Hurry Up and Wait – Traveling is SO Glamorous
With the delays out of LAX, we arrived into CDG with minutes to make my connection. I dashed through the airport like OJ Simpson in those old Alamo (or was it Avis?) commercials, ya know, before “the juice is loose” took on new meanings. I fretted for no reason as the security recheck was deserted and I got through faster than I’ve done at TSA precheck in the US.
I had time to spare do stopped in the kids play area to snap a selfie with a Rapunzel standee… but conked my head on her low hanging castle roof which clearly had been built for younger and therefore smaller people. You know that scene in Star Trek V when Scotty says he knows the ship like the back of his hand? The clonking sound his head makes striking a support beam wasn’t as loud or tremulous as the one my head made on Rapunzel’s flying buttress.
Fact is I needn’t have hurried anyway because a “technical fault” was delaying boarding a few minutes… which became half an hour… then another half hour… and yet one more half hour.
Hurry up and wait… wait and hurry up with half hour intervals, only to be told it would be another half hour four (4) times.
I had been scheduled to arrive into Dubai at 11:20 pm; I even prebooked a cab to my hotel for 12:30 am. But the cascading delays meant the new ETA was 1:20 am.
But because the aircraft had been sitting on the tarmac for an extra two hours, and because it was 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit in the City of Lights, we then had to go through that chemically noxious de-icing procedure.
We finally took off and the pilot promised to make up for some of the delays. The navicomputer displayed on our screens says we should arrive at 1:32 am. I reckon with customs, immigration, visa issuance, and baggage, coupled with taxi transit time, ill be lucky to get to my hotel by 3:30 am. That gives me 27 hours before the Dubai Marathon starts. Time, time, time. It is a cruel mistress.
***
I’m in the second to last row of the plane; the guy sitting across the aisle sounds like Ferris Bueller’s pre-recorded sick day audio tracks… only the sound is not produced on a Casio keyboard, it’s real. I think he may be coughing up a lung. Yeesh.
And since no piece on the glamor of travel would be complete without those oh so appetizing in-flight meal shots, here’s what I had on my AirFrance flights today, starting on the West Coast of the US and going all the way to the UAE. There’s a reason airplane food was a staple of standup comedy for generations.
I went with the pasta for dinner:
The “omelette” was the only choice for breakfast … and we all thought French cuisine was haute:
My lunch? Dinner? Third meal on the flight to Dubai was a choice between the same pasta or a chicken dish. I thought I’d try the chicken to mix things up. A poor decision to be sure:
The pre-arrival snack was a choice of tuna or cheese sandwiches. I opted for cheese.
I’ve still got 1:27 minutes before we land and just finished reading a middling thriller. Exhausted but unable to sleep, my scraped elbow still tender any time I hit it just right, my head throbbing from the Tangled strike, I’m looking forward to being on the ground. And perhaps most of all I’m looking forward to brushing my teeth. I really should pack a toothbrush in my carry on.
No matter what damage I may have done or will do to my body whilst running, there is a level of control that is sorely lacking when relying on airlines, public transport, or traffic of any sort. A therapist might say I’m a megalomaniacal control freak; I’d say I just gotta be me.
As is often the case on long haul travel, I think of my mom’s lament: “If only we had a transporter!”
Beam me up, Scotty.
***
One last note – we’ve just landed. It’s 1:24 am.