As sometimes happens the night before big-time traveling, yesterday morning saw me awake and out of bed far, far too early. My ride to the bus station in Montpelier was supposed to show at 8 a.m., there were things to get done before bolting.
Outside, snow came down. Quietly beautiful -- not so quiet when the breeze kicked up -- though not prime traveling weather. By 7 a.m., four or five inches had come down with no sign of let-up. Somewhere in there I made the mistake of turning on the computer, found myself getting absorbed in cyber-matters. At some point, it sank in that I needed to get my adorable butt into gear, from that moment things moved faster and faster, me racing around, taking care of last-minute biz.
8 o'clock. No ride. 8:05. No ride. I was aiming for an 8:50 bus, the trip into town -- normally 20 minutes -- would be slow, lengthy. I decided to lock up the house, wait in the garage so that when R. showed, I could simply toss my things in the back of his truck and go. Had the garage door wide open so he'd pull up there, had one boot on and laced up, remembered something I needed from upstairs, didn't want to go through the unlacing/pull boot off/pull boot on/lace boot up thing all over again, found myself hopping back into the house on one unbooted foot, up the stairs and into the kitchen, the boot touching the floor now and then, leaving piles of dried mud every time it did. On the trip back down, I saw the long muddy trail I´d left, grabbed the shop vac, tried some fast clean-up. The time: 8:10. Heard sounds of a vehicle outside, saw the vac didn't seem to be doing much, gave up. Hopped back into laundry room, began jamming unshod foot into remaining boot, calling out to R. to bring the truck into the garage. Heard further vehicle noise outside, but saw no sign of its driver. Turned out he'd parked way over to the side, out of view, where his pick-up (rear-wheel drive) had gotten stuck on snow/ice. I tossed my bags into the truck, began pushing as he rocked the truck back and forth, with no effect, my booted feet slipping around on snow-covered ice. It was clear we had to take my car, we did so.
The ride: slow, slippery, but gorgeous, Vermont looking its winter-season finest. Me a bit keyed-up, jabbering away at R. about whatever came to mind (him indulging me with great kindness). We reach the station just before the bus is scheduled to show. I thank R. for helping out, drag my stuff into the teeny station, find out the bus is running late. Real late. At 9:20 it pulls up, four sleeping passengers on board. The driver emerges, takes my ticket, examines it, not looking happy with his lot. "How are the roads?" I say. He stops examining ticket, slowly raises his head to look me in the eye, expressionless, saying nothing. "Ah," I say, nodding, trying not to smile and piss the guy off, but beginning to enjoy the morning's comedy.
The trip from there: smooth. (And lengthy, my adorable butt enduring long periods planted in one seat after another as I spent hours traveling followed by hours waiting followed by hours traveling, etc. Somewhere over the Atlantic, parked in a sophisticated instrument of torture posing as a Lufthansa airliner seat, it decided it'd had enough, began complaining and didn't stop until the next morning, when it found itself in a kinder, gentler seat, courtesy of Spanair.)
Snow fell all the way to the New Hampshire border, Vermont looking like the Great White North, the bus driver driving at alarmingly caffeinated speeds, blowing past state plowing trucks as if they were standing still, leaving scant inches between the vehicles. In New Hampshire, the roads cleared, the snow lightened, stopped coming down. At some point, I made the mistake of sidling into the closet that passed as the bus's loo -- there really is nothing like trying to take a whiz in a speeding bus.
Had a 3+ hour wait in Logan, long enough to get plenty of reading done and shovel down a passable Chinese meal from an in-terminal restaurant. With no snow falling in Boston, the plane lifted off more or less on time. I've never been on a plane with rows of seats crammed so close together -- which of course made the whole sore-butt thing that much more wonderful. Between unhappy gluteous maximi, abundant hacking/coughing from nearby passengers, and nearby college students playing poker (which might have been fine if not for strangely loud, strangely frequent card shuffling), sleep mostly remained elusive.
The pilot parked away from the terminal in Frankfurt, necessitating a bus ride from plane to building as daylight gathered. We moved slowly between mammoth Lufthansa airliners, huge aircraft, seeming gigantic in scale compared to our little vehicle, everyone in the shuttle silent, staring out at them all. All of us appearing to share the same unexpected sensation of... something. Smallness. Awe. Could be its power lay in us dealing with that unexpected display of enormity, of a kind of grandeur that paid us no attention, after being stuffed into a metal tube in excessively close quarters for many hours.
Inside the terminal: more waiting, followed by another shuttle ride to a manageably-sized Spanair jet where the flight crew spoke Castellano (the Captain made his introductory speech in Spanish so rapid I had to struggle to keep up with it, then switched to English, his accent and verbal velocity making that version of the speech just as difficult to understand as the first) and the seat treated my rear quarters with far more consideration than the previous parking spots had.
Frankfurt was in the middle of genuine winter conditions, the temperature well below zero. The sun rose through clouds massed along the horizon, providing a intense dawn of oranges and reds. I watched through a small oval window speckled with small frost stars (the music from American Beauty playing on the inboard sound system), appreciating the show after the long night. We waited as the plane went through a lengthy de-icing process, and when we finally took off, the countryside around Frankfurt spread itself out below us, covered in snow.
Once all cloud cover had been left well below us, I pushed my seat back -- sunlight of surprising warmth bathing one side of my face -- drifting easily off to sleep, where I remained until the descent into Madrid.
[continued in next entry]
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Shop window, Madrid:
Madrid, te quiero.
rws 5:50 PM [+]
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