DISCLAIMER: Follies have not been proven to prevent death or death related symptoms. If you or a loved one has died due to complications resulting from exposure to a Folly, you may be entitled to compensation. If you develop uncontrolled muscle movements, or suddenly feel compelled to take the bus, seek immediate medical attention as these may be symptoms of a more serious and permanent condition. Drinking increases these risks. Follies are not for everyone. Consult your travel agent.
Day 1:
Wife went back to San Fran to console her BFF whose grandmother died recently. She got home today at 1700. I leave for work at 2000. (I relentlessly use military time writing the Follies because I like watching her count on her fingers. She has pretty hands.)
I make dinner. Steak, broccoli and French fries. Wife is wiped out. Falls asleep in the couch. I go out to clear her stuff out of my devil car before it eats a shoe or something while dinner cooks.
My wife and her belongings have a fairly open relationship. More out of mutual boredom than any active physics or intent. My car is much more interested in her stuff than she is. Generally, things go into the suck, but rarely come out of their own accord. I try to mount a rescue once a week or so, but many a pair of sunglasses has died in captivity or vanished without a trace. I remember the fallen and I will not forget.
Chuck Norris won’t return my calls, but I’ll bet El Coche would straighten up, hand over the hostages, and generally quit being such a complete shit after a roundhouse to the windshield or two.
I get her suitcase out of the trunk. Purse out of the passenger’s seat. Keys off the floor. Various makeup components out of the ash tray. Shoes out of the three inches of standing fluid in the rear foot well …wait….wha?? NO! BAD CAR! NO!
Maybe one of the rear passenger windows was down during the torrential rains this week. Maybe a travel mug bled out as it was being dragged off to the bowels of Jetta hell. Or maybe my fucking car has an attitude problem and should be taken out behind the shed and beaten with a hose for its insolence.
It takes two full rolls of the quicker-picker-upper to soak up all the car spooge. When I pull out of the driveway, leaving for work, it flashes a hot water symbol at me. The one that means coolant level is low. “Fuck you bub. Yeah I pissed on your wife’s shoes. What are you gonna do about it?”
I’m calling a priest. A mechanic would only ruin my opportunity to watch this viciously stupid car have its dark and malignant soul ripped out. I entertain myself during the drive to work singing “Party in the U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus. Been stuck in my head all day. Sing along to the bleating cadence of the “brake is set” beeps. (Bought it for my daughter. Swear.)
The Capt. is youngish looking. British by way of Italy. Married to a Continental Express pilot. They figured out that with his wife’s 10 years seniority, some precision bidding and a few well placed sick calls, they can reliably count on 16 weeks of time off a year, so they pretty much have vacation every month.
They don’t have kids. Bought a little beach house in Mexico. Live on the beach in Florida. Couple times a year to Brazil to visit his parents. A couple trips to Europe. Someplace new each year. I’d like to hate the little fucker, but he’s too damn nice.
It is truly impressive just how quickly and completely FUBAR <<HOME>> gets when it rains. This is the 21st century for fuck’s sake. <<HOME>> airport may as well be made of paper mâché for how much rain fucks things up. But we’re tough seasoned professionals. We can take it.
Our plane is at the gate, but the flight is delayed a half hour. (Barely a scratch. Didn’t even feel that.) We have no flight attendants because they’re trapped on another delayed inbound flight. (My grandmother can hit harder than that.)
They pull another back-end crew off their idyllic PNS overnight and cram their angry butts into our experience. They go from beers on the beach to the LA redeye in a phone call. They have been on duty since 0700 and are understandably pissed off. (Ok. Take it easy.)
We push for LAX an hour late at 2245 and there are spacing restrictions headed west which adds 30 minutes to our taxi. (Let’s just calm down before somebody gets hurt.) Departure Control is taking west-bounds off the south side runways which means we take off and fly southeast (the wrong way) over a hundred miles before turning west around the storm.
