrito  bowl to eat.  I wait… we board.  I call my wife.  It takes a long time.  We taxi out to take off… we wait...the pilot announces that something is not right.  We head back to a different gate.  They say we need a new plane.  Comforting that they figure this out right before we take off.  They say half an hour.  Instead it is an hour and a half and we finally take off for Dooblin.  I say Dooblin because now I am sitting next to a gen-u-wine Irishman.  Been in the US for a year.  Time to go home.  His speech is almost unintelligible.  Still, very pleasant.  I read.  They serve us a meal that is purported to be chicken.  I know it is tainted with gluten but I eat anyway.  It is worse than terrible.  Chicken is a sauce in a styro-foam dish with broccoli.  Warm iceberg head lettuce salad.  Brownie I know I cannot eat.  Biscuit I know I cannot eat.  I drink water.  I sleep uncomfortably in my chili pepper pants.  It is only a 5 ½ hour flight.  I probably do not actually sleep.  The seat is narrow.  The cushion is hard, the pillow is tiny and styro-foam and keeps slipping through the crack between the fuselage and the seat.  But, it is better than full wakefulness.  I know I am being poisoned by the recycled air.  I am dying.  I will not be missed.

Surprisingly the sun is coming up over the horizon.  We have of course traveled north in ways that make no sense to me.  The sun is very bright over the clouds.  I pull the shade.  Eventually we land.  I exchange pleasantries with my Irish companion.  I realize I have not made plans as exactly where I was meeting up with my daughter.  Somehow even though the both of us knew it was unlikely our phones would work we just said we would meet up.  Just meet up at a strange airport neither of us had ever been to.

I get through customs easily.  No daughter.  I panic.  I think I am going to have to call home and admit to my wife again how stupid I am.  I don’t know how to call home.  I turn on my iPhone and miraculously enough they have free WIFi at the airport.  Take THAT Lambert.  My daughter is in the wrong terminal.  We meet and get the rent a car. I lived through flying ¼ of the way around the world.  I will live to fight again.

PS  Wait till you get to hear me whine about the trip home!