MId-Transit

I am sitting in a major urban airport as I write this on Saturday past, mid-transit between Old Home and New Home.

My flight has been delayed midpoint and thus I find myself with an additional 45 minute wait – or two hours overall – until I board to complete the journey. This is not the first time a flight has been delayed for me, although flight delays can feel very different depending on what airport you get delayed in. In some airports – the smaller, older ones – a wait on a travel can feel packed in among everyone else awaiting transit elsewhere, humanity’s seething mass impatient, loud, and packed in

This time though, I am lucky. It is a large airport and there are a handful of flights – maybe 12 – leaving between now and the end of the day. I can tuck myself away near the gate I am to depart from and wait, greedily sucking power from the provided outlets – for some reason I have an unreasonable fear of running out of power, and insist on having my phone highly charged at all times.

Airports, no matter where they are in the US, are largely the same: stores selling highly priced merchandise, food stores – some recognized chains, some local – selling food at higher than average prices, and the ubiquitous airport bar, with sportsball games blaring and travelers drinking to take their mind off the travel or off the wait to travel. In some ways it is less about travel and more about the American shopping experience in microcosm.

I have become shockingly familiar with many many of these airports in a five state circle on the route to Old Home and then back over the 2.5 years that I have been traveling once a month. I laugh at that statement – there was a time, many years ago, when traveling once a month for work to a foreign destination was a burden. Now, I do it monthly and do not think of it much more than an inconvenience that is to be borne.

The darkness fall early in Winter: from the time I exited the plane to the time I walked the length of the airport twice and then found this spot to sit, we went from the fading beams of sunset to the sparkle of lights and planes of the city surrounding the airport. The airport is temperate but not warm and the air is filled with boarding announcements and the public service announcements that seem common everywhere one goes anymore – do not smoke of course, but does anyone really accept packages from someone they do not know? Apparently the airport authorities still consider this a major point of concern, judging by the number of announcements about it.

I am not much of people watcher: that would imply I (on the whole) enjoy spending time with them. Airports are generally reasonable environments for being somewhere with people if one has to be there if for no other reason that everyone is the terminal has a reason to be here. There are stories I see as I sit here and watch, which I am sure that I could ponder about if I had the inclination. 

Here a man slowly meanders in circles, talking to himself in a phone conversation that only makes sense to him as the rest of us only hear the half; there an older couple seems to have some kind of debate about some fact, stopping and gesturing back and forth at one another. People stroll by and stop, checking the travel board – it can only be for departures at this point – and then continue to meander on their way. Occasionally someone stops, looks, and hurries on, late for a boarding.

At best I can only muster the interest to ask why where Crocs or slippers is considered acceptable traveling attire.

In every airport one sees the maintenance staff as they make their rounds, emptying garbage and recyclables and generally cleaning up. I wonder, briefly, what it would be like to work all day at a transit hub like this, surrounded by people that are going around the world while you are likely going to be here tomorrow and tomorrow and the tomorrow after that. Those that travel often – and this is a common thing in a time and place where travel is still relatively inexpensive – take these sorts of things for granted. I can remember a time where a single plane flight a year was a big deal; this year I have made 14 round trips and I almost do not think of it.

I wonder, as I watch the lights reflect off the linoleum floor and the bags and people roll by, what air travel must have been like before it was “democratized”. Was it like the images that one sees in the movies from the 50’s and 60’s? Was it an event like it appears in the movies and the ads of the time, with people dressed up and formally uniformed staff everywhere? I can remember a day where meals were still served and headphones had to be rented and there a single movie to be shown – and that only on international flights. We walked to the gates and saw people off or waited by the gates for their return. Now we take our meals on ourselves or chew our snack mix while having a drink only, we stand outside the main entrance and wait – although even this almost never seems to happen anymore; much more likely we walk out to the front and wait for our pickup. Less time and certainly less parking cost, we tell ourselves.

Like almost everything, we have moved into the modern world, and lost something in the process.

A women walks her dog by. This is one of the more interesting things that has happened in air travel over the last ten years. I like dogs (and the occasional cat I see), and their presence inevitably brightens up my mood. I wonder what they think of this circulating mass of humanity and its accompanying foods and bits they buy and the thundering voices that rumble from above. Do they question any of it, or do they simply take it in stride as a new environment?

The dog at least seems excited by all of it; the rest of us, with the exception of the very young, take it all for granted.