Flying Out

Listen, I am a life-long believer in the Location Cure. Get out of town. Go see or stand in some place your eyes haven’t seen before, or haven’t seen in a long time. I guarantee you that, for a minimum of ten seconds, everything you’re running from will be gone. When you travel, projects, people, enduring circumstantial pain, all of that stays on the platform and you, free from hateful burdens, get to be somewhere, anywhere, else. I deeply believe this to be true. 

Now, all those things you left behind don’t go away entirely. Some find a way to follow you into the next big city, or down the highway, or into the next state, or across an ocean. Taxes, usually. They follow you everywhere. And your anger and your hate and your frustrations. Those are inside you and so you never really leave them until you deal with them. They're just easier to ignore when you’re in a new postal code. But given the enduring nature of the things that grieve our hearts, the Location Cure provides you a necessary, invigorating, momentary reprieve. 

But what do you do when you’re not in need of a cure? Because it’s happened, friends. I have arrived at the moment when I am bored at an airport. The ride to airport was a chance to have a fun conversation with a roommate that I hardly ever get to have a real chat with, rather than a stomach-turning half hour of enthusiastic nerves. Check-in and security were old hoops I’ve long since mastered jumping through. I almost checked my metro map while waiting for the train to my gate because this all felt mind-dullingly routine. I wandered past the shiny bright airport shops and took in the dozen languages being spoken around me without so much as a blink, answering a couple of texts from my friends as if this were any average Sunday, as if I weren’t going to get into a deformed metal cylinder with wings and engines attached and be hurtled from one continent to another as the world below me turned into night. 

The airport muzak was playing Hall and Oates when I found my seat in the waiting area. So that was nice. 

And it’s not that I’m not excited for where I’m going. My friends and I planned this trip in January of 2017, when tickets for Hamilton on the West End went on sale, and I’ve been waiting for it since, fourteen-ish months of checking countdowns and making plans and updating budgets. I’m ready to see everyone again. I’m very excited to be in Edinburgh and to see it decked out in snow. I’m delighted to be going back to London for a bit. I’m ready to spend a couple of day traipsing around parts of the UK I haven’t been to before. I’m going to take a thousand pictures and live aggressive amounts of life. (I’m also going to have multiple study sessions with my friends because we’re all grad students, but let’s not talk about that.) I should be pumped right now. This is the beginning of an adventure! 

And I am. And it is. And I know what a privilege it is to be able to be blasé about it, and how weird it is that international flights are a fact of my life. But for maybe the first time in my life, going somewhere different has felt like an interruption of the adventure already in progress, rather than the adventure itself.

My heart is settled where I've been. I’ve got a pile of classes to attend to in pursuit of a degree I’m incredibly suited for. I’m really happy with where I’m living and my roommates. I’ve got two good jobs that I enjoy doing and don’t enjoy leaving. I’ve got an internship that I had to pry myself away from. And I have relationships that I don’t necessarily want to put on hold for ten days. I’ve been enjoying being me of late. I kinda don't want to leave. 

But I’ll enjoy being me on the other side of the ocean as well, I’m sure. 

I’ve just got to get there first. 

Merry 2016, Everyone!

Waking up today was difficult, though maybe not for the traditional New Year's reasons. I didn't so much close out 2015 as run into 2016. That run came in the form of a cancelled flight, two rescheduled flights, a four-hour nap on a plane and half an hour of carrying my luggage through packed Edinburgh streets, because apparently I can't fly into town on a day when the airport bus hasn't been rerouted for some reason. But I was here in time for Hogmanay and Hogmanay in Edinburgh was, as has been my word for 2015, fantastic.

This video is after we sang Don't Stop Believing together as a massive mob and before the "Happy New Year!" guy in the video led us all in a shamefully lyric-lacking version of Auld Lang Syne. I went to the Princes Street party with Clara, a friend of mine from New College, and her friend and flatmate and flatmate's friends and we sang and danced and watched fireworks and it was an exceedingly pleasant way to ring in the new year.

But my body remembered that it had spent twenty-four hours in airports and on airplanes and that it had lugged thirty pounds of clothes and books farther than it ever wanted to and that dancing dehydrated in the Scottish cold was not the kindest set of activities I could have chosen to participate in after such a day. My body woke up around noon sore and with a cold.

You know what, though?

Worth it.

Everything is closed today, so there's no need for me to venture out into the world. I've got oatmeal and ramen and that'll hold me until I can do a proper grocery run tomorrow. Though this does not bode particularly well for my resolutions (to be non-stop and to pay attention), there's nothing stopping me from curling up with my Netflix and taking a vacation day, giving my body the space to find forgiveness for the past day or so.

