On The Road

This is from a couple of weeks ago:

I'm just walking down the corridor, when this announcement comes over the loudspeaker:

“…this flight is severely overweight… we are looking for six volunteers to take the following flight at 3:12…”

Well, I wouldn’t say that they were severely overweight. I took a little walk by Gate 46 so I could judge for myself. They were a little on the chunky side, but to say that this flight was severely overweight may have been a bit of an exaggeration.

That definitely brightened up my day. I’m traveling today. And right now I’m in the Detroit airport. I actually like this place now… sort of. I’ve found a new place to eat. National Coney Island. Good stuff. Different than the old standby of Cincinnati’s Skyline Chili, but it’s tasty. And there’s also a Jose Cuervo Tequileria here, so the 3 hour layover is a little more fun this time with the aid of some the Agave plant’s wonderful uses.

The flight this morning was uneventful. Sort of just drifting in and out of sleep, working on a rough outline for my speech, thinking up plays for flag football, wondering how different my life would be had a couple other choices been made. I’m not sure if it was the 6 hours of sleep that I got last night (after not sleeping well [or much] the last few nights), but I was just in an introspective mood this morning. It carried over into my layover. I had some time so I took a lap around the airport. It’s always interesting.

Who works at the airport?

People without a lot of hope. It’s like the normal service industry that we see, only a little further down the totem pole. Generally, it’s a long way out of town, so there’s a big commute. There are some tough hours, since you need to be ready to sling hash for people getting in on the redeye. And you need to be open for people who are taking the redeye, too… I remember one of my old Illini Updates – these e-mails that I’d send off to my old high school crew during my freshman year, talking about life. I didn’t like Detroit airport back then. A lot of it was from the people who worked here. And boy, I shredded them apart. I didn’t think much about it then. But then again, I was an idiot 18-year old. Things are different now. I’m now an idiot 27-year old.

I was watching the dynamics in the diner. The servers? All white women. They were young, but looked defeated. There was some pleasure in the trite and trivial. But they looked like they were stuck. They had on a happy face when they were interacting with the others. But in their quiet moments, when they were eating, left to their own thoughts, there seemed to be something different. Something quieter, something a little sad. Maybe I had the wrong read. But it sort of depressed me. What if my life were just a little different. What if I wasn’t quite as smart, quite as lucky, born into quite as good a family, just built a little differently. Would that be me?

I’m not sure. And I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. There was a tequila and tonic (with extra lime) with my name written all over it. And it was good.

Who drinks a vodka-water, with lime?

People who are looking to get drunk, without tasting much, and worried about getting ticketed for underage drinking. I was out with CJ last night. Should’ve done some more work or gotten more sleep, but we needed to go out. We’re off at Clybourne, and we see a couple barcrawls going. One was the nursing students. Pretty solid crew, those nurses. Sort of made me want to turn and cough. The other crew was actually very clever. A 3-legged bar crawl, where the girls had their legs tied together and were stumbling around. Definitely good times watching the show. At one point, 4 of the girls stumble over to the bar where we were drinking and start flirting, but a purposeful flirt. They wanted someone to buy them a couple drinks since they had a big, black U stamped on their hands. Having no morals, I obliged, though they wanted vodka-waters, with lime. Didn’t think much of it until later. Just thought that it was a bland, tasteless drink. But then I realized that it was the perfect drink for freshman girls. They didn’t really like the taste of hard alcohols, so they were wanting to keep it sort of plain. They also wanted it to look like just water. So, in the little, clear, plastic cup was this clear liquid with just some lime. Probably didn’t taste like much. But it got the job done. Like I’ve said before. Youth is wasted on the young. If I could go back and take advantage of the energy, enthusiasm, etc. that I had back in the day, armed with what I know now… watch out world.

In a slump…

When you go 0 for 12 in baseball, it’s a little slump. I just walked around the gate prior to boarding. My guess was 0 for about 40. That’s a “get sent down to Triple A to get your swing fixed” sort of slump. Ouch.

Anyway, it’s time to board. Until next time.

-Chairman