12:04
Any trip to the airport can be a lot of fun if you have the time and the parking funds to make it one. As a young teen with little to do, my friends and I used to drive to the airport at night and roam around in the empty terminals and dream of throwing blow out parties there. We thought that the airport was a perfect place for a bash because it had the parking, the sound system, the bathrooms, the space and was always empty at night. I'm sure that other city airports might have been busier at night, but my home town landing strip was never busy, not even during the day, which made it ideal for a world-wide bash.
I spent my day fetching my brother from the airport in Spokane and I had to leave pretty early to insure that I got there in time. Spokane is a few hours away from the forgottens and with country traffic, it can take forever. It doesn't really matter where you live, or when you leave for the airport, you will never make it to the airport exactly when you should be there. You will either get there hours early, feeling that you are on top of things, only to find that you waste away your time cushion looking for a parking spot OR you get there late, spend the same amount of time looking for parking, get inside the terminal only to find that you have no way of finding the person you were looking for and then spending more time in the terminal fretting and tallying up a large parking bill OR, even worse, arriving too early, getting a juicy parking spot and having to spend an eternity waiting in a terminal for your passenger pick up to arrive.
Waiting for your "passenger" to arrive is an amazing masterpiece of an emotional mess. You have to look at everybody that passes so you don't lose your pick up. After a while, your head starts to spin and the colors start to blur. As more times passes you begin to question whether or not you even remember what the person looks like you came to pick up. Were they tall? Could a 6 foot 4 man with dark hair become a 5 foot 1 blonde haired woman? Sure. Why not? The more time that passes while you are waiting and looking, the deeper your indecisiveness grows. I'm sure there are people in airports all across the world that have been sitting in terminals for years, still waiting for someone to get off a plane that they know so they can leave. I'm sure their families have given up on them and assumed they were lost in some freak car accident or were abducted by aliens. No, they're still alive. They're just at the airport, waiting for flight 320 from Fargo. I'm sure by the time they finally do find someone that they know, or someone they know finally finds them, that the thought of their large parking bill might just make them abandon their car and take a cab home.
It's in those long waiting-for periods, that I remember the dreams of the large party. I look around at the people walking, waiting, crying, laughing, drinking and scampering about and I think of them as the party. I think of them as enjoying the fiesta, not being dictated by schedules on television monitors. I think of the monitors as directions to other kinds of party rooms in the airport and the screen indicates what time that each one will begin. A friendly, "on time" is displayed to let the party-goer know that they haven't missed it yet. In fact, as they walk away, you can see the relief on their face as they head off toward their party.
The security at the party is pretty tight. No one gets in here without making sure their feet don't stink. They have to pass through a body odor detector too make sure they won't offend and their "b" of "b.y.o.b." (the latter b) is scanned to make sure it isn't spoiled, flat or warm. I like this daydream, can you tell?
I arrived at the airport with enough time to spare. I spent more time looking for a parking space than it took my brother to fly from Salt Lake City, but I finally found somewhere to park. I noticed that I was taking his luggage into consideration when I was looking for a place to park. An odd thought to have really, but it occured to me that luggage always get a mental mention when you have it with you. But, my brother, he's a pretty strong dude and for me to think that I shouldn't park too far away so he wouldn't "tire" from the walk was pretty ridiculous. But I did it. I spent thirty minutes slinking around like a vulture waiting for a close place to park, just so he wouldn't have to lug his bag, which has wheels, a long way. In the time it took for me to park, a man parked his car, walked into the airport and returned with his passenger pick up and left. Yes, it was his spot that I took.
You will never be on time. There is no such thing. Thinking that you can plan out how much time you will spend at an airport is foolish. You think you know, but you don't know and you can't know. I thought I was being cleaver getting a metered parking space as opposed to a garage parking space, I thought that would save me money AND time, but two trips back to the car from the airport and five quarters later, I am questioning my imperfect plan.
He's tired. I'm tired. We are headed home. The evening sun is coming in quickly as the season dictates at this time of year. The harvested, golden brown fields of the Palouse are warm and motionless against the ever darkening sky. As we pull into town, the "aphids of the apples" are everywhere and itf I haven't told you about them before, they are the tiny ity-bity bugs that look like small flecks of cotton and they float around in the early morning and the early evening making the world around you look like a snowglobe. They don't make a sound, they don't bite and they die by the thousands as you walk by, or should I say, through them. They love fruit trees and are usually only found where an orchard is near. This is Washington, where isn't there an orchard? Their daily timetable suggests that they only like to arrive when they will be truly appreciated, when their cotton-like bodies can reflect the softest light from the sun to their fullest ability. It only lasts a short while and if you can stand still, and watch them, it's like a lovely party, filled with enjoyable guests, that will have to leave as soon as their flight arrives.
