Leaving on a Jet Plane.....

I’m leaving/ On a jet plane/ Don't know when I'll be back again....

Well, I do. I'll be back on Christmas Evening. (Not to be confused with Christmas Eve.) But still. I've done more flying today than I ever have before-- I've been on a plane or in an airport from 6:23 (Mountain time) to now, 5:30 pm (Eastern time). Still a couple hours before I'll reach my final destination.

Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays…..even when “home” is a state you’ve never visited before. Virginia, in this instance. Like Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes sang, “Home is wherever I’m with you.”

Salt Lake City’s winter has decided to be the gift that keeps on giving, in that it snowed all day yesterday and was still doing so when I left the house at five thirty this morning. Rest assured I talked to my car (Cathy) all the way to the airport, assuring that she could do it, she was a good car, and she didn’t want me dead. Although the freeway was scary I arrived just in time to catch the shuttle. Security was backed-up, but I made it to my gate four minutes before they started boarding. Crushed it.

Nice things about this flight (from Salt Lake to Dallas, Texas): I had the window seat, and the middle seat was empty. This resulted in Business Man and I using the middle seat as a home for my purse and his newspaper. It was pretty great. Unfortunately, our flight took off half an hour late due to needing to de-ice the wings. I knew that my connection was going to be tight, so I booked it out of there once we landed. I’ve always been impressed by Texas airports. Those I have visited are huge and know how to transport people quickly. I took the rail several terminals down, then made a mad dash to the gate.

However, my running was in vain. I watched the gate announcement change from “Flight Boarded/Closed” to “Flight Departed.”  I tried so hard, and got so far, but in the end it didn’t even matter. Haha. Actually, I wasn’t stressed at all. The benefit of having worked in an airport for several years means that it all seems par for the course. I’ve seen so many people miss flights that to pretend that it’s the end of the world is ludicrous. There was no specific reason I needed to land in Virginia at four pm instead of seven. Don’t worry, be happy. C:

I chatted with Nita from American Airlines to see what flight she could get me on. She was friendly and my kind of person. She rebooked me on the next flight from Dallas to Charlotte, North Carolina, which began bordering in ten minutes. I used those few minutes to use the restroom (I CANNOT use the restroom in the sky. It’s like camping. I’ll wait.) and buy a candy bar, as I was starving. I was in the Dallas airport for all of twenty minutes, but again I leave with a positive impression. I’ll never move to Texas, but I will certainly not complain about flying there.

The flight to Charlotte was uneventful. Shout out to the gentleman wearing a cowboy hat in the row behind me who helped me get my stuffed-to-the-brim carryon suitcase into the overhead bin. It was heavy, and my arms are weak. He also got it down at the end of the flight; his good karma levels are out of control.

So now I’m sitting in Charlotte, North Carolina, waiting another hour before flying into Lynchburg, Virginia, at which point I’ll be picked up and go to Buena Vista, where my family has lived since August. I’ve already looked up Brookstone (where I used to work) to see what was new. I was also surprised to see a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (also a former place of employment). I guess even though I spent eighteen months telling people that we had locations across the country I never quite believed that anyone who lived more than a few states from the Rockies had any right to that delicious chocolate. The couple behind me had an argument about whether or not their cousin is still married. One man has been cussing at his phone for about ten minutes (I think his luggage is lost). I’ve watched the sun set over the airfield and listened to the “Do NOT leave your luggage unattended” announcement about a hundred times.

I love seeing cities spread out underneath the plane as we take off or land. I love thinking about how this is someone’s home town. This is someone’s dream city. There are people who know this town as well as they know anything. And I’m a stranger, just dashing in and out. This level of mobility (I can fly across the country in the time it would take me to drive across Utah) makes the world seem a smaller and more connected place. Every time I travel I resolve to keep doing it.

 Stay tuned for more adventures on the east coast!