A Harry Potter Ride Home

I just found this on my Mac. Forgot that I started writing it for a blog entry on my trip back to HK. I kept the original title as I had been saving the new Harry Potter for the flight back. So, here is a belated entry from last July 2005...

I packed my bags Tuesday afternoon, cleaned the apartment, and had one last taste of my favorite Thai food before heading to the airport for my return flight to the Hong Kong. These last 2 months in the U.S. have been fun but draining. I must admit looking forward to a bit of quiet time in HK and sleeping in our own bed.

It is a good thing that we are not forced to be photographed getting on or while on the plane. Travelers are an odd looking bunch, surrendering fashion for faux pas, but none seems much to notice. Stranded by a delayed flight in the Kansas City airport today, I made conversation with a woman from Los Angeles who had come home to see family this week. Seeking comfort, she donned her nursing fatigues for the flight although she wasn’t headed directly to duty and looked a bit out of place in the waiting area. Add to this the Dorothy and Wizard of Oz themed sweatshirt she purchased at the airport gift shop to stave off the cold, and you had quite an unlikely combination.

But it’s not just the abandonment of normal senses that fascinates me, it’s the adoption of preemptive measures you find in travelers. You know what I mean…the way in which otherwise normal people enter a plane and immediately pass out, get drunk, or otherwise engage in seemingly hypnotic activites. These are people that outside of a travel setting seem more ADHD than non-responsive. My favorite of this group are those that come prepared with sleeping pillows. My neighbors tonight perhaps take the cake, having blown up their neck-encompassing pillows before I had entered the plane, so I was met with a row of four perfectly normal looking, wide-awake people, all with these mini-life preservers floating eerily about their neck as they conversed, and the hustle of a loading plane encompassed them. They were prepared.

Although I am not a pass out, pillow hugger, I too have my own odd traveling habits. I often laugh at myself on the plane, realizing that the assortment of snacks that I purchased for the flight will come in handy if we get stranded in the Arctic for a month. For this trip, it was a couple of candy bars, 3 waters, and some nuts.