HALFWAY THERE

At 1:30 AM Thursday morning the first of three alarms wakes me.  A latte and oatmeal get me going.  My eyes are not quite bright but the rest of me is bushy-tailed after five hours sleep.  Not that hard falling asleep at 8:30 PM. 

In the Van

Two cars and one truck are all I see between my house in Bishop and the Atlanta Highway.  It’s warm by my standards (44 degrees).  I’m wearing three shirts and one Icelandic hat.   The excellent driver of the Groome van arrives precisely at 6:40 and stays exactly between the lane lines the whole way to the airport.  Two fellow passengers sleep the whole way. 


 TSA is not bad; lines are short.  An older female agent asks whether I have a hip replacement cause it would set off the x-ray’s alarm.  Jeez, I must look old.  The Plane Train is not in service (it wakes up at 5 AM) so I get a chance to walk for 25 minutes to Gate D3.  Prophylactic exercise. 

Two women, sprawled over wheelchairs, snore under red Delta blankets at D3.  How can they breathe with their heads under those blankets?   An Asian toddler with a red dress and white leggings is squealing and running around, but these two sleep through it. 

An older man and woman wear hospital masks as they’re pushed in wheelchairs toward Gate D2.  Are they infectious or super cautious?  Maybe they’re really sick.  Ten minutes later the man walks briskly in the other direction (toward restaurants) still wearing his mask.  Another ten minutes and he walks back with two foam food containers -- no mask. 

I’m in the air and will be for five hours.  The sun is showing a strip of orange above the horizon to my left side.  Thirty minutes later, it’s still just a strip.   Okay, so if the sun rises in the East and is now behind me, we must be heading West.  That’s good cause we’re going to Seattle.  It’s 7:45 Atlanta time but 4:45 Seattle time and 2:45 Honolulu time.   A big light goes on in my head.  The sunrise in Seattle will seem later than it is here because the earth is round!  We are flying over a round ball!    As we go West, the sun stays pretty much behind the horizon.   Why did this never hit me before?    We are racing the sun.

 Below us are popcorn clouds which part to show lakes and small towns.   Then the clouds disappear and I see patches of free form green.  Oh, and a big river off farther to the left.  Is it too soon to be the Mississippi?  I wish the co-pilot would tell us where we are every 15 minutes.

I love Alaska Airlines!  Lots of leg room and comfy seats. A tall guy in my row has knees which are at least six inches from the seat in front of him.  And an outlet for electricity and the plug for iPhones.   I order a breakfast sandwich cause it’s been six hours since breakfast.  The sandwich is yummy with fluffy scrambled eggs, tomatoes, and Canadian bacon on a sourdough roll.  Wonder if I’ll end up having four meals today.  No, I will not!


I walk down the aisle toward the 3 bathrooms.  They’re all occupied.  One of the crew warns me to be careful while I stand there.  She doesn’t know I’m an ace at balance.  While I’m sitting on the john we hit a patch of turbulence.  The Return To Your Seat sign blinks at me.  But I’m probably better off just sitting there until things smooth down.  The bathroom is so small it would be impossible to crash into anything.

 The sun caught up with us.  It’s bright out the window with a beautiful blue sky above us because we’re above the clouds.   I see a landscape of closely packed cotton balls with the East-facing sides reflecting the low-angled sun.  But very light wispy clouds pass over this as if they were part of a gentle snow.  I love thinking I’m seeing snow.  I miss it.

I see something that looks like a mountain in the flatness of the snowy-looking clouds.  By Jove, it IS a mountain.  We’re close to Seattle so it must be Mount Ranier and it’s taller than the clouds. Wonder what it's like to climb it when it's like this.




We land at noon (my time), having left at 7 AM.  As I enter the Seattle Airport they call for everyone going to Honolulu to board another plane because it’s leaving.  I sort of remember a discussion about whether I want to take a chance buying a ticket for that flight or selecting the one I’m leaving on, 5:30 PM, but that’s Seattle time. I was afraid to take a chance on such closely timed connections.   I will get to know this airport very well. 

What I already like about it compared to Atlanta:  There are no arm rests on their large-seated chairs.  Sleepy people can stretch across them. 



At first I was ready to rave about the plentitude of electrical outlets but the first three I tried didn’t work.

