This is where the story starts. Again.
Midnight over the Atlantic, near the Irish coast. All hours are midnight just here. The ocean doesn’t have a time zone. This 6 hour flight is only a dream.
We’re an hour from descent, maybe a little bit more. It’s dark but not too cold, and I’m better prepared this time; having Marty along has made traveling a much less difficult affair. Instead of two hands, I have four. Instead of one sleep deprived brain, we have two. I don’t know the sum of two sleep deprived brains, but two is certainly better than less.
At this point, yes, I’m very tired. We woke this morning at 6:15 — the morning of July 25th, 6:15am in Austin, Texas — to finish packing, catch a taxi, and begin our day and a half of traveling. Some of it was stressful, and some was delightful. I was awake the whole day, except for a few opportunities to rest my eyes — usually during take-off, or landing. We boarded our transatlantic flight in Newark at 7pm local time. Around 10, I began to flag. I napped (or whatever it is you call a nap when you don’t really fall asleep). I puttered. I read. And now, eighteen hours later, I’m writing. Barely an hour before the cabin lights return, before they wheel down the aisle with a breakfast I won’t eat, sleep seems like something other people do.
Even though my eyes are sore, and sleepy. And lucky Marty has konked out in the seat adjacent. And everything is so, so quiet, except for the rushing of air — that filtration noise, or the noise of wind and cold and atmosphere outside. My head aches, but I can’t help but wonder what the next few days will have in store. All resting? I wonder.
So here is the remainder of our travel plan: We arrive in Birmingham at 7am their time, except most likely 40 minutes earlier. We rest for a few minutes, and I fire up my Internet access. I find us someplace swanky to eat breakfast, because hell if I’m going to miss what amounts to an entire night of sleep and not be richly rewarded on the morning of the second day.
Then, we hie ourselves to the train station. Somewhere in there, I probably publish this post. We buy train tickets. We wait for the train. We ride the train… For 2 or 3 hours, I don’t exactly remember. And we get off at Ebbw Vale Parkway, which may or may not be pretty damn close to our final destination.
Then I suspect we struggle to stay awake for a few more hours, in the hopes of sleeping the whole night through and (maybe!) being fairly well adapted to our newfound time zone.
The cabin lights just came on — earlier than expected!
There are too many thoughts floating around in my head. I want to explain to you how vastly different this feels from the way it felt in 2006. I want to tell you about the things that are the same and the things that are very much not the same. I want to tell you about how Continental apparently has this quaint new video-on-demand system, like Jet Blue but better, and that it runs on Linux. I saw it boot up and I crowed in delight.
I didn’t watch anything on it, of course, because I planned ahead this year; we had things of our own to watch. Score ten for us, yes!
Now the smell of warm croissants is wafting through the cabin, and I remember this part. Ah, yes, “breakfast”… But no, I won’t be eating breakfast that turns to sugar in my stomach and inspires arthritis pains. I wrote a song about that. It’s finished, but not final. I sing the word “fuck” in the middle.
Pastries make me crazy.
On Continental’s video screen — there’s one on the back of every headrest, so we each have our own — I can push a few not-all-that-responsive buttons and get our flight information. Ground speed, 592 miles per hour. Zowie! An hour until landing (for real this time) and I’m cursing our seats because we’re just over the wing and I know we’re about to fly over Ireland. And I remember how beautiful it is to fly over Ireland.
And then I push up the window shade, and remember that it’s morning, and I gasp over the sunrise and take a few pictures and feel good about this minor transformation. I was there. Now I’m here.
Still cruising at 37,000 feet, minus 66 degrees outside my window (you heard me!), 2600 miles and more behind us, I wonder how easy it will be to ignore my bladder for another hour because everyone in my row is asleep and they won’t stay that way if I clamber over them. Actually, I don’t care all that much. Peeing is for the weak. Whole new day ahead of us, man.
If this feeling is an omen, the next three weeks are going to be incredible.
