On my way...

I’m sitting here in seat 5A on what will soon be flight 1080 from Providenciales (Provo, as the locals call it) and it has occurred to me that we are way late in our departure. The jetway (its one of those outdoor ones that they drive up on top of a truck, like they still use in the United Terminal at San Jose International Airport) is still connected to the plane and the door is still open. Out the window I notice the ground crew engaging in some horseplay down by the front wheel.

The captain just walked past me (yes, by the way, 5A is in First Class…I got the upgrade this time) and headed out the door of the plane and onto the jetway. “That’s peculiar,” I think to myself, checking my watch to see that we should’ve left 15 minutes ago. The client with whom I’ve been working for the past 7 days, Jeff, is also taking a flight today and his plane just backed out and is headed toward the runway. They were supposed to leave 15 minutes after us. Nice to see that somebody’s on schedule. I’m not worried. I don’t think that I have a particularly tight connection at JFK. Besides, we’ll have to go through immigration and do all that nonsense of claiming and re-checking our baggage so I’ll be there for awhile anyway. Wait, I have no idea how long my layover is. I’ve hardly glanced at my itinerary at all. I’ve hardly done much of any of my regular routine for the last week. I’ve been so exhausted and my eyes are so worn out at the end of the day that I haven’t wanted to really look at the screen of this laptop at all. I’m on my way back to my life now though. Real life, that is. “This isn’t real life…I hope you realize this,”Jeff’s mother has famously quipped during her visits down here to see he and his family.

Okay, now we’ve got an update. Apparently, there was some mechanical trouble on this plane as it made its way down to Provo from New York. Well that’s what you always want to hear as you are strapped in on a big metal tube with wings, weighing almost 200 tons that relies on speed (provided by the thrust of man made jet engines) and wind (that blows as , well, as the wind blows). Well, they did make it here. We’re waiting on a technician to come and bless the plane and tell us that everything is in ship shape. One of the guys from the ground crew took a break from the horseplay and came back up here to talk to the captain.

“Are you the technician?” asked the captain.
“No…(h)im soon come…(h)im almost here,” said the ground crew guy.
“Is he REALLY almost here? I’ve heard THAT before.”
“Soon come…(h)im almost (h)ere.”

Then they went down the jetway and went away to some room that looked like it might be the baggage office and stayed for awhile. I was watching all of this transpire from the window. Meanwhile, I started to thumb through the American Way magazine, starting from the rear to read the Jim Shahin piece in this issue. I had to do something to pass the time. I’m trying not to sleep through this First Class experience. Besides, I’d rather sleep on the long flight form JFK to SFO. I don’t know what it is about the guys that they give the last page of a magazine to, but I like it. I read Sports Illustrated the same way. Rick Reilly holds court in that publication with his “Life of Reilly” rant/commentary. I love it. I’ve read him for years. I even got my daughter to be a fan of Reilly after reading some of his best ones to her a couple years ago. I look forward to Shahin on every American Airlines flight that I take. In a way, these guys have replaced the images from my childhood of Dwight Gooden and Michael Jordan, as I study their “moves” and try to incorporate elements of them into my “game”. A more adult analysis might be that I’m appreciating another artist, the way that Bill Evans might have done at a Thelonius Monk show or Coltrane might have done at a Lester Young show. Well, maybe that’s putting a little bit too much on it. Maybe my first analogy was more appropriate because I am but a mere blogger at this point, daring to dream that I can have my own back page some day. Now that would be some kind of real life, wouldn’t it?

But I digress. We’ve taken off now and I got a little happy with the digital camera out the window. I wish it could really capture the incredible shade of blue water that surrounds this place, but you’d have to see it.

So we’re a little late. I can’t complain about today at all. I started the day with a nice jog down the beach, followed by my last plunge, marveling at how I was in the water up to my neck and yet could see my feet as if I were in the world’s largest swimming pool. I took note of how peculiar it was for the waves here to be so docile almost massaging you rather than trying to knock you over as they might at most other beaches. Lake Tahoe may have had bigger waves than this place. No...no complaints at all. I started the day that way, and I’ll end it in my own bed at home. It doesn’t get much better than that.