I’m All Petulant and Whiny

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 – tired, hungry, wearing excellent pants

The other day, as I was sweating profusely in an electric trolley-car, next to an exuberant little Frenchman, I decided that travel nowadays isn’t quite what it used to be. In fact, it’s almost too much hassle to actually go anywhere that involves airports or security lines or morons who make you take your laptop out for no reason except to put it in the same bin your coat and bag are in, all of which pretty much leaves your best option spending vacations in your own living room with a bottle of cheap wine and a plastic palm tree.

If you do decide to go ahead and do some travelling, you will invariably end up like me, lugging heavy bags without wheels around an airport in a panic of gigantic proportions, five minutes past the final call for your flight and still a mile from the gate, looking at signs pointing in opposite directions for the same thing and not having the slightest clue which one to follow, while swearing in two languages because no one in this stupid airport seems to have heard of moving sidewalks or luggage carts.

Then a miracle. A nice Frenchman in an electric train thing, normally reserved for the elderly, infirm or marginally retarded, sees your distressed, red, puffy, exhausted visage and homicidal eyes and offers you a ride the rest of the way. And you manage to resist the urge to kiss him, but only just. It was a close call - you are pretty certain you hear angels singing.

Then you will ramble away in French, telling him how you’re about to die from the fatigue of carrying heavy baggage a distance the equivalent of the New York marathon and please pardon your stench but there’s not an inch of you that doesn’t smell like old socks and how you’re not going to make your flight because your previous flight was two hours late arriving, making you run like a crazy person and now there’s a very real possibility you’re going to be spending the night in the airport on a cold metal bench, so thanks a fucking bunch, airline I will not name. The bemused and bored guy at the entrance to your gate lets you through despite your lack of a boarding pass, because you are MAGICAL. All in all, it’s a sweaty, unpleasant half hour of anxiety.

So you know. Don’t do any travelling by air, that’s all I’m saying.

In the end I actually made the flight. I cajoled and begged them to let me on and the tired desk clerks let me, despite everyone already being seated and the overhead bins being closed and it being five minutes from take off. I huffed and puffed my way to the back of the plane to my seat, bumping my giant bag into everyone’s shins and muttering about how a laptop can weigh approximately the same as a small country and trying not to sweat on anyone. What is WITH the heat in airports, by the way? Are they moonlighting as saunas? Heat is not conducive to lugging heavy things anywhere. Anyway, I made it home in one piece and with my dignity mostly intact. So, hi! Thanks British Airways, I guess.

My luggage though? It decided to stay the night in Montreal. Hell, it needed a vacation of its own.

Someone needs to invent a teleporter and do it soon. I can’t take anymore of this flying business.

Stuff on States later in the week. I’m lazy and tired and I already missed a week, what can I tell you? I hope you all had lovelier weekends than I did!