More Whirlwinds, Part VI: The Voyage Home

when we last left our intrepid heroes...

There is a reason that it is a very, very bad idea to eat five tacos, two fried chimichangas, rice and beans, a full chile relleno, and drink three beers before a day of flying halfway across the country, but it's not the reason you'd expect -- I found that at 3AM Wednesday morning, I awakened with some of the worst heartburn and acid reflux I've ever had in my life. So bad that I got up and scoured the house for Tums, Zantac, Prevacid, Tagamet, etc -- anything I could take that would stop the discomfort.

I also awoke to three text messages from Lady, and they were not good news. She had arrived safely in the midwest, yes, but her friend (who was driving Lady's car to pick her up) had blown a tire and was stuck halfway to the train station. This means that not only was Lady stranded in the train station in the middle of the night, but her friend and car were stranded on the side of the interstate in the middle of nowhere, and neither of them could do anything about either situation.

For the record, Lady is a poor college student just like me, and also just like me, she has no family out here in the midwest. Having something like this happen isn't just bad, but catastrophic to a certain extent. They say money can't buy happiness, but having money sure solves a metric fuckton of otherwise horrific problems. Neither Lady nor I have any money to spare -- we're just scraping by, her even more so than me. Because of this, it's not like Lady was able to afford a $100 cab ride back to school from the train station, or pay a tow-truck driver however much it would be to tow the car back to school -- not to mention figure out some way to get her friend (remember, she's stranded there along with the car) back to school as well. With me getting on a plane in but a few hours and with no money to spare either, there was absolutely fuck-all I could do to help the poor girl.

Also, because I was out of the T-Mobile network, the timestamps had been absolutely screwed up on the texts she'd sent me while I was sleeping -- I didn't know how long before I'd awakened that she'd sent me the texts, because they gave bizarre times like Monday 2:37PM, Tuesday 9:41 AM, etc. Which, obviously, were quite wrong.

I had but one idea, and one only, and I texted it to her: "If all else fails, use what money you have and get on a train going west that will go through Newton. I will pick you up once I land in Wichita and will drive you back to school in the morning." This was the only idea I had, and it would have been a roundabout way of doing things, but it was better than her being stuck in a train station four hours away for who knows how long. It wasn't a great idea, I'll admit, but it was still an idea.

Some of you may be asking "if she was still stuck there, why wouldn't you just go pick her up and take her back to school?" This is a reasonable question, to be sure. The train station is over four hours away from Newton, where I live. I would have had to get off the plane in Wichita, drive home to make sure the cats were okay, get back in the car and drive another four hours to the station, pick her up, drive the two hours or so to take her back to school, and then drive the three hours it takes to get from her school back to my house. For those of you keeping count, that would have been nine hours of driving, and about a 500-mile round trip total -- or, in my car, about $80 worth of gasoline (and needing more once I got back home). Not to mention that I'm sure that if I made my car drive 500 miles in one day, it might explode, completely die, blow a head gasket, etc. Simply driving her to school and back from Newton, while not exactly an ideal situation either, would be cheaper and less stressful on my car (the drive between the two places, really, is a straight line for about 80% of it), with the added bonus that even if she was shaken and frazzled by the entire travel experience, we would've at least gotten some time together in the meantime.

In the meanwhile, my mother was still awake at 3:30 or so, watching some shitty movie on cable, making sure the dog was okay (he was sleeping most of the night, but for the past few days he'd been needing to go out over and over because of his intestinal problems, sometimes once or more an hour). I hadn't gotten any responses from Lady to my texts, but the anxiety about whether she was safe/okay kept me awake along with my acid reflux/heartburn. I figured that whether she was still stuck in the train station or not, she had found a way to get some sleep. I made something to eat and made a pot of coffee -- I was now awake for the day, with little else to do until my dad woke up in the morning. By around 5 or 6, my stomach had settled down, and I spent those early morning hours watching the news. Around 7, my dad got up and began getting ready for the drive to Pittsburgh.

