From the Apollo 15 Lunar Surface Journal, as astronauts Scott and Irwin finish their last extravehicular activity:
CAPCOM Joe Allen: As the space poet Rhysling would say, we're ready for you to "come back again to the homes of men on the cool green hills of Earth."
Mission commander David Scott: Thank you, Joe. We're ready, too, but it's been great. Fabulous place up here.
After the Museum of Flight adventure ends, we're left with a couple hours. We need to find something to do, but we don't have much time before we need to get to the airport. (We're also building in a little extra time because there will be some additional things that need to be done when the car is turned in.)
Eventually, we end up in a shopping center parking lot getting everything arranged, packing our respective bags and boxes. All our tape is used up, so we need to go to the nearby Fred Meyer to get more, as well as to get a bite to tide us over. I make do with a 3 Musketeers bar and a Coke Zero, and pick up a spool of mailing tape. On the way to the airport, we hatch our plan: since it would be an awful hassle to schlep that big heavy box around, my friend will drop me off curbside and leave the boxes with me, and I'll wait for him until he comes back. Fair enough.
So we do the really long drive around to the Departures level at Sea-Tac (they really should consider using that for a racetrack; that's how long and winding it is), he drops me off and gets all the boxes out, and I sit and wait. I'm not alone. There's several yuppie types who have just completed an outdoorsy vacation (skiing or something) and are about to catch a Southwest flight back to the Bay Area. I'm right in the middle of them, in close proximity to everything they're doing, and...well, let's just say they're not the sort of people I run with. The wait's long enough for me to watch plenty of Human Drama play out, and increasingly I find myself wishing my friend would show up. Which, before too terribly long, he does. I grab my stuff, he grabs his, and we head in. We give the bags one last check (I make sure my bag of liquids is easily accessible and that my laptop is ready for removal) and then go up to the counter. And that's where the real fun begins.
My friend tells the counter agent that he has a box that will need to be checked. The man tells him to put his box up on the scale. Now, my friend is traveling on a full-fare first-class ticket, and his understanding is that the weight limit on a checked box is 80 pounds. Guess again, Skipper. The limit is 70 pounds. The box tips the scale at 71.5 pounds. This is not good. My friend tries to work with the agent, but nothing's going to happen. I'm momentarily stunned when my friend turns to me, with defeat in his voice, and basically says he's screwed and doesn't know what to do.
Something in the back of my mind has told me something like this could happen. (Yeah, I over-think things.) I also know that I have a backpack that, though it's already full, can take a little more cargo. I tell my friend to pull a few of the smaller books and I'll ship them back to him. Several times, he asks me if that's a burden. I promise him that it's not. (It isn't, and besides that I really want him bailed out of this little fix. I feel genuinely awful for him.) The agent provides my friend with some scissors to cut the box's tape, my friend fishes out some books, gets the box to an acceptable weight, then uses the remaining tape to seal the box back up. (We give the rest of the tape to the counter agents.) Now all is right with the world. For the first time in a while, my friend seems pretty relieved.
Then it's off to clear security. No matter how upright a citizen you are, you still approach the security checkpoint feeling almost like you're committing some sort of heinous crime by just wanting to fly somewhere. I have my boarding pass and my passport out, ready to go. And I'm amazed, yet again, by what happens sometimes: just by smiling and talking nicely to the gruff TSA agent checking IDs against boarding documents, I get a smile and a kind word in return. (I've been amazed many times by the things that have happened to me when I've given someone a smile.) I get through security okay, collect everything, and get busy stowing my laptop and my liquids and putting my shoes back on. My friend clears security a few moments later, and we claim a place in the big food court atrium. Eventually we grab a table and have a late lunch (or early dinner, depending on how you look at it).
