In the past 48 hours, I’ve been to six airports in five states, JAX, ATL, SLC, LGB, LAX & HNL. (In related news, LGB is still the same sucking refugee camp it was when Hodgie and I were stuck there last year.)
Meesh, my partner in crime from my Atlanta days was randomly on my flight to SLC – surprise friend No. 1! When my plan to fly standby fell through because of the blizzard, Vicky, my supervisor when I lived in Atlanta and now just a really great friend, offered to put me up at her house with her sweet family during my unexpected daylong stopover in Los Angeles. Surprise friend No. 2! Lastly, my high school friend Antoinette came to LAX just to give me a hug and send me off to see the world. Surprise friend No. 3! It was such a blessing to get all that last minute encouragement, especially from three gals I love so dearly.
While I had zero delays and two upgrades to first class (yay!) during my first 4 flights, some of the other flyers have been hell-bent on making me insane. Since I left Jacksonville at 5:30 a.m. on the 30th, I’ve been seated next to a toddler who whined, laid all over me and kicked my leg every 30 seconds for 6 hours while his mom dozed, have had the woman behind me angrily pound the touch screen on the back of my chair all the way across the USA and sat on the tarmac for what seemed like ages while the pilots tried to line up the plane with the gate arm thingy in Utah. The only thing that stopped me from whooping a stranger’s child on that flight to Hawaii was the fact that I really wanted to be in Fiji, and not stuck in jail for questioning.
Almost there…
Picture taken by the one island police officer at the local jail on Crooked Island, Bahamas, in 2009.