It was hard to leave my family home again, and understandably so. As glad as I am that I moved out and moved on with my life as an adult, there's always something intangible I'll miss about living in West Virginia, living in that house, and waking up in the morning to sit on the porch with a cup of coffee and a cigarette while the sun rises. There's something about the view, the environment, and the climate there that I'll miss. There's something about the easy familiarity I have with Morgantown, with my parents, with my friends who still live there -- that something can't really be described or truly be put into words.

Despite that, there are many factors (many, many factors) that prevent me from ever wanting to live in West Virginia again.

Because the dog took his sweet time on his morning walk, my dad and I didn't get on the road until 8:30 or so -- a full half-hour after we wanted to leave. When we left, I gave my mom a long, tight hug and a kiss. I don't know when I'll see her again for sure, though Lady and I are planning a trip back out there sometime this summer if at all monetarily possible. Mom is usually pretty weepy and/or sad to see me go, but this time she was able to contain her emotions for the most part -- possibly because we were short on time, but also probably because she knows that I would stay longer if I didn't have to worry about my cats, or if I didn't have to get back to school the next week to teach and take my classes.

Despite it being rush hour in Pittsburgh, we were able to navigate through the traffic and get to the airport fairly easily/quickly. I had a little spare time, so I smoked a few cigarettes and talked to my dad for a little while before going inside, printing my boarding passes, and getting in the line for the security screening. He came with me, but that was as far as they let non-flying people into the airport. I gave him a hug, told him to be careful going home, and we parted ways. The line was long; I knew I'd be waiting a while. The security line in Pittsburgh's airport is always really long, as it's an incredibly busy airport. I estimated my wait time would be about 45 minutes, judging from previous experience there as well as how long the line was (I was about 50 yards or so from the TSA checkpoint).

However, one of the TSA guys walked by me, looked at me, and asked "Hey, are you traveling alone?"

"...yes..." I replied, blinking.

"And you only have the one bag?"

"Yep."

"Oh, well you don't have to use this line then, you can go up there to the express line."

"Oh, thanks! Awesome."

A 45-minute wait then turned into about a 5-minute wait, as I was able to get into that line and get through security quickly.

However.

Two people in front of me, a lady with all sorts of metal jewelry on had been detained because she kept setting off the metal detector. Over and over. I watched her set it off at least three times, perhaps because she had about five different necklaces on, huge hoop earrings, six rings, and fucking metal buckles all over her shirt. No, I'm not making that up. Why anyone would dress like this and expect to pass through airport security with no problems boggles the mind. Because of this lady, the people directly in front of me (as well as myself) got to experience the wonders of the backscatter X-Ray machine -- something I'd never gone through until then. You know what I mean, I'm sure; it's the machine that takes the X-Ray of you that people were soooo irrationally concerned about because it lets them see basically a naked photo of you (and radiation! OMG! etc). Yeah, well, they can look at my dick all they want; I just wanted to get on the fucking plane. It was an amusing experience; they make you stand with your hands in the air like you're praising Jesus, or something, and then tell you "okay, you're fine, be on your way." At least it lets me avoid the metal detector thing, which is slightly ironic because this time I made damned sure to get every piece of metal off my body before going through security, including my belt and sunglasses.

I did not hear back from Lady until I was at the gate for my flight; she called me and told me that she had gotten back to school; several other friends from school had come to pick her up at the train station and to pick up her friend stranded with the car as well, but the car was still on the side of the interstate and she didn't know how she'd get it back to school.

"Well, how far away from school is it?" I asked.

She named a town that was about an hour away from hers. That was, really, almost exactly half the distance between the school and the train station, unless my distance math was wrong.

"Okay," I said, "Well, once you're done with classes or between classes, look up tow trucks or places who can tow the car in the area. Call some of them. Tell them what happened, and get the cheapest one to take the car back to [town], preferably right to the Walmart so that they can put a new tire on it today. If you run yourself out of money doing this I'll pay for it once you come in this weekend, to make up for it. A tow truck's going to be about $40 or so, maybe a little more or less, and a tire's going to be about $100, roughly, but do it today."

