Red Eye Tripping

Next time I fly long distance I’m going to adopt a little toddler so I can get on the plane early and find an overhead bin to store my carry-on baggage because it is impossible otherwise. At least for a polite person like me.

My flight back to college was star-crossed from the word go. I’m not sure what it was, but I started feeling very sick at the airport and threw up a couple of times before boarding the airplane. I had booked my tickets a long time back and dad had even pre-booked seats for me, but as it turned out, they were really very crappy seats, not Air India crappy, but crappy nevertheless. I was seated next to a boring, middle-aged couple who were carrying their own food and kept eating all the way through to London. Just watching them made me throw up twice in the airplane toilet. I did get around to watching Lord of War and Pride and Prejudice in between my false alarm runs to the can.

London Heathrow was not any better. The transit security check took forever and my cell phone decided to run out of batteries. The duty free shops were charging outrageously compared to India or even Paris, so I ended up buying nothing. Twenty four pounds for a carton of cigarettes, are you insane? I think it’s a conspiracy to stop people from smoking.

The nine-hour flight to Chicago was also marred from the start. For some uncanny reason the plane could not make it to the gate so they provided shuttle service to take the passengers to the plane, all three hundred of us. Sometimes I wonder how a mess up like this is even possible. Anyway, this time I took my seat between an elderly NRI nurse and a rather striking blonde. Well if nothing I could at least squeeze out a conversation with a beautiful girl, but alas, being German, she spoke no English. Perhaps she just did not want to talk to me… My stomach was a little better but I was still feeling lousy. This time I watched The Constant Gardener and Wedding Crashers, but under extreme discomfort. Partially because of my stomach and partially because of the million toddlers on board making a hell of a racket.

Chicago. I passed through immigrations quickly, but then ended up waiting forty minutes for my baggage. No matter, I said to myself, I still have four hours. I quickly moved through Customs and took the train to Terminal 3 only to be told that all flights to Syracuse had been cancelled. I still do not know how I stopped myself from flushing my head down the toilet. The next flight was at ten the next morning. My four-hour wait had now turned into a fourteen-hour wait. What is worse, they did not even give me freaking food coupons. This is the last time I fly with those American Airlines bastards.

I didn’t have much money with me and I finished most of it on a lavish dinner at O’Hare Airport as a celebration of my recuperating stomach, slightly prematurely as it later turned out. It was like Port Authority all over again, minus the illegal Mexican immigrants and gun trotting psychos. But it was still spooky because I was the only passenger in the entire terminal, the rest were the cleaning crew. One of them was watching the CNN News. A SWAT officer shot a 15-year-old kid because he was holding a pellet gun that resembled a .45 automatic. This country I tell you…

I met a whole bunch of college kids at the airport and tried to make polite conversation. It is stupid to ask a kid who goes to college in the US if she enjoys college. I have never heard anyone complain about college here. After all, if you’re forking out more than thirty grand a year for college, you had better enjoy it. You’d look stupid if you left your family and friends and spent a fortune coming to study in the US and then did not enjoy the experience. Even if one hates her college, they’re always go gaga when asked about it.

The next morning I flew to Syracuse. Just barely. We boarded the plane at 9:25 am, due to take off at 10. At 10 the pilot says that there's a slight dent in the right wing and the mechanics want to run a few tests, so be patient. I just hid my head in sorrow. The Syracuse University student next to me started writing poetry. "...and the coocooned caterpillat turned into a butterfly" Oh my God!

My baggage of course had a trip of its own. Interestingly enough my suitcase ended up in Dakota the night before but then they got it back to me in Syracuse airport. I don’t even want to know how. Thank god for that, I had some important stuff in there, including Professor Bradfield’s textbooks. US domestic airlines are such a mess and then they wonder why American Airlines and company are filing for bankruptcy.

It was so cold you couldn’t even finish a thought. Every thought ended prematurely with the exclamation “fuck, it’s cold!” I realized I didn’t have enough cash for a cab. Most of it had gone into my one-man food and booze celebration the night before. But I knew that one Hamilton student was flying in at noon and I was sure there would be more. So I picked up my baggage, borrowed a big blank signboard and wrote “Hamilton Anyone?” and parked myself by the airport exit. As luck would have it, and deservedly so after all the shit I had been through, I saw Ahn as she was walking out of the airport. Thought we'd share a cab back to college but nope, it turned out to be someone else.

There's a pre-paid taxi booth at the airport, but they are crazy expensive, so I decided to call a city metered cab. Unfortunately every Yellow Pages book in the airport had all the pages after T ripped out so Taxis weren't listed. Finally I managed to find one intact copy and dialed the first number on the list. And they sent me a limo. I was chauffered back to college in fucking limo and it cost me a fortune... but perhaps at the end of the day, I deserved it.

I have been sleeping since then and woke up to write this. Perhaps a slightly anti-climactic ending to a rather nefarious series of incidents, but I prefer drab and dull to profoundly infuriating any day…I think.