We have about three hours to kill before his flight, and mine leaves a couple hours after that, so we need to find some things to do. So I pull out the computer and we take a look at the pictures we shot earlier in the day at KBFI. A little while later, we troop on down to the Continental gates and sit and talk for a while. My friend disappears for a little while, and I wonder if everything's okay; he returns a little while later with his digital camera, for he'd been taking some pictures. Meanwhile, a Southwest flight has been boarding at a gate across the concourse from us. The very cheerful gate agent has a voice that sounds a little too familiar. I half expect her to start going on about "bein' a maverick" and "goin' rogue." You betcha!
The time we have remaining is spent on an ongoing series of inside jokes and obscure references. It's a yuk-fest. For that, I'm thankful. The last few times I've met up with this friend, it's ended with me bawling when it's been time to say goodbye. Why? Well, the surroundings we meet up in do that to me. But it's also because this friend is very special to me, like he's a cooler, smarter, wiser older brother who knows where the cool stuff is, how to enjoy it, what wine to order with dinner, all that neat stuff that I must have missed on that day in school the other kids learned that stuff. This time, though, it's no tears; only laughs. Maybe it's the chaos that happened on this trip, or maybe it's that Seattle, while great, isn't quite Alaska. No matter. When we wish one another farewell, it's with laughs. So as he leaves to board his flight, I head off up the concourse, not looking back.
I still have a couple hours to kill. Normally, when I'm waiting around at Anchorage, I'll go into one of the little bars in the concourse and nurse a Diet Coke until time to board. This time, though, I want something more, something I can't get back home. So I troop up to a little tavern near the food court and order a plate of onion rings and an Alaskan Amber. Oh, does that hit the spot. Yeah, so the beer provides me with a temporary head rush for a bit. It passes, and I have long enough to get rid of the head rush before the flight. No harm there.
There's a lot of sitting around left to do, and I find an empty gate and hang out in the numerous seats there. I play with the computer for a little bit, and then sit and wait a little more, doing the arithmetic in my head about what time it is back home, and also trying mightily to fight sleep. At one point I hear a whining noise coming towards the gate. It turns out to be the first of two Hawaiian Airlines 767s that's just arrived. I notice the fleet number and realize it's one of the old Delta 767-300s. I'm under the mistaken notion it's the first 767 I flew on, the one that took me to see hubby for the first time when we first met, and I go into some momentary sentimental stuff. (Later, it turns out not to be that one.)
Some time later, it's time to board. It's the 11:45 flight to Houston, and I can't wait to get aboard, get settled in, and catch some sleep. It seems to take forever before I can finally get aboard. I get to my seat, strap in, get my headset and iPod ready, and settle in. There's already a blanket and a pillow at my seat. I end up with a young couple as my seatmates, and they're nice enough. Behind me is an older couple, and the old man loudly clears his throat at regular intervals. I also notice the window shade directly at my seatback slamming shut, too. The young man next to me begins a flight-long series of sniffles, too.
We get through the usual departure stuff (including the videotaped safety briefing, played just a little too loudly, with slightly creepy greeting from Continental CEO Larry Kellner, and set to jazzy music that sounds as if Jeff Richmond had scored an episode of "Will & Grace"). Then, at long last, we go screaming into the air. I'm rewarded with that wonderful climbout angle again; the 757 is such a great airplane.
We finally get the word that it's okay to break out the funny electronic gear. I figure that I'll play a long, essentially white-noise track on my iPod (the KCBS recording of the radio coverage of Mercury-Atlas 6) to blank out the sounds around me. I also decide to put in a set of earplugs as extra insurance; at top volume, I can still hear the audio track. Well, it doesn't quite work that way. I'm too interested and too distracted by the track to rest. Worse, I can still sort of hear what's going on around me. And the young lady in the "C" seat, also trying to sleep, squirms a lot, and when she moves, it shakes all three seats. I also can't get comfortable, either; my head can't find a good place to go. I finally pause the audio track and am rewarded with...oh, about an hour of sleep, I guess.