It takes us half an hour just to get back past <<HOME>>. (OK that’s enough.) Our 4:15 flight to LAX takes over 5 hours. I step into my hotel room at 0400 <<HOME>> time. And yeah, it hurt.
Day 2:
We’ve been at the Airport Radisson LAX for almost 2 years. Nice enough, except for the elevators and the gym. The elevators must have been programmed by people who are afraid of elevators. I’ve waited 15 minutes before. There are 4 elevators but they never seem to be on my floor or going my way. If I’m lower than the 6th floor, I just take the stairs.
The gym has been temporarily under construction since we started staying here. Temporary gym facilities are in the closet next to the gift shop. An elliptical machine with no handles, a treadmill with a slipping belt, and an inop stationary bike. There’s no ventilation except for the 2 large floor fans. The two pieces of surviving hardware are a sit up bench and a reverse sit up bench.
I trudge unenthusiastically down, and the fitness closet has been reborn. 5 treadmills with TVs. 3 ellipticals. 4 bikes, Nautilus machines. A BowFlex and a BowFlex Tread Climber. They even have those dial-a-weight barbells. (No free bench though. And no place to put one.) All in a new blown out room. Everything brand new. Clearly a chick gym, but a well endowed one.
I try all the BowFlex stuff because ok, I’m curious. The blonde girl in their old commercials was impossibly hot, so I watched them. Damn you successful advertising!
On the van for the airport, there are 3 Air Canada FAs. All older. All live in Calgary. All with the supersaturated vowels of accent lore that compel the rest of the English-speaking world to make fun of them.
‘When does it start to get cold up there?’
“Ooh, not till aboot January or February.”
‘Really?’ (My definition of “cold” is loosely based on when I start taking my overcoat to work.)
“Oooh yeaah. I park inside and take the train. Burns my face.”
(Maybe I’m asking the wrong question. Maybe “cold” means something else in the land of the northern lights.)
‘What do you consider cold?’
“Anything beloow -40.”
There you go.
The van driver is Samoan (maybe). Animated in his sense of duty. Big jiggly arms swirling like he’s casting competence spells on inept drivers. Freezes in a “What the fuck?!” pose for a good 15 seconds after slamming on the brakes and inadvertently forcing me to put my hand on the leg of the girl next to me to keep from putting my head in her lap. I’m sure the driver who cut him off will need weeks of therapy to recover from that stoic glare.
His hair is shellacked to his head. I once made a Mohawk for Halloween with egg whites and Elmer’s glue. I could carry a beer on my hair. Shamubadmood looks like he just skipped down to that resin they use to make clear table tops with shells imbedded in them. If there were a nuclear blast, there’d be nothing left but his little hair helmet tumbling along on the blast wave.
More disturbing is what’s dangling off the back of his head. It’s about the size of a plantain. I know it’s hair, but that doesn’t help. It jiggles. Looks like he glued on a little mummified egg plant. It’s a shiny black egg sack of revolting. A little flair to tip the scales for any fence-sitting prospective mates. Watch and learn.
In the terminal, a man asks me the strangest question to date – “You’re flying into clouds really fast right? So when you get off the plane does it feel like you’re going backward?”
‘—no—-?’
We discover we have a 4 hour ground stop headed back to <<HOME>> because of rain. (Information we could have used before we left the hotel.) I tell the Capt. we should just board em up and go park somewhere. Passengers love that. The gate agents think this is a good idea.
<<HOME>>’s wadded panties un-bunch in spastic cramps of frustration and boredom. We can’t get a straight answer on our EDCT. (Expected Departure Clearance Time) Clearance says 4 hours. Dispatch says 3 hours and the gate agents want to board and go 10 minutes ago. I figure somebody will poke me when I’m supposed to do stuff. So I work on honing my “not giving a fuck”. It’s shaping up nicely.
Suddenly we are late. Ground stop is lifted. People look resentfully at us as they board like we’ve intentionally made them wait a couple hours so we could hang out on the plane and eat all the snacks.