I spent my day fetching my brother from the airport in Spokane and I had to leave pretty early to insure that I got there in time. Spokane is a few hours away from the forgottens and with country traffic, it can take forever. It doesn't really matter where you live, or when you leave for the airport, you will never make it to the airport exactly when you should be there. You will either get there hours early, feeling that you are on top of things, only to find that you waste away your time cushion looking for a parking spot OR you get there late, spend the same amount of time looking for parking, get inside the terminal only to find that you have no way of finding the person you were looking for and then spending more time in the terminal fretting and tallying up a large parking bill OR, even worse, arriving too early, getting a juicy parking spot and having to spend an eternity waiting in a terminal for your passenger pick up to arrive.
Waiting for your "passenger" to arrive is an amazing masterpiece of an emotional mess. You have to look at everybody that passes so you don't lose your pick up. After a while, your head starts to spin and the colors start to blur. As more times passes you begin to question whether or not you even remember what the person looks like you came to pick up. Were they tall? Could a 6 foot 4 man with dark hair become a 5 foot 1 blonde haired woman? Sure. Why not? The more time that passes while you are waiting and looking, the deeper your indecisiveness grows. I'm sure there are people in airports all across the world that have been sitting in terminals for years, still waiting for someone to get off a plane that they know so they can leave. I'm sure their families have given up on them and assumed they were lost in some freak car accident or were abducted by aliens. No, they're still alive. They're just at the airport, waiting for flight 320 from Fargo. I'm sure by the time they finally do find someone that they know, or someone they know finally finds them, that the thought of their large parking bill might just make them abandon their car and take a cab home.
It's in those long waiting-for periods, that I remember the dreams of the large party. I look around at the people walking, waiting, crying, laughing, drinking and scampering about and I think of them as the party. I think of them as enjoying the fiesta, not being dictated by schedules on television monitors. I think of the monitors as directions to other kinds of party rooms in the airport and the screen indicates what time that each one will begin. A friendly, "on time" is displayed to let the party-goer know that they haven't missed it yet. In fact, as they walk away, you can see the relief on their face as they head off toward their party.
The security at the party is pretty tight. No one gets in here without making sure their feet don't stink. They have to pass through a body odor detector too make sure they won't offend and their "b" of "b.y.o.b." (the latter b) is scanned to make sure it isn't spoiled, flat or warm. I like this daydream, can you tell?
I arrived at the airport with enough time to spare. I spent more time looking for a parking space than it took my brother to fly from Salt Lake City, but I finally found somewhere to park. I noticed that I was taking his luggage into consideration when I was looking for a place to park. An odd thought to have really, but it occured to me that luggage always get a mental mention when you have it with you. But, my brother, he's a pretty strong dude and for me to think that I shouldn't park too far away so he wouldn't "tire" from the walk was pretty ridiculous. But I did it. I spent thirty minutes slinking around like a vulture waiting for a close place to park, just so he wouldn't have to lug his bag, which has wheels, a long way. In the time it took for me to park, a man parked his car, walked into the airport and returned with his passenger pick up and left. Yes, it was his spot that I took.
You will never be on time. There is no such thing. Thinking that you can plan out how much time you will spend at an airport is foolish. You think you know, but you don't know and you can't know. I thought I was being cleaver getting a metered parking space as opposed to a garage parking space, I thought that would save me money AND time, but two trips back to the car from the airport and five quarters later, I am questioning my imperfect plan.
He's tired. I'm tired. We are headed home. The evening sun is coming in quickly as the season dictates at this time of year. The harvested, golden brown fields of the Palouse are warm and motionless against the ever darkening sky. As we pull into town, the "aphids of the apples" are everywhere and itf I haven't told you about them before, they are the tiny ity-bity bugs that look like small flecks of cotton and they float around in the early morning and the early evening making the world around you look like a snowglobe. They don't make a sound, they don't bite and they die by the thousands as you walk by, or should I say, through them. They love fruit trees and are usually only found where an orchard is near. This is Washington, where isn't there an orchard? Their daily timetable suggests that they only like to arrive when they will be truly appreciated, when their cotton-like bodies can reflect the softest light from the sun to their fullest ability. It only lasts a short while and if you can stand still, and watch them, it's like a lovely party, filled with enjoyable guests, that will have to leave as soon as their flight arrives.
posted by Daniel Loomis | 6:34 PM
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