I was fully prepared to give her the money to make up for it; I do have $140 to spare, despite how destitute I am most of the time, while she does not. I'll also remind you that she was coming in that weekend to stay with me anyhow, so having the car was rather important. What I did not tell her (or at least I don't think I told her), so that I didn't further stress her out, was that if you leave a car on the side of the interstate for too long -- usually a day or so -- the highway patrol will mark/flag it with an orange sticker-like thing, and they'll tow it to an impound facility...which you will then have to pay more to get it out of. So yeah, it was imperative that she get it back and fixed ASAP. She told me she'd do what she could, but I could tell that she was already supremely stressed and sleep-deprived from the trip back to school and that this was just one more bullshit thing on her plate that she had to deal with, but shouldn't have had to worry about. And it was, of course. Lady is really strong and can take care of any obstacle that life throws at her -- it's one of the many, many things I love and admire about her -- but this was just one more thing that was stressful and would overload her even more. That's one of the reasons I was trying to help her as much as humanly possible, but again, being stuck in an airport and/or on two different flights all day, there wasn't much I could do.

When we hung up, I found out that my flight had been delayed. A familiar sense of deja-vu began washing over me, as you'll recall that my flight into Minneapolis from Wichita on the previous Friday had been delayed as well, and I was already envisioning another "sprint to the tram and then to the gate" sort of experience in Minneapolis.

"The plane will land here in Pittsburgh in about fourteen minutes," the gate attendant said over the intercom to us, "and as soon as we get the passengers and crew de-planed we will begin the boarding process."

Okay, that's good, I thought.

"We have checked ahead with Minneapolis-St. Paul and it looks like all of you who will be making connecting flights this afternoon should be able to make them just fine, despite the delay," he continued. "We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you again for choosing Delta to fly with today."

Even better, I thought.

Right on time (though half an hour late, of course) I was on the plane and we were able to lift off from Pittsburgh with little issue. This was a much smaller plane than I was anticipating, however, and because of that I could not fit my bag under the seat OR in the overhead compartment. I got it about halfway under the seat and let my foot rest on the part that stuck out for the entire flight -- which, of course, was highly uncomfortable and made my knee ache horribly. The guy in the seat next to me was a bit of an asshole, too.

Anyway. We landed in Minneapolis and it was very gray and depressing outside, and I had about 30 minutes until my flight to Wichita would depart. Luckily for me, we had landed in the same terminal that my next flight would take off from, so all I had to do was walk from one gate to another one at the end of the terminal -- about 300 yards or so, people-mover included -- before I could sit down and relax. I turned my phone back on and texted Lady that I was safely on the ground, and sent out a tweet that Minneapolis looked like a wholly depressing place.

When I finally got on the plane bound for Wichita, I found that it was larger and a bit more comfortable to fly on. This time, I was on the left side of the plane, and was able to have a little more leg-room. The guy who sat next to me was just a kid, no older than seventeen or eighteen. He looked exhausted.

"Where you comin' from, man?" I asked.

"Fairbanks, Alaska."

"To Wichita?"

"Yep. Visiting family. Spring break. Two days of flying. What about you?"

"Doing the same; flying back to Wichita from Pittsburgh, just visited my own family over break."

The kid was pretty cool; throughout the entire flight he watched The Fighter on his netbook. I, meanwhile, passed the hell out until nearly our final descent into Wichita. We were making good time -- the flight wasn't supposed to be on the ground in Wichita until 4:12 PM; we were on our final approach by about 3:50, a few thousand feet off the ground and gliding in.

"Welcome to Mid-Continent Airport," the pilot said over the intercom, "where the local time is 3:52 PM and the weather is rainy and 45 degrees."

...say what?

