Going to California...one last time, Part 2

My experiences flying to the heartland and back were so awful they deserve a second post.

To be fair, though, “awful” is a strong word. “Exasperating” and “irksome” are more accurate, and part of it was personal.

I have no problem flying. Back when I was a novice air traveler, however, I was uneasy about planes. Take-offs and landings worried me. I once read that if anything disastrous were to happen on a flight it would likely be during take-off or landing, so I was always on edge, waiting for the unthinkable to occur, as we sped down the runway or were moments from touching down. I’m still a little wary of take-offs and landings, but am much more at ease now. In fact, I love the exhilaration I get when the engines roar to full power and the initial lag in inertia sinks me deep into the seatback. Landings are mostly routine and promising: “I’m finally getting out of this tin can!” What I have a major problem with are airports and fellow passengers.

My dad says airports are both the happiest and saddest places on Earth. Having traveled to the heartland nine times while living on the west coast, I strongly agree with him. Except for those in the brainwashed corporate class, who fly extensively for business, airports have no middle ground between my old man’s happy-sad dichotomy.

For me, the best feeling in the world was the experience of arriving in Cedar Rapids. It’s a delight that builds slowly as I count down the weeks and days before a trip home. My excitement is so fervent I have never been able to sleep the night before flying back. Maybe two or three hours, but that’s it. (The night before this last trip I didn’t sleep at all. I laid in bed, tossed and turned, closed my eyes, but never once fell asleep.) The thrill begins to peak when I board the connection to CR — always a tiny CRJ compared to the 737s and 757s flying from OC — but the climax doesn’t happen until after the plane has landed and docked at CID. It’s a ritualistic sensation I will never forget. I take my turn exiting the plane, walk up the jet bridge to the little terminal, take a quick leak if I need to, walk the long connecting corridor lined with international flags (Iowa’s is included in the display for some reason), down the stairs into the security screening/turbo prop gate area, and turn the corner to leave the sterile area. The best feeling in the world — the zenith of delight after days and weeks of anticipation — was when I turned that corner and saw my parents waiting in the center lobby.

Home.

Contrastingly, I experienced the worse feeling in the world at the very same spot about 10 or so days later. My return trip to California — the inevitable consequence of flying back to Iowa — hung over me the entire time I was home. Maybe that’s why IC visits flashed by in an instant: to a degree, I spent the whole visit worrying about leaving. I dreaded it. The last day or two of an Iowa trip were completely overshadowed by flying back to California. I had to coordinate equal time with friends — and make sure I didn’t snub anyone who wanted to hang out — so everyone got their goodbyes. I felt rushed and unable to relax; I was working against the clock. (I want to hang out with my folks, play pool with Mervgotti, sit and chat with Tom, watch my sister’s softball game…) My return trip usually started at the butt crack of dawn, so my dad always woke me around 5:30 or 6 in the morning; I would be tired as hell after a long night of trying to fit in as much as possible. I was aware of the day ahead as I readied myself, but the stomach turning dread didn’t begin until I took one last look at my room. That’s when I realized I wouldn’t be back for…four, five, six months? I was never sure. With my luggage in the back, my dad would back out of the garage and I would take one last look at my parents’ house and think, “Oh shit. Here we go.” On the drive to the airport I gazed adoringly at the city and landscape along the freeways, trying to capture every detail one last time. CID is not an airport you need to arrive at two or three hours prior to a flight (if you’re a risk taker, unlike me, you could probably get there 30 minutes before your flight, check in, and pass through security with 20 minutes to spare), but we always got there an hour early just in case. The wait in the large middle lounge was often torture; it was like delaying an execution by firing squad. “I hate this, but let’s get it done!” About 20 minutes before my flight left, I would say, “Well, I think it’s time.” My parents (both of them always saw me off) and I would get up, slowly saunter to the security entrance, and say goodbye. Parting was very emotional, and I always had tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. When leaving Iowa in July ’09, I completely broke down. I didn’t want to go back and was overwhelmed with emotion. I had not cried like that in years — and it was in plain view of everyone else in the airport. But I didn’t care. I regained composure, went through terrorist screening like a man, then resumed bawling when I was in the sterile area. It was hard. Once on the plane it was business has usual; it was just a leg on my trip back to CA.

