Day One: Shayne and I woke up well rested this morning. We got to sleep at a decent hour and didn’t need to get up too early. Shayne was forced to skip her exercise this morning because she seriously cut her toe on some piece of metal coming off of my box spring. We ran some quick errands; bank, dry cleaner, grocery store, and then we collected Jerry for some breakfast. At ANN SATHER. I built my own omelet, a choice becoming popular for me at locations that don’t have their “Mediterranean Omelet”. It was Jerry’s first time at ANN SATHER. He liked it. After breakfast, we went home to finish packing, make photocopies of our passports, print directions and itinerary. I packed up my camera bag and the messenger, taking more of my sweet time than maybe I should have. Finally we were ready to head out and Shayne, Joe and I piled into Jerry’s Geo Tracker. We stopped at Irving Park and Clark for gas, which was $3.69 for the cheap stuff. I put $25 in the tank, almost filling it. The drive was quick and uneventful. Something Joe would probably ruefully remember judging by the horrendous traffic it looked like he would be facing on the way home. After joe dropped us of with hugs and a “be careful” that I mistook for “be cheerful,” we were cut in the check-in line by a couple of real bitches. Yeah, the sweet-talked the baby in front of me, but I saw through the façade.

I believe that it may be a mistake in the airline industry to begin boarding a plane by inviting passengers with children, or who are in need of special assistance. Especially on a flight from Chicago to Milan, Italy where a quorum of the passengers are elderly. At the moment the flight crew announced that they were boarding families, elderly and cripples, about 70% of the people waiting for the flight lined up. On a Boeing 767, (and without the exact information in front of me), there are just shy of 300 passengers (editor’s note: After checking with the in-flight magazine, it is found that there are actually 214 seats in a Boeing 767). Meaning that approximately 210 of the passengers (editor’s note: more like 130) believe they were a.) families traveling with small children; b.) the elderly (honestly, it was a good number, though); or c.) those in need of special assistance. The effect of this bum rush was that as they began to board for general seating all of the non=-qualifying passengers to be were bottlenecking the entrance, and us legitimate boarders were forced to circumnavigate the mess of “special people.” Maybe rather than leaving it up to the general public who has a legitimate claim to early entry, the crew should do some screening process when they go looking for people and ask them to come board the plane early. To my mind, that should make for less frustration, chaos and confusion. It would, however, require a human element that is not terribly popular in the corporate world.

Here’s a minor thing I’ve always s been amused by on planes. At any point around the time they serve the meals…wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. When they serve the meals on an airplane, generally they bring the cart from the very back to the front, where they start. Then they work their way back to the back where the cart stays. I‘ve only flown maybe on 6 trips, but that was always the case on my flights. I‘ve noticed that there were always be an unfortunate situation where someone goes to the rear bathroom after the cart has been brought to the front, and by virtue of the fact that life is inherently a very funny thing, when these people are attempting to return to their seats, the cart has passed their row and they must wait for dinner to be served to rows 22-41 before they can sit down to their beef meal. That in itself is good. It is things like that that we can remember on a down day to give us a little boost. Because that situation will happen as long as meals are served on airplanes, we can have a good chuckle knowing that somewhere, some dude is staring forlornly at his empty seat, wishing he were on the other side of that cart.

I’ve always loved to travel. I don’t know if I can attribute this love to any one childhood experience…we never took the long road trip vacations cross country when I was coming up. I honestly think it is a mature manifestation of my childhood wanderlust. My brother and I were never satisfied with the four walls of our population 1300 town. As soon as our parents were foolish enough (or wise enough, as I like to reflect on it) to give us bicycles and a measure of trust- with obvious guidelines- we broke for somewhere out there without much care for what it was we would find when and if we got there. So after bicycles, there was this invention called a car. We discovered that combining one of those with a minimum wage paycheck and a day off was for some near-lethal. For others, near-euphoric. We started going to independent record stores we heard of in the surrounding suburbs and the city too. Really, we took any opportunity to be somewhere other than home. Concerts were another good opportunity to go beyond. Milwaukee was almost 2 hours from home, so we’d make a big production of going to shows there. College came along, and it was trips to NIU, Champaign-Urbana, the city and pretty much anywhere within a couple of hours. One stand out milestone for me is when we drove from Chicago to Atlanta to see a band play. We had friends in Atlanta who we met online, and they were having a huge after party for the show. We decided it was worth a couple days and hopped in the car. I would say that after Atlanta, my jones for cross-country travel really kicked in. The road trip was in my blood and I couldn’t get enough.