So, thanks 2015, because you were a lovely addition to the years of my life, and thanks 2016 for all the things you haven't added to my life yet. I don't hold to hopes and expectations but I believe in the general positive nature of the world. Good things are coming our way, be they tiny and insignificant or monumentous and prayed for. I look forward to it.

A Flight Deferred

America, how dare you make me miss you?

August is so far away. It'll be eight months before I can have a chicken biscuit from Bojangles, or grits, or a disgustingly greasy double cheeseburger. Eight months away from open highways and the local classic rock station. Eight months until I'm greeted with a smile and a hey y'all at every register I walk up to. Eight months until I see the other side of 70 degrees.

I know that's all North Carolina centric, but I think the familiarity of home is what I'm going to miss. That seems obvious, I know. Other than your friends and family, you miss the things that you're accustomed to. You miss knowing where everything is and how the food is going to taste and how the people are going to sound. You miss your favorite soda or beer or snack. You miss your normal.

But me, I'm pretty good at adapting to new situations, making the life I'm living my new normal. I don't really think about how uncomfortable or inconvenienced or abnormal I feel until I'm out of the situation. Until I come home.

And now, I'm staring down months of being the outsider again. Months of sounding different from the norm, of using the wrong words for things, of making witty references that don't land because we don't exactly have the same shared cultural experience. And that's with being in a country whose language is basically the same as mine and whose people are generally inclined to like people like me-

Hang on, I have to go deal with an airplane.

***

Okay, nobody panic- my plane was struck by lightning but I wasn't on it at the time and now I'm rebooked on a better flight than I had before and am thankful that I'm not one of the people I see sprinting across the airport as I sit with my Bojangles on a rocking chair under a tree in the Charlotte airport. Everything works out okay. Usually. 

If you didn't get to see my face while I was in America, I'm sorry, but never worry! I made a video (which serves the dual purpose of introducing the new Vlogyries team for 2016) and I've put it below. Here's to new flights and new years! 

No Place Like Home for the Holidays

I've never flown during the holidays before. I now understand why no one ever wants to. Allow me to present to you "Dude, Where's My Plane: A Christmas Special." Brought to you by flight delays.

Tuesday, December 22nd

6:05am- Wake up dramatically from a dream involving essay grades and a chicken. Proceed to try unsuccessfully to fall asleep for three hours.

10:15am- Stumble to the elevator with the flat trash and a duffle bag. 

10:18am- Toss the trash into the dumpster and begin to get drenched by the rain on the walk to the airport bus.

11:10am- Arrive at Edinburgh International Airport. I’ve flown out of here before, but it was years ago and I’m convincing myself they’ve remodeled because the only thing that looks familiar is the international arrivals area that I waltzed into three months ago. I check in, I drop off my duffle bag, I go through security, and I find a place to wait for my flight to be assigned to a gate. Luckily, all I’ve got to carry around is my purse, which is no more packed than it would be on your average school day, so I’m pretty mobile.

1:53pm- My flight was supposed to leave at 2pm. Still haven’t been assigned a gate. Amuse myself by listening to the conversations around me and tweeting about them.

2:50pm- On the plane, really feeling the lack of sleep last night. The British girl beside me clearly has a cold and the poor dear orders tea the same time I order coffee. I pass her her tea and we cheers before going back to our own little worlds.

4:15pm- We land in London and I power walk to the connections board. Chicago isn’t listed, but there’s a sign that says that flights to the US are operated by AA and are at Terminal 3. I’m at Terminal 5. I walk very quickly to the terminal bus.

4:18pm- The bus driver waits for a group of 20 who arrived as the bus was supposed to leave to board. I’m counting the minutes between terminals. As long as the gate number is listed when I get to Terminal 3, I can still make it.

4:32pm- I follow the signs to the American Airlines desk, which is disconcertingly empty. I tell the man behind the desk that I’m looking for a connecting flight to Chicago and my heart drops when he shakes his head. Since it was a delay on a British Airways flight that caused the problem, he sends me to their counter. I do my best to keep all the crying on the inside.

5:04pm- After going through security again and waiting in line at the BA counter, I’m handed a new ticket for tomorrow morning, a set of vouchers for a hotel stay and shuttle services, and a toiletries bag. I ask how much I missed the flight by. The guy checks and winces at the screen. “No chance,” he says. “Even if you ran.”