When we get to <<HOME>>, we park at D2. Our next flight is out of C2. (For real this time.) We are almost 2 hours late. I haul ass. Get to the bottom of the escalator. An old Mexican man wearing an insulated parka and baseball hat, (Indoors. In September.) has stopped an unsuspecting man and his kids by blocking their path and presenting his ticket, boarding pass and driver’s license.
The dad pauses to look at the old man’s stuff. Tells him “C 15. This is D. C is that way.” He points down the long subterranean hallway. The old man stares into his eyes blankly and returns to his inanimate state of confusion.
I know he’s going to ask me. As I pass he thrusts his wad of “stuff I need to get on the plane” at me. I check it real quick. ‘Yeah. C-15. This way. Down there. See the stairs?’ I make an oblique over the shoulder “this way” gesture which turns out to translate in Spanish loosely as, “Come with me. I’ll take you there.”
I haul some more of my ass down the moving sidewalks. Up the escalator. Blunder into massive congestion on C concourse. I weave and dodge. Direct and redirect using the ninja skills of motion that come from navigating masses of directionless traveloids for over a decade. Fast but not frantic. Fluid. (The trick, if you’re interested, is to look at a spot maybe 50 feet in front of you, like you’ve made eye contact with someone you really need to talk to. People part like the Red Sea.)
Glide into port at the terminus of C. Say ‘Sup’ to the gate agent so she will give me the paperwork. Scan it briefly to see if the weather at our destination is bad, or if anything on the plane is broken. As I’m opening the door to the jetway, I hear wheezing. Loud swamp breath. I turn around.
The old Mexican has humped it all the way to C2 with me. Long way. Forgot all about him. He has taken his hat off, but is sweating buckets in the down parka in line to talk to the gate agent. Trying to catch his breath
<fuck>
‘Hey buddy. You ok? I’m so sorry. You’re at C15. This is C2. See?’ Point to his the C15 on his ticket. Point to the C2 sign. ‘I’m sorry. Go back about half way. Okay?’ (Make “half way” trombone hand gestures.) ‘On the right. See? 3, 5, 7. Down to 15?’ Give him a pat on the back. Feels like he’s baking in that parka. Hopefully comprehension will meet him at the gate.
We get to the hotel in MCO at 0130. Fall asleep around 0200. Wake up in the middle of the night after what feels like a well played 4 hour sleep cycle. It’s 0230. ??? Great. Wake up every hour or so till morning.
Day 3:
Drag my ass out of bed in time to make the lottery breakfast (hot eggs and sausage). No joy. Either false advertising or I’m here too late. The big hot server contains only biscuits. Mope back to my room.
This hotel sucks. We used to stay on International Drive. Like a little slice of Disney. Bars and restaurants everywhere. Huge mini golf next door. Pub across the street. Fun.
Now we stay close to the airport. There’s nothing nearby except a Friday’s. Nowhere to go. Nothing to see or do. We are here all day until 1700. I watch the history channel for 5 hours straight. Finally slouch down to the same gym as last week to give my depression something to do. There are still muffin crumbs in the cup-holder.
One leg to IND. Nothing happens. But in a deliberate and forceful way.
Day 4:
Lindsey Wagner can eat a dick. The Sleep Number Bed is a joke. It’s an air mattress. Research. Perfect sleep. More energy. His and hers. Cell technology. Fuck you. It’s an air mattress. Unless you Jack up the pressure to 90% or more, you’re sleeping in a satellite dish. Damn you successful advertising!
At IND they’re training a boatload of new rampers. You can tell they’re new, they’re smiling. Bunched together. Eager. One of them follows me on the walkaround asking questions about the plane. Poor sap. I should take his picture so I can show him what excited used to look like in about a week.
We are back on schedule when we reach <<HOME>>. Safari into the concourse for a visit to the potty and a flu shot. Quick walkaround and I’m back in the pit. Flu shot lady was kneading my arm. Told me to relax my arm.
‘That is relaxed.’
“Oh you’re just naturally tight.”
‘That’s right baby. Like a tiger.’
– end of line.