Travels Well with Others

Away to Grand Rapids

"Well, I guess I've just entirely misunderstood the nature of duty-free stores then!" Michael huffed from our crowded seats in row 19. It was the final leg of our 38-hour journey, a brief commute from Atlanta to Grand Rapids, and we had barely made it.

"Honey, just...--" Oh no, I was about to say it. Two years of marriage and we are already here. "--shut up." And then, like it helped, I added, "please."

Away to Atlanta

Our thirteen-hour flight is coming to a panicky end. We have twenty minutes from that moment, in the back of a two-story overseas plane to disembark (oh, the shuffle of crowded airplane aisles!), exit one country's customs and enter another, navigate through baggage claim, and pass through security one more time before catching the next flight. Let the sweating begin.

"Okay, you grab the backpack and the purple bag. I'll get this one and the duffel," I carefully instruct as the plane continues to taxi for what seems like an eternity. He nods with not nearly enough conviction.

A few minutes later, doing that awkward half-stand thing while waiting to officially enter the aisle: "Wait, why don't I get the backpack? And you just go ahead and make as much progress as you can in the passport line. I'll catch up." Mike agrees.

After the stewardess asks those with a connection longer than 45 minutes to remain seated (they didn't) so others can deplane first: "Just be aggressive, okay? Be bold and just push through the crowd and-- Oh no. Am I sounding like--?"

"Yes."

"Oh gosh. I'm sorry. Just-- Ugh." I sigh, defeated. "Just take your time. If we make it, we make it. It's fine. Seriously," I say, but I know the shaking in my voice betrays my apparent courage. Mike's knowing smile doesn't help.

Despite the flight attendant's plea to humanity about not everyone deplaning at once (after first class, of course), there are three people behind us by the time we actually get off the plane. Mike, living up to his new "Gimpy" nickname, shuffles along behind me in a half-jog behind me while I tromp through the wide hallways with the shoulder bag, the duffel, and the roller suitcase. Look out, Atlanta.

Praising our ingenuity at not checking bags, we fly through the baggage claim area and arrive at the next level in our game: a uniformed man who instructs us to follow the ropes to get through the door behind him. ("That door? The one right behind you?") So we throw our weight to the left and follow the canvas barriers that mock us with their elastic frailty. The man behind us ducks under a few and hops in front of us. We get to the end of it and a woman in uniform asks where we are coming from.

"Thailand," Mike says, reasonably.

"Tokyo," I say, because that is the word all over the boarding pass I keep triple-checking.

Fail.

She furrows her eyebrows at us and asks to see our passports and boarding passes. Cue frantic digging into any of the various pockets that have been deemed important in the last two weeks. We display them proudly and she directs us to the right. No! The exit is right behind her, but she has already signaled to someone down that hallway, and they have nodded their acceptance of the two passengers who don't even know what country they woke up in that morning. As Mike and I grumble to each other about which of us answered incorrectly, we approach the other agent who grunts and points to the labyrinth of empty lanes behind her. The quickly moving traffic of our fellow passengers on their way to their next flight taunts us from the other side of our glass-enclosed prison.

The "lane" starts to wind us around and around in the empty room, causing me to cry outloud "Are they messing with us?!" In protest, we spin around on our heels and march back to the woman, daring to attempt to walk past here to wherever we're being directed.

"Where are you going?" she snorts. "You have to go through the lane."

But! But!

We hang our heads in shame and look like idiots as we weave in and out and around the empty room, our well-educated brains demoted to a rat race of canvas ropes. At the end is an empty security machine with a bored looking man staring off into space. We stop at the end of the lane, trained like those rats to only progress when told near these security machines, and he gestures us forward.

"Do you have any food in your bags?" he asks, bored and full of authority just the same.

"No," we answer, but then I spit out the confession that we do have a granola bar--"unwrapped, though!"--in our bag.

"Any vegetation?" We shake our heads. "You're sure you don't have any?" Um.... yes? He asks again about food, and we throw our bags on the conveyor and walk to the end.

"Step back," the man half-yells over the machine. I take a step back. "Further." What?

"To your left," Mike politely translates. I step right. (Long story, but these are the rules in our marriage.)

"Keep going," the man says.

"What do you want?" I more-than-half-yell back at him. He looks pointedly at Mike, who is waiting fairly patiently at the actual end of the machine with our bags. I have somehow misinterpreted a bend in the conveyor as the end. Oh. Oh for crying outloud.

We run around the corner, and a man directs us to the security lane at the end of the row. We walk all the way down there, but it is a door to a seemingly empty hallway, so we turn around, ready to enter another lane right in front of us.

"No," the man says. "The end of the row!"

"But it's not a lane," Mike says. Again, the bored and authoritative glare turns us around to follow his directions once again, and we enter through the door and, sure enough, down a hallway is a random security lane.

Cue the dance.

