And I'm in an airport again.
Not my airport. But if you can navigate one well, you can roll with the others easily enough. And what I've learned from a year of frequent business travel is that you don't always end up in the airport in which you expected to find yourself when you booked your flight anyway.
I have accumulated some practical wisdom as I've worn a well traveled least-cost-path back and forth across map in the last year. I now know that airport shops never have knitting magazines. Not even the crappy knitting magazines. I know how to pick the best seat partners on a full flight. (Middle aged business men. Not nervous fliers, always polite, not excessively chatty, and they can deplane with efficiency.) I've got my carry-on down to a minimum, and packing to a science. Most importantly I think, I've learned how to roll with it when the plans don't go as planned.
Valuable life lessons in an airport.
This plane that I'm waiting for today is taking me away for a pleasure trip, rather than business. (Let's here it for frequent flyer miles, shall we?) Curiously, waiting by yourself in an airport always feels the same no matter where you're going. There's something in the smell of the place and the way the non-slip linoleum floor of the concourse feels through your shoes and... I don't know exactly. A feeling of pending, I guess.
Ursula Leguin wrote a fantastic book called "Changing Planes" in which she postulated that inter-dimensional travel is possible, but only when sitting for a long period in a plastic airport terminal chair waiting for an indeterminably delayed flight. The lady's brilliant. Give it a read.