Well, at least it’s not my fault. I take my purse (so "lucky" that I'm traveling light) and find my way out.

5:25pm- I text my mother from the airport exit, telling her what’s going on. I would have done that earlier, but I assumed that I could just pop through immigration. I was wrong. I get on the shuttle to the hotel and realize with a start that the bus door is on the opposite side of what I was expecting. All airports look like America to me. I had forgotten where I was.

6:15pm- Hello, my name is Addie Jo and it’s been 159 days since my last hotel stay. Thought maybe I’d make it a year, but apparently the fates had something else in mind. The routine formed by three years of traveling for work kicks in- I set my purse on the tile of the bathroom floor, check the mattress, drawers, and corners of the room for bedbugs, kick off my boots and fall backwards onto my bed. My glorious, free, king-sized bed. It’s funny- if it weren’t for the picture of Big Ben on the wall, I might think I was back in middle of nowhere North Carolina. My plans for the evening are about the same. I close my eyes for a few minutes. 

7:05pm- The airline comped me dinner, so I go to the hotel restaurant. I hand over my voucher and the hostess asks if we’re all sitting together. I walked in alone, so I turn around and find that there’s a group of twelve attractive British twenty-something males, every one of whom gives me the once-over as I smile and wave and tell the hostess that it’s just me. We all have a good-natured chuckle over it and I resist the urge to pump a fist in the air. 

7:11pm- I HAVE NEVER EATEN SO MUCH IN MY LIFE. I’ve been living off of ramen and left-overs for the past two weeks and this hotel buffet is exactly what I needed in my world right now. 

7:20pm- Oh my everything, this chocolate pie. I could die happy right now.

7:45pm- I would like to take this opportunity to thank British Airways for this toiletry bag. I take a longer shower than is necessary, using the razor and shaving cream to properly shave my legs since this is the most room I’ve had in months. There’s apparently one multi-purpose wash that’s supposed to work as shampoo, conditioner, and body wash and no washcloth in the hotel, but whatever man. We’re making this free stuff work. There’s even a t-shirt in the pack, so I can let my sweatshirt finally dry out from the rain that morning. 

9:30pm- I set my alarm for the next morning and settle in to bed. Dammit, Britain, ya skimped on the pillow top. This might be a princess and the pea situation, but I know a mid-priced hotel bed when I sleep in one and my friends, this is slightly substandard. 

Wednesday, December 23rd

5:58am- My alarm goes off. I left it charging across the room so I actually have to get out of bed.

5:59am- I go back to bed.

6:28am- I groggily get out of bed, “pack” (put my laptop and phone back in my purse), and “get ready” (put my jeans and shoes back on). 

6:33am- I hand over my key in the hotel lobby. Thanks for the free night, Park Inn by Radisson! 

7:01am- After getting my actual boarding pass, going through security again, and walking through the absurdly brightly lit stores at the airport, I sit down at the designated seating area and wonder if napping for two hours is worth it.

7:25am- Amazing how comfortable you can get if you just wedge yourself in sideways on these airport benches.

8:25am- My flight is supposed to be assigned a gate.

8:35am- Still hasn’t happened.

8:40am- COME ON, BRITAIN. 

8:52am- THERE IS BOJANGLES WAITING FOR ME. DO NOT STAND BETWEEN ME AND MY BOJANGLES.

9:00am- That’s it. I’m going to die here. They’ll find my body propped up just outside the Pret, covered in left over croissant wrappers. 

9:03am- Gate 1 it is.

10:30am- There's a technical problem with the plane and we can't board until it's fixed. My money's on the phalanges. 

gif source

10:47am- We're delayed until 12:30pm. Cue the general outrage. 

12:24pm- We're all just sitting at the terminal. Somehow I don't think we're taking off in 6 minutes. On the bright side, they did serve us snacks and water! 

Friday, December 25th

Sometime after 12:45am- We boarded the plane around 1pm London time on the 23rd and sat on the plane for hours while they removed luggage for passengers that had rebooked their flights after the delay. At least the booze on the flight was free. When we landed in Charlotte around 6:45pm local time, we sat on the runway for a while waiting for a gate. Then I went through customs and went to go find my checked bag, which was missing. But a friend of mine came and picked me up and I got the call around 4pm on the 24th that my bag would be delivered that evening. And it was. Sometime in the early hours of Christmas morning.

So that's my saga, friend! I was originally supposed to land in Charlotte, bag in hand, around 1am on the 23rd. But I'm home! And that, as my friend said, is a step in the right direction.