GOING HOME LIKE IT’S THE FIRST TIME GETTING OUT

Going home is a goal no matter where you start.

After a year or more of covid awareness, the idea of home changed.

It’s a sanctuary home, a home hospital, a home office. All together it adds up to the same thing: Home.

After leaving for the first time in what feels like more than a pandemic year, home changed again.

Home got bigger. So did the notion of leaving.

Travel anxiety is real, but add a year of disease fear and watch out.

Vaccinations and homework that showed a less likely chance of taking a ride on the covid train helped.

So did using the tools learned, like washing hands, social distancing, and wearing a mask.

The first thing I noticed once I got started was the federal mask mandate in airports. The same requirement carried into every place I stopped.

Local indoor workers were all masked up, besides the federal mandate.

For my part I wore a mask all the time, indoors or not. One mask on my face, one in a shirt pocket, one in my hip pocket.

It seemed like a good idea, even with a flight to Arizona, not India which is on fire with covid.

Getting Out And Going Home Without A Problem

After an abnormal year, normal things are the same. Heat is hot, rain is wet, snow is cold.

I didn’t test the results, it’s science. But you can.

The same travel rules apply. Make a plan, execute the plan, address the problems.

Get a ride to the airport, get on the plane, rent a car, check in, do what you went to do.

Doing things in Arizona after coming from Oregon includes working with a thirty degree upward rise in temperature; 65 to 95, or 100 degrees.

It’s not snowbird weather. That’s a few months earlier.

Apparently it is golf weather based on men and women loaded up with their clubs at the check-in counter.

Did the heat bother them? It had to. I got acclimated just in time to go home.

The images in this post include a jet engine and wing shot of the desert, Mt. Hood, and the landscape under the Oregon cloud cover.

That’s right, I got the window seat. It was a travel celebration with only one setback: I lost my boarding pass after I got through security. That’s a problem.

My travel wife, who is the same person as my married wife, and home wife, had plans and lists for a successful trip. I held up my end until the last hurdle.

We had pre-checked everything ahead of time, so no ticket work at the counter. Our bags were marked and ready for the scale. And we were also pre-checked for TSA. It made a big difference in time and travel anxiety.

I handed the TSA man my drivers license, scanned my printed out boarding pass, and lowered my mask to give him a good look at my mug. Drivers license back in my wallet with boarding pass in my hand.

After that I hustled to the carry on bag x-ray and emptied every pocket into my pack, along with my phone and glasses.

When I gathered my stuff at the other end I had no boarding pass. The last thing to lose track of, I lost track of.

I searched everything over and over, then spoke to the TSA guy who has seen this play out all the time. He said people always find it. So did the next person I asked. I searched and searched. Why not, it’s got to be there. It didn’t disappear. But it did.

After I talked to someone in charge, who reminded me she was a woman who could do many things at once, I learned I could get a boarding pass at the gate.

Flying Takes A Boarding Pass

The thrill of getting out and back loses a little when the return trip is in jeopardy.

I went to the gate with time to spare and talked to the lady. She said yes, she could print a boarding pass.

Except her printer didn’t work, wouldn’t work, and she had to run off to her duties with the passengers on the plane that just landed.

My choices were to stay calm and carry on, or panic and go back through check-in to get another boarding pass.

This is when cool and collected is the goal. It would work out, yes it would, I’d make it work if anyone could. A little bit of cheerleader pep always helps.

Another lady showed up at the other boarding desk. I talked to her, she nodded and smiled, and her printer worked.

With that out of the way I relaxed, sat in an updated seating assignment with an empty middle seat, and waited for takeoff.

The first few minutes in the air included an engine noise. I looked out the window at the engine, reminded it that I was the loose screw, not it, and explained jet technology to my wife. I know nothing about jet engine technology, but when has lack of knowledge ever stopped a mansplaining man?

It went from hot and clear to cold and cloudy, then dropped through the clouds, and made a two-hop landing. Home. It felt like a dream.

Real life kicked in at the Uber stand. We got a driver and loaded our gear when an angry woman claimed the ride. She wanted us to get out, and repeated that she wasn’t going to pay our faire.

Our guy was a veteran of the Afghanistan army who’d worked as an interpreter before he got his visa to come to America. He spoke to the lady like a Manhattan cabbie might remind a Brooklyn guy that he was downtown, not in Flatbush.

He made going home that much sweeter.