I said that I’d get on a plane again soon and I did, both the commercial and military versions. With the commercial one (outbound), there was a delay, a mechanical one. Some computer had to be removed and replaced and the flight was delayed about an hour and a half. Needless to say, my fear-factor was on the rise and I was beginning to feel like Jonah. (I toyed with the idea of the passengers tossing me out at thirty thousand feet.) But the flight finally did get underway and it was smooth-sailing, or flying rather.
Where was I going? To DC. We landed at Dulles only and hour past schedule. The pilot must have been hauling it.
I was met by an old friend who put me up for the duration. (Thanks, darling.)
My main purpose for being there was to attended a career fair, but the details of tooling around in Our Nation’s Capital are more fun so that’s what I’ll talk about.
Due to scheduling conflicts, my friend wasn’t able to get me to the fair. So, the day before, he helped me to navigate the DC area metro system. Having used the U-Bahn in Berlin extensively, I found the system workable and was even impressed by it. I had no problems getting to the fair.
The Conservative Sisterhood Congregates
The day after the fair, La Shawn Barber and I made arrangements to meet. After a miscommunication due to my not writing down the instructions, we met the next day and had lunch at a Union Station restaurant. La Shawn is erudite, accomplished and lovely--here that, good guys?—and we definitely didn’t have enough time to talk about the gazillion things that that we wanted to talk about. We’ll definitely do it again.
Crazy People
Sheesh! Are there more nuts in DC—politicians, not counted—than in LA? I don’t know, but it sure seemed like it. Twice I encountered Metro passengers whose hold on reality was tenuous at best. Maybe it’s because I rarely use public transportation here in LA and, therefore have fewer chances to observe the mentally-challenged up close. First there was a man, young, relatively normal-looking. However, my attention was drawn to him by his yelling, cursing and challenging someone to a fist fight. I saw no cell phone, so at first I thought he was using an earpiece. But he wasn’t. He was sitting across from me on the aisle and a woman was sitting next to him with an alarmed look on her face. When she got up, he moved to let her by, even though he was in mid-tirade. I heard the woman let out a “whoooo,” in her relief to be away from the guy.
The other nut was a woman, black (pertinent here), with a “working girl” appearance. When an older white man got on, I guess he must have been guilty of "reckless eye-balling"--looking a little too long at her--because, all of a sudden she’s in a rage at him about it and about white people in general. “You white _____ smell like hot dogs when you’re wet.” Um okay. Maybe she had been too up close and personal with…er…hot dogs and got confused. I put on my glasses, pulled a book out of my pack and buried my nose deep within it. The book? The Power of Positive Thinking.
Return Leg
To return to the other coast, I boarded a C-5 at Andrews AFB. Often on these military flights, a person can get bumped for others of higher priority or the flight can get cancelled for maintenance reasons. None of this happened, however. So I kissed my friend goodbye, got on the plane and we were off with no hitches. As you can see, the C-5 is a big, fat beast. When observing one take off, one wonders at the miracle of aviation; how such a large, seemingly slow aircraft can ever get off the ground.
The flight went smoothly, surprisingly quickly and the landing was barely felt (my compliments to the pilot). The destination, however, was Travis AFB, CA, some 500 miles north of LA. What to do? I looked at the flight schedule and was crest-fallen. The next flight to March ARB—the closest Air Force base to my home—wasn’t taking off until 1900 the next day (that’s 7PM for you non-military types). And, were I to wait for that flight and take it, I would still have to find a way to navigate the 70 additional miles between March and LA.
I wanted to go home! So I rented a car and drove the 500 miles, leaving close to 3PM and arriving at my front door just shy of 12AM. I hadn’t done a road trip like that in years and was afraid that my old, creaky bones would be stuck in sitting position for days afterward. But I made it with no after-effects and no speeding tickets. I was beat, but glad to be home.
