I'm returning from a brief business trip to lovely El Paso, Texas, where I experienced what I'm told was a hundred year flood event. My hotel was without internet and, indeed, without telephones throughout the duration of my stay.
I saw the Rio Grande with water in it. I'm told this is a rare experience.
Now I'm parked in yet another gate in yet another airport for yet another layover. The sunny, dry Phoenix airport has free wireless internet and I feel as though I am slowly reconnecting to the world.
Random thoughts from space:
Phoenix looks like crop circles from the air. Crop circles of residential tract neighborhoods spiralling out across the desert. Does that make us an agricultural crop, we suburban dwellers? Carrots? Cabbage? Perhaps grains of rice grown in between evenly spaced, manicured, planned levees?
In one particularly long layover, I found myself catching up with old friends in a restaurant 6 minutes from the airport. My friend is telling me about his wedding, which I missed. Are we so grown up now, all of us? Married and having babies? My friend tells me that he lost his wedding ring on his wedding night. I laugh. And that when he tells his bride she responds that she knew he'd lose it sooner or later and had ordered him a spare. I laugh louder. Same old friend. And perhaps we're not so grown-up after all.
The people on the conveyor belt walkway at the airport are doing it wrong. While not an experienced business traveler myself, my father is, and the girls of my family have been trained well.
- Thou shalt not pack more than one bag for a two-day trip.
- Thou shalt not take forever when fetching or storing thy bag in the overhead bin.
- Thou shalt not stand still on the left side of the conveyor belt walkway. Thou shalt walk, briskly, or thou shalt plaster thyself to the to railing on the right and make room for travelers who know what they are doing.
Traveling west is a trip. Technically, my plane landed in Arizona 5 minutes before it departed from Texas. When we departed from Phoenix for Sacramento, the sun had just set, and we chased that red strip on the horizon all the way home.