I told my wife we’d have to leave early in the morning to catch our flight back to North Carolina, and she shot back a cold, level look.
“How early,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
I said, “So early that we might as well just stay up all night so we don’t have to get out of bed at 4:30 tomorrow morning.”
So early that I already packed all my stuff up and put it in the car last night and now I don’t have any deodorant. Hard to face the day without Old Spice Smoldering Campfire scent guarding my sweat glands.
So I use my wife’s instead and now I smell like an ice cream cone.
Airports are my maximum discomfort stations in life. I am always on edge prior to a flight and by “prior to a flight” I mean prior to buying a ticket. And realizing I’ll be forced to go to the airport if I buy a ticket means odds are even I just won’t buy a ticket.
Me rolling down 101 on my way to SFO is like you rolling down the hallway on a stretcher at Ukiah Adventist on your way to surgery.
Last time we flew out of SFO I left my suitcase in the taxi. I should have left my suitcase on the sidewalk and snuck back into the taxi myself.
Nothing goes right for me at an airport. My brain blanks because I’m nervous. I get in the security line and someone tells me to show a boarding pass and open my carry-on bag, and I forget the definition of “boarding pass” and how to operate a zipper.
And I left my carry-on in the taxi. Oh wait—that was the other time we were in the airport, but never mind I won’t need luggage, I’ll just buy clothes when I get where I’m going. A pleading look at Trophy the wife: “Tell me again: Where am I going?”
So simple: baggage, tickets, timetables, gates, connecting flights, me with a sprained back and Trophy with a freshly broken right arm, plus we have a dog.
Longtime readers may remember we’ve had previous airport adventures with Sweetie, our highly trained and deeply reliable Therapeutic Service Animal complete with her bright red “THERAPY DOG! STAND BACK!” vest, a gold badge, documents, passport and the ability to speak three languages.
This morning is her second time strolling the concourse to Gate B-23, and both times I have walked directly behind her and both times she has, while prancing along briskly, extruded large steaming logs onto the polished floors. Maybe she’s trying to send me a message.
She drops these bombs without slowing, pausing, squatting or any other indication she’s about to engage in a bowel evacuation maneuver. Sweetie just skips along la la la and out they pop. I’d like to know how she does it; I could use a weapon like that.
Then the flight and the terrific in-flight meal of a mini-bag of mini-pretzels, the exciting arrival at the Charlotte airport in pitch dark followed by a fun drive home.
And finally we relax and enjoy all the comforts of our lovely cabin nestled in the cozy warmth of the American south. Except it was snowing.
Trophy, a lifelong California lass who thinks “cold” begins at the point you can’t go swimming in your neighbor’s backyard pool, is literally shocked at temperatures in the mid-20s. She insists the 12-second walk from the car into the house gave her frostbite.
Well, when you’ve got lemons, as the old saying goes… So I tried making ice tea from the icy pellets. The 22-degree temperatures were harder to convert into cheerful winter wonderland singalongs, and our morning conversations have all been quite frosty, heh heh, since we arrived.
The Fire This Time
1) Has anyone considered the possibility the fires eating Los Angeles are acts of terrorism?
2) How does the removal of dams and their abundant reservoirs of water look now? Yes indeed, a natural, flowing, dreamy river flowing lazily into a placid pond through a water treatment facility is very nice and might make a nice photo in the 2026 California calendar.
Photos of a dead and still smoldering LA might not.
But as my pappy always told me, “Before you tear something down, make sure you know why it was put up in the first place.”
And maybe it’s not too late for Northern California to halt its reckless plans to rip up old dams, and not just for potential fire protection. When the dams are removed the years of sludge get washed downstream and all the fish you were bragging about saving get killed.
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