 When you look outside the great big windows, though, it’s gray and depressing.   

Gretchen Yanover plays her own music with an electric cello.  Another musician (from Phoenix) talks with her about music gigs.

 They’ve got a nice mocha cafe with exotic-sounding chocolate-espresso drinks if you’re tired of Starbucks. I’m totally confused about what time it is.  It’s 11:30 AM in Seattle.  My phone says it’s 2:30 in Atlanta.  But what does that mean in terms of which meal I should be thinking about.  I go to the mocha shop and buy a medium dark mocha was is made with intense  special chocolate plus a little snack box of cut apple with peanut butter to dip it in and two small slices of walnut toast.  When I go to pay for it I can’t find my wallet, which I just had in my hand.  Shit!  I start looking on the counter and then in my backpack but find my wallet tucked under my arm.  Whew!  The occasional moments of terror that accompany traveling alone!

 A man (Greg, he says) with a broad-brimmed outdoor hat and flannel shirt tells me he now lives in Colorado, which he doesn’t much like.  Too dry; uninteresting.  He’s coming to check out property in the Spokane area.  He used to live in the North West and his kids live there now.  So what is Colorado?  Is it in the MidWest?  He got rather specific about all this so I told him I came from the East Coast, near Athens Georgia.  Greg sang part of a song about potatoes to me because the Athens B-52’s are his favorite group.  He would have sung a song he just wrote himself but he didn’t have his guitar.  Greg says he’s going to caucus for Bernie Sanders.

 Alaska Airlines planes are painted in different ways.  One came by just now, looking like a massive salmon.   Wild Alaska Seafood, it says.  One is painted like Disneyland.  The most common one has a man in a furry parka painted on the tail.  He looks a lot like Chet Guevara but it supposed to be Inuit or another Native American.  Some have Hawaiian leis around those dressed-for-the-cold faces.  Just read a report on the 20 safest airlines in the world. Alaska Airlines is in that 20.  British Airlines is not. 

 I check the departure list and don’t see the Honolulu flight.  Hmm.  Maybe it’s too early.  A helpful A.A. employee says there’s no point checking the list sooner than an hour before departure (5:30) because they change gates too often.  She suggests I go to the main terminal cause then I’d have five minutes access to all the major parts of this huge airport.  I had already learned every part of the North Satellite.

 Thanks to a very sweet building employee, I get on a Plane Train which, after 2 stops, takes me to the double-decker escalator going up to a huge terminal full of restaurants heavy on seafood.  And live music by a guitar-singer performing old popular songs. 

On the way, my guide and I talk.  Although she was born in Macon, her part of the family moved quickly up North, as in Seattle.  She still has kin in Atlanta and Milledgeville.  I told her I lived on the Macon Hwy.

 My next buddy, whose name I don’t learn, is 86.  He and I stare out the great big windows watching planes fly up and down.  He came down from Alaska to visit his ex-wife in Pasco Washington.  They hooked up after his second wife passed away about 6 years ago.  “I was a bum when I was married to my first wife.  She divorced me when I moved to Alaska to work for IBM in 1959.  Back then computers were huge and required an air conditioned room to house just one.”  He and two other guys worked to make smaller computers -- worked from their apartment in Anchorage.  Finally got one small enough to be housed in a bank.  He remembers the first big jet plane that came to the west coast.  It had to fly and land using military airports in Hawaii, Seattle and Anchorage.  We reminisced about what a big deal it was to fly: that women wore hats and gloves, stockings and heels because it was such a special occasion.

He retired after 30 years working in a pulpwood facility.  Has been retired 25 years, just fishing mostly in Katchikan.  It rains so much there the annual rainfall is expressed in feet, not inches.  Last year they had 12 1/2 feet of rain.  He’s got two granddaughters who were adopted at 12 years old from a Ukrainian orphanage!  His 86 year old girlfriend, ex-wife, had her second hip replaced so she’s back to golfing.  She’s got him learning it now when he comes down to visit her.  “I learned about the history of golf.  It started at a club in Scotland and was for Gents Only Ladies Forbidden; G O L F.”

We talked for an entertaining hour, shaking hands with big smiles, so I’ve only got three more hours to wait.