Passport and boarding pass in mouth. (I know, but it's the only way!) Laptop out of main backpack pocket. Into crate. One, two, three sandwich bags of liquids out of backpack front pocket, shoulder bag, and duffel. Into crate. Flip flops. Flip flops. Into crate. False gesture into pockets just before passing through metal detector to show them you care.

"Is this your bag?" one of the attendants asks, pulling out a plastic bottle of water from my bag.

Oh dear God. "Yes."

"I am going to have to throw this away," he explains, probably more politely than I deserved. "Unless you want to drink it? You'll have to exit security and come back through without it."

The bottle was the Japanese Pocari Sweat, and it had been a sentimental purchase Mike made in the Tokyo airport--it seemed like days ago now. He'd been dreaming about that drink since his first trip to Japan years ago. I look at Mike, on the other side of the detector, struggling with his belt. A clock is ticking on the wall behind him, and our plane is minutes from departing.

"Just toss it," I say, martyring the bottle for our final leg, for our desire to simply get home, for our marriage.

Mike catches up with me, and we run down the hallway and catch the tram in seconds because, of course, our gate is the furthest one from the international terminal. We hop off at the stop for Terminal D. Only it's not. It's an empty lobby with a long hallway to the right and an elevator and door to the left. We spin around, but the tram has left us.

"Which way?" Mike says. Near the elevator is a sign that says "Terminal D upstairs," so we push the button and wait. A man comes walking out the door next to the elevator.

"Which way is Terminal D?" we ask him, out of breath now. He sort of gestures behind him, but it's clear he doesn't know, and the elevator arrives. I yank Mike inside. I feel like water pouring in around our feet would be appropriate about now.

"But he said that way!" Mike protests. I keep pushing the button for the next level, but it isn't working. "Heather, this is a service elevator!"

We fly out the elevator, down the hallway, and turn the corner to find a well-marked escalator to the Land of Terminal D. We are at our gate in minutes.

The scanner won't accept our boarding passes, but they key us in manually and we walk through the doors. Only to find an emergency exit and a set of concrete stairs that look like they are from a horror movie. Mike is dismayed and considers the emergency exit just to get arrested and end his woes. But we drag ourselves down the steps and are led out into the rain to walk to our tiny commuter plane. We slip and slide in our flip flops, waiting patiently while a man takes our roller suitcase and tells us we have to check it plane-side.

"What about this one?" I ask, pointing to the just-as-big duffel on my shoulder.

"It's fine," he says.

So we hike up the slippery steps to the plane. We're in separate seats, so Mike puts the backpack in the overhead above his row. Only it barely fits. Which isn't a good sign for my duffel that is three times as big.

I turn around to the flight attendant. "I don't think this bag will fit," I tell her.

"Sure it will!" she chirps. I am too tired to do anything but tilt my head and squint at her. "Go ahead and try it!" I squeeze forward a few rows to the next open bin, and go through the motions of "trying" it to appease her so she'll let me check the bag plane-side. When I turn around to accept her acquiescence, there are now several more passengers between us.

I pass Mike in his seat and sit in my seat with my wet bag bulging over my lap, too tired to consider any other ideas. When the flight attendant comes by, she tells me I won't be able to keep my bag on my lap during the flight.

"I know," I sigh. She suggests I shove it under my seat and, amazingly, it works.


Away to Grand Rapids

"Ooh, you're in flip flops!" remarks the delightfully Midwestern lady who has magically appeared in the seat next to me. She notices my embarrassed shrug because she quickly adds, "Coming from someplace warm?" When I tell her we were on our way home from Thailand, she teases me about the snow and returns happily to the arranging of her paperback and glasses. Mike, a few rows ahead, turns around and asks for his book.

"Oh, would you like to sit with your husband?" she asks.

"No, it's fine--really," I say, but she insists, unbuckling her seat-belt and already gesturing to Mike to join me a few rows back.

When he plops down, I remember. "Honey, I had to throw away your Japanese water." I am staring blankly out the window, defeated.

"What?"

"That bottle of--Sweat? Pocari Sweat? The guy made me throw it out..."

"But why?"

I start to explain the four-year old rule about liquid on planes, but he protests, "I bought it at the airport!"

"I know, but it's still a bottle of water and after customs, it's probably--"

"I was looking forward to drinking the rest of that. I was saving it! Did you tell him I bought it in the airport?"

"Honey, I'm sorry. I really am, but--"

Away to Who Knows Where Next

In bed a few nights later, I told Mike that I'm going to blog about how I wanted to kill him on the last leg. "You know, like that Peru essay I wrote," I say. That "Peru essay" was my capstone paper for my undergraduate writing degree, and the opening line included something about our honeymoon, killing Mike, and a boiling vat of french fry oil.

"What is with you and--?"

It just hit me too. "Oh my word! I don't know!"

Mike smiled. "And here I was thinking how well we travel together."