So, We're Going to Savannah

Leaving on a Jet Plane

One of the flowers girls at our wedding (there were two and they are sisters) not only turned 18 a month or two back, but now she is having the audacity to shove my age in my face by graduating from high school. The nerve!

An eon ago, Em said she wanted to go to Savannah (where Em went to school, where she lived when we met, where I used to 'Spring Break' and we lived for a spell after we were married) since we hadn't been back since we left. That was apparently eight years ago. I refuse to wrap my head around that number as it means I was in my late twenties then, and am now knocking on my late thirties. Forty, gulp, can't be far around the corner should the good Lord see fit to allow me to be here.

I said sure. An eon ago. Before I changed jobs and missed a couple paychecks and got the car registration renewals and paid the taxes. And when it came back up for real the other night, she was not happy that I planned to back out. I didn't ask her not to go, (I have learned things in my nearly eleven years as a married man- most of those within the last six), I know better.

She originally didn't want to fly. I didn't want to drive. Neither one of us levitates, apparates or owns a transporter, time machine or other such device and the corner store is fresh out of flue powder (too many Harry Potter references?). We were at an impasse. Literally and literally.

I told her I cannot take a week off in late May and another off in mid-June and I will not miss workcamp with 'my' kids. Also, it sucks to burn both weeks of vacation within a month from each other and then have to go a long far stretch before you get to go on vacation again. I did it last year and by the end of the year I had had it so much I quit. We don't want that to happen again now do we?

So we compromised. By which I mean we both ended up happy because I gave in. Em proposed a weekend hop, on a plane rather than the eighteen hour slog of a drive down I75. I will only miss one day of work, which I can deal with (they won't even know I am gone) and we will get to go spend a little time in the great (to visit) city of Savannah in the beautiful (blisteringly hot) month of May. A flurry of activity and some quick planning later we had our plane tickets, rent-a-wreck and a place to stay. All for the reasonable sum of everything I had saved up for a down payment on a pickup truck.

So, joy incurred are plans deferred. I am happy we are going. It has been too long. I miss the city and our friends there. It was the first place we had a joint life, Em and I. When we moved there, away from my friends and baggage in Detroit to a place where she was comfortable and had some established roots we were able to really be an 'us' instead of a she and he.

I would never want to live in Savannah again. Too much humidity and pollen and a full 110 years after the invention of the automobile those people still don't seem to get how to operate it. But I am glad we are going for a visit. If only now I can transport myself back to my late twenties...

Fear of Flying

I used to love flying. Now I only fly when there is absolutely no other way. And believe me, could I afford the time, I would drive everywhere. I love to drive. I am a good driver. I have driving stamina. I can go for miles and hours that would hasten most people to the grave.

Flying has become such a joke. You have to assume a delay, big or small on at least one leg of your trip. Since we are flying on DELTA (which curiously stands for Don't Ever Leave the Airport) we will be transferring planes in Atlanta. Yes, the ubiquitous Atlanta. It is said that great rewards are there for those that make it into heaven, and those who go to hell still have to change planes in Atlanta. Twice.

You have to get to the airport early, strip to a level of nakedity that approaches and then surpasses embarrassment, then go through a scanner which as far as I can tell has the sole purpose of logging a picture of your penis into a database for later study, then sit and wait and pay $14.00 for a Cinnabon and a burnt cup of Seattle's Best coffee. Thank God they are sending out their best, because anything less would be impotable.

At the end of this is the reward of being crammed into a tube with hundreds of other people, many of whom are about to or have just given birth. Those that haven't probably have cholera and/or ebola or a preexisting heart condition triggered to go off at precisely 28,000 feet. You laugh, but I have been on a plane where a passenger died. Not cool having to reach over a blanketed corpse to get your carry-on.

I am a fat man and a twenty-two inch wide seat is like a torture device. Plus it is hard and has bulges in all the wrong places. Big bulges. Big, bad, painful bulges. All for the bargain basement price of all the money I had saved up for a pickup truck. The one big windows, lots of space and soft, comfy, heated, leather seats with bulges in all the right places.

I digress (eventually and temporarily). Flying is the issue here. We can put a man on the moon but can't comfortably fling people through the sky? You have a scanner that can show you all the intimate details of my penis, but I still have to take off my belt and shoes?

I am going to stuff a banana down my pants and walk through with a big ass smile on my face. And when they frisk me, I'm just gonna laugh and answer, "no, I'm just happy to see you."