The friendly skies

Air travel is not what it used to be.  I mean, wasn’t there a time when flying was an adventure? When one strolled across the tarmac in stockings and heels, with coordinated  and monogrammed luggage in tow?  When the cocktail placed before you on the tray table was not a coping mechanism but a kind token of life’s small luxuries?

Okay, I admit, I may be romanticizing a bit here.  I never took that fantasy flight, and I, like most people, occasionally suffer from non-fact-based nostalgia.  But I’m certain, certain that there was a time when flying felt more like an adventure, when the skies were substantially more friendly.

I remember my first flight to Orlando at age five: sitting wordlessly beside my mom during the rush of speed at take-off, deplaning on a staircase that was rolled right up to the plane door.

I remember my high school trip to Europe, my mom actually walking me up to the gate before telling me goodbye and reminding me how lucky I was, how much she would’ve loved to board a plane to anywhere at all as a teenager. (At that time, she’d still never flown over the ocean)

And my flight to London for a semester abroad: the excitement of ordering a complementary alcoholic beverage once we got into international airspace–no one even asked if I was twenty-one yet.  When the attendant finally reached my row, I stuffed my copy of Continental Magazine in the seat-back pocket, as if I hadn’t been memorizing my booze order since we reached cruising altitude. “Oh, yes.  I’ll take, um, the California Chardonnay, please,” I said casually, as if it was an off-the-cuff decision.

Flying meant going somewhere new and exotic; it meant gawking out the window to see the familiar landscape transform into something strange, a grassy quilt with patches of green and brown; it meant browsing the Sky Mall and thinking all those gadgets were pretty cool (“No way! Here’s a machine that cooks hot dogs and buns at the same time with the push of a button, just like a toaster!”).  Flying meant an exhilarating independence from the constraints of time and space and gravity, one step closer to being beamed up by Scotty.  And in rural Virginia, flying was a status symbol, a way of showing that you’d been somewhere, seen something, maybe even eaten strange food, like crepes or prosciutto.

My most recent adventure in flying was only adventuresome in that it required extra-but-not-unforeseen logistical planning to arrive at my destination, and again to arrive back at my home.  I know, I don’t have to tell you about the long lines, the mess that comes with flying from Vancouver to Virginia via Montreal, where you have to uncheck your bags, go through customs, recheck your bags, remember you accidentally left your laptop sitting on the customs form podium, ask security to go back and search for your laptop, wait patiently while trying not to think of all of the writing you may’ve lost since you last backed up your hard drive, smiling graciously and thanking your tear ducts for keeping their cool when the very nice (?!) TSA agent returns with your computer safe and sound, then going back through security and hoofing it to your gate all the way over in concourse B, only to have the final leg of your flight cancelled due to fog, and finding yourself stuck in the DC Metro area with no clear sense of when you will in fact arrive home, but thanking God that your friend is in town and happy to make you a midnight sandwich and let you crash on her couch.  I know, I know, you’ve been there too, in one iteration or another, because that’s what flying is, a series of possible failures, a day of holding your breath, a mad-dash to the one counter in the O’Hare airport that serves Intelligentsia Coffee and sheer, glowing gratitude at the sight of a giant urn of “house blend.”

What I can say about my return flight is that even though it was cancelled, and after some negotiation, only delayed by a day, I did get to enjoy a few things that I might not have otherwise: afternoon Cardioke in Kerry’s living room (yes, if you’re wondering, Cardioke is exactly what it sounds like), one more night of falling asleep on the couch while watching TV movies with Casey (The Sound of Music, on this occasion), and the pleasure of returning via Portland, where a girl can spend her four-hour layover drinking a pint of Rogue Ale and browsing the shelves at Powell’s Books.  Now, tell me that’s not cool.

So when they finally said it– “Boarding all rows to Vancouver, all rows to Vancouver”– I marched out into the rain, camera in hand, relieved–maybe even a little bit thrilled–to finally, finally feel my feet on the tarmac.