When I had left Pittsburgh, it was gorgeous. The temperature was about 80, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It was beautiful. Minneapolis had been dingy gray and cloudy, but I hadn't gone outside there (obviously). Getting back to Wichita, it's 35 degrees colder than it was in Pittsburgh, and pouring rain? Oh yes. Welcome back to Kansas, Brandon.

I looked out the window as the plane pulled up to the terminal, slowly, and saw that it was not only raining, but it was a horrific torrential downpour, raining so hard that you could barely see the terminal building through it. Greeeeeeeeeat. However, I was safely back on the ground, and I'd made it back to Kansas from my front porch West Virginia in the time frame of a little less than seven hours, two of which were driving and a third waiting in two different airports. Air travel is fast, son.

I got off the plane and texted Lady again to let her know I was safe on the ground in Wichita. I texted Andrea to tell her as well, and tried calling my parents but couldn't reach them. I was finally able to get ahold of them once I was sitting in my car, soaked to the bone because I'd had to park in long-term parking in the middle of nowhere. I waited for a good twenty minutes, during which I plugged in my GPS and let it charge a bit while smoking a cigarette, to let the rain lighten up a little bit. It wouldn't. Sighing, I told my car "Hello, old friend," and started her up to make my drive back home.

For those of you who haven't driven a lot in the rain, let me tell you that during rush hour traffic on two of the busiest highways in the Wichita area, it's not fun. No, it's not fun at all. It was raining so hard I could barely see even with the wipers on at full speed, and it was freezing because I had gotten so wet on the walk from the shuttle bus back to the car. Adding insult to injury, it was $36 to even get my car out of the parking lot, since I'd left it there on Friday morning.

By the time I finally made it back to Newton, I was exhausted and didn't want to cook. I had very little food in the house anyhow because I'd been gone for a week and didn't want to buy a bunch of groceries beforehand (obviously). I stopped at Walmart on the way home and purchased a sub from their deli, reloaded on cigarettes and coffee, and finally, finally came home -- burned out, face covered in five days' worth of stubble, bags under my eyes.

The house was as I'd left it, for the most part. The cats were perfectly fine; they hadn't torn anything up or gotten into anything while I'd been gone, and they'd only consumed about half the food/water I'd put out for them. Usually, Sadie will spill the water the very first day I'm gone, and they'll empty their food dish shortly thereafter because they eat like hogs. This time, however, they seemed to be pretty subdued during my time away -- and amazingly enough, all of them came out to see me, came out to spend as much time with me as possible, which is a first. Usually when I've been gone for a long(ish) trip, the girls will hide under the bed for a few hours, scared that someone is in the house with them again, until they realize that it's just me and come back out.

Once I'd settled back in with new coffee, new smokes, and my sandwich, I got online to talk to Lady. In the time I'd been flying/landing/driving, one of her (very nice) professors had taken her to pick up the car -- Lady has full AAA coverage, but they wouldn't tow it without her there -- and had it towed to Walmart to put a new tire on it. Lady's mother had paid for the tire. Lady herself was taken out to dinner with said professor (female professor, no worries) to de-stress, and finally, all was as it should have been -- Lady and I were both home safely, the tire on the car was fixed and she had the use of said car again, and my first half of break was over.

I wish there was more to tell to end the story, but there really isn't. Lady, while nervous about something else going bad on her car, made it to Newton that weekend (and we had a wonderful weekend together), and once she returned to school, I returned to school as well to start the final six weeks of the spring semester. Granted, this was two weeks ago now, and a lot has happened in the interim, but everything is back to normal for the most part. School is school, teaching is teaching, money is money. One month from tomorrow, I will be giving my students their final exam, and afterwards will bid the campus farewell for an indeterminate amount of time -- depending, of course, if I'm teaching or doing anything else this summer on campus. As frightening as it may be to run headlong into summer with no job or other sense of financial security as of yet, it is indeed a bit liberating (as always).

So, that's the story, folks. We can now return to your regularly-scheduled normal blog posts.