Culturally, airports are soulless, bland, and commercialized microcosms of everything I dislike about this country. (Cedar Rapids is not so bad. When the terminal’s Millstream Brewhaus is turned into a TGIFriday’s or Applebee’s, that’s when it will have lost its regional and local charm.) Flying is a marriage between travel and feudalism. From what I can tell, the corporate class — brainwashed office slaves traveling from here to there for sales and marketing meetings — makes up the largest portion of the airport population. Dressed in anything from a suit to a golf polo and khakis, they buy hardcover versions of the latest career success guides and biographies about the founding fathers from the airport Barnes & Noble or Borders stores, gorge on fat smothered with fat and served with fat (washed down with a Bud Light) at the same national chain restaurants they frequent at their suburban shopping centers, and chat endlessly on their iPhone’s or Blackberry’s about sales numbers or market trends. On flights to and from Orange County, they always put themselves on First Class stand-by. There are always 15 or 20 of these pretentious pigs trying to buy their way out of the steerage. About 40 percent of the airport population consists of regular travelers and vacationers, taking trips home or to exotic destinations they’ve saved for years to visit. Most are adept at air travel, but some are inexperienced and need help deciphering terminal maps and figuring out where to go and when to be there. During layovers, they shop at the chain stores and locally flavored tourist shops, buying up corny shirts to let everyone back home know about The Governator and not to mess with Texas. It’s a great and unique experience for the isolated and uncultured. Then there are the airport workers. The airline staff are usually white middle class, but the store cashiers, stockers, waiters, and janitors are usually members of the dominant local minority or lower class: Latino in OC, black in Chicago, black or Middle Eastern in Minneapolis, black or poor white trash in Cedar Rapids. (On a side note, the Persians seem to have a monopoly on John Wayne’s taxi and shuttle bus business.) The blatant inequality on display made me sick. I felt bad being there, supporting it in a way. Each time I bought a snack or ate at the Maui Taco or Godfather’s in MSP, I couldn’t help feeling guilty about benefiting from their exploitation.

Not all of my fellow passengers were annoying. Mostly just the OC idiots. While checking-in at the self-service kiosks at John Wayne, a woman walked up to the machine next to mine. She looked to be in her 40s, had three or four bags of different sizes, and wore a soccer mom track suit (one of those tacky looking cotton sweatshirt and sweatpants combo from Victoria Secrets with “PINK” written across the ass; God I fucking hate those outfits). To use a self-service kiosk you need a major credit card, maybe an ATM card, or a passport. She read those options aloud to her husband or boyfriend, who was hauling her luggage around, then announced, “I don’t have any of those!”

Ugh.

It amazed me in a couple ways: I can’t believe someone would come to the airport that unprepared, and I’m surprised she didn’t have some kind of plastic on her; most Southern Californians always pay with plastic.

The OC idiots amazed me in another way. They will gladly max out their credit cards, mortgage themselves to death, and lease fancy cars they can’t afford to keep up with the Jones’, but they’re too cheap to pay $20 or $25 to check their luggage. They bring all their shit on the plane and jam the overhead bins full. It was pathetic and insanely annoying. Not only did it take forever to board OC planes because people had to find enough space for their bags, it took forever to deplane OC flights because everyone had to retrieve their luggage. After one flight I swear it took 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes!

Air travel is maddening for me in another way: I can’t see ahead and don’t know what’s going on at all times; I’m not in control. I hate it when a plane taxis and then stops. What the fuck is going on? Are we waiting for the ground crew at the gate or for another plane to pass? I wish I could sit in the cockpit so I would know all and see all along with the pilots. They probably wouldn’t like that.

Needless to say, I will enjoy driving for the foreseeable future. When will I fly next? Hopefully when I visit Europe sometime in the next couple years (I really have no clue when I’ll do that, but I will).