On a plane before you know it...

9/19/06

It’s been more than five years since I’ve been this way and it’s been like this for me. They ask me on Thursday afternoon if I can be there Monday morning bright and early and ready to contribute. Only this time I say, “No, sorry, but will Wednesday do?” And of course it will. And I didn’t even have to tell them I had a doctor’s appointment. But I’m glad I did so they don’t think me “difficult.”

I don’t really know what my standing is these days with my current employer, but whatever it is, it is what it is, and it is bound to improve with this trip. Unless something terrible happens and I fail to manage the situation. And there is a very good chance something terrible will happen. The customer is six months or more behind on routine maintenance and there are visible cracks in the levee. I’m supposed to repair the damage and shore up their system in a little over two weeks.

It’s been so long I had forgotten the rush I get from this kind work under this kind of pressure. And I know I’m a little rusty. But I’m good at managing people and situations and I’m confident this will go well. And sometimes managing a crisis can make you look better than if nothing had gone wrong at all. Step 1 will be to communicate the probability of an outage or two in the course of the next couple of weeks.

I started the day this morning with a subacromial cortisone injection and the rest of the day I felt vaguely weird – no pain when I expected it, odd pains when I didn’t – it’s weird how you get used to pain and make it your own. And when it changes, you feel different and you almost miss it. Come to think of it, emotional pain is like that too. There’s something I always knew but just now realized.

The rest of the day has been a blur of assembling documents – boarding passes, hotel and car reservations, project documentation and a shiny new composition book then taking far too long to pack far too many things and hoping TSA will close my suitcase properly for a change so my belongings don’t spread out like a yard sale around the baggage carousel. Then setting up a camera to video conference with the wife and kid (and maybe Scott) and maybe watch the dogs during the day. Then being all set and packed and ready and finding still more things to stuff in the few remaining nooks and crannies of my luggage. Then leaving fifteen minutes later than we planned and driving faster than I should but not at unsafe speeds – traffic never seems fast enough on your way to the airport or a tee time – and snaking through the canyons – it always makes me wonder who and how they decided to lay out the road through the mountains and feeling certain I could have done a better job of it – tunnels and more straight lines are in order.

Then the 5, one of the greatest highways in this great land and a posted limit of 70 and not much traffic and only a couple of trucks wanting to go 58 passing a couple of trucks going 54 making me brake hard a bit as they cut me off to pass throwing gravel and grit in to my grill and windshield. I mentally take down the 1-800-How’s-My-Driving number knowing I’ll never call.

Then more open road and hundreds of bugs on the windshield in a moment and for a few miles it sounds just like rain. And then I start getting little pleasure spasms and twitches and a little numbness in my butt as if the lidocain zylocain xylophone buckwheat zydeco or whatever they shot in my arm has dripped down there on the drive.

All the while having the best sort of half casual half serious all good conversation and sneaking loving looks and holding hands with my wife and best friend and soul mate and all that, and our boy popping out from under his headphones every once in a while to let us know he’s there and how he feels about Jack Johnson’s music but that he understands that we like it or to tell us something else he remembered that happened at school today or last week or when we lived in Petaluma or when Lauren and Paul came over that one time.

And the sunset it beautiful.

All of which makes it harder on me to go.

But I’m going.

And dusk is all around us- it didn’t creep up at all, and I tell Rachel to take it slow and drive safe going home and she says, “OK, bossy.”

And as darkness fell I realize we are going to make it in plenty of time, so I stop worrying about missing my flight and start worrying about does she have enough gas to get home? Honey I left a little money in the safe if you need it. Are they going to let me take my stainless steel water bottle on the plane? What if I dump out the water? Will they remember to feed the fish and water the plants and the lawn? Did I turn off the sprinkler? Did I pay PG&E (cable, taxes, water, garbage, etc.) And a whole gaggle of thoughts like that fly through my mind and all of a sudden the airport is improbably close – Airport Exit ½ Mile.

I ease back and over and we are there at the curbside, bags out and on the curb and trying to make our hurried hug last a couple of weeks and then they are gone and I’m all alone in a crowded airport again.

And I check my bags in an hour early for my 8:25 flight only to find it was a 7:00 flight- rookie move, that. And so the one thing I didn’t worry about is the one thing that went wrong. But she can get me on the 12:29 – oh it’s going to be a long day tomorrow after this – but no, she meant flight 1229 at 9:25, so it ain’t but so bad really.

So I had some dinner. And called my sister. And read a bit. And watched the end of a show and the beginning of the next on the terminal TV while trying to read and imagining where al of these people at the gate are going and why. And then I boarded and got a whole row to myself. And the flight attendant tended to my needs and filled my stainless steel water bottle with ice and canned water- weird that, canned water. It’s water. In a can.

And I’ve got my Bose Quiet Comfort II noise cancelling headphones and over 1,300 songs on my iPod and these three seats all to myself to spread out and rock out and let it all hang out in ink on pages- more than I’ve written in one sitting in years.

Then “DING” Ladies and Gentlemen, at this time we ask that you turn off and stow all portable electronic devices…

I am in Portland.

I will collect my belongings, pick up my car, and head to my hotel, and later this week I will blog this whole entry.

It’s later this week now. So far, so good. And although it was not explicitly prohibited, something tells me that hauling luggage through an airport is not the sort of thing I should have been doing after that shot. But what are you gonna do? I bought some ice packs. It was pretty bad for a while, but felt better today after I got some good rest by mistake (got home from work and to bed at 2:00 A.M. and set the alarm for 7:30 P.M. instead of 7:30 A.M. which let me sleep till 11:00).

Tomorrow I am going to go see Mt. St. Helens. I think.