When I wake up, we're still about an hour and a half away from Houston, and somehow I manage to get through it. I'm glad to get on the ground, and decide that some caffeine and some breakfast is in order. By the time I get off the plane, it's a little after 6 am. And I want some coffee.
I look around, trying to find a decent place open at this hour. I end up at a little bar/pub type joint that offers a few breakfast items. The very friendly young waitress looks like she should be a Wachowski daughter. She quickly makes with the coffee and takes my order for the pancakes. I probably look like hell, but I imagine she's used to bleary-eyed customers. Unfortunately, the tables nearest me are taken by a group of hip European travelers who don't speak English very well, get into a little misunderstanding with the waitress, and then mock her behind her back in their native tongue. I'm just as happy to get settled up and be away from them, and I leave the waitress a healthy tip.
Then it's over to the train for the commuter jet concourse. By this point I'm becoming increasingly aware of how grubby I must be. I really want to take a bath and change into some clean clothes, but that's not an option. More than that, I just want to be home. I still have an hour's wait and a two-hour flight ahead of me, and I really want to clean myself up and take a nice, long sleep in a familiar bed. I look around, trying to find a quiet place to sit for a while with something to drink. That proves to be a challenge; when I think I've found some place quiet and secluded to sit, someone else discovers it (most annoyingly, someone with a loud personal music device who keeps playing the same part of the same song over and over).
Now, keep in mind that I'd had breakfast already. But I found something that grabbed me and would not let me go: Shipley's Donuts. That's right. The B concourse food court at Houston has a real, live, honest-to-goodness doughnut shop. Imagine just about any kind of doughnut possible, and it's there. I knew full well I'd already eaten, but, by gum, there was no way I was passing this up. Seventy-two cents later, I was the proud owner of a Bavarian creme-filled doughnut, going blind with the first bite and savoring every morsel. Wow.
It didn't take me long to regret that. See, I'd had all three little tubs of syrup with the pancakes an hour before. And I'd also had much of a Cherry Coke Zero. In a little bit, all I needed do was think about anything even remotely sugary and my lips would start to vibrate. When the time finally came to get on the little Embraer, I wondered if I was going to jack. Nope, as it turned out, I wouldn't. But I learned my lesson. (Lesson: Next time, just head straight for the B concourse and let Shipley's take your money first.)
The flight home is pleasant. I catch some microsleep, listen to the rest of the MA-6 coverage, finish off the bottle of Coke, finish reading a favorite old book I started re-reading on my last trip to Alaska two years ago, and commit various acts of daydreaming. Soon we have the field in sight, and on final approach we're fighting a wicked crosswind that startles a lady sitting on our row. (I explain to her what's going on and it soothes her a bit.)
We're soon at the gate, and I'm back where the whole adventure started a few days before. I go up to the baggage claim and wait for my box to arrive. And wait. And wait. And then I worry a little. Finally, a lady in a uniform who's yanking some bags from the belt asks me which flight I was on. She asks me if I checked a box as baggage. "Oh! Yours arrived early! It's over by our baggage office." I thank her profusely, make a bee-line for the baggage office, find my box (it's intact! Hooray!), and then wait for the hotel shuttle. Eventually, it arrives. The young lady driving the shuttle bus zips us through the airport traffic, all the while not missing a beat in her cell-phone conversation (during which she is venting about how various colleagues of hers at the hotel are not living up to their end of things).
We get to the hotel, and I claim my stuff from the back of the van. I'd worried about if my car was going to be there, but, sure enough, there she was. Relief. I stow everything, get my car ready, and then head on home. Two hours later, I'm back where I belong, two more states and one more big adventure added to my list. Somehow I stay awake (if just barely) until bedtime, after which I sleep like a log until well into the next morning.
And that, ladies and germs, is my big adventure. There's normal life to get back to, and all its attendant business: office check-ins, doctor check-ups, you name it. But, for once, it was awful nice to get away for a long weekend and explore something new. That's one good thing about life: there's almost always another adventure awaiting, and another dawn to chase.
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