Up Up & Away

Poor Jim. I had to drive him in this morning so he could catch his flight out of the Baltimore-Washington airport down to our middish sized city in South Louisiana his mother resides in.

I feel for him. Coldest damn day of the year so far. Stiff blowing wind. 30th anniversary of the worst air disaster to take place in the Washington Metro area. And that is all without adding in the supposed bad luck of Friday The 13th.

No bad luck here today, unless you count my bi weekly Xolair injections. But I'm so used to that needle now I rarely flinch. (If you've arrived here Googling "Xolair" and want to know what to expect or are worried about starting the therapy leave a comment and I can point you in the right direction.)

Hoping Jim had a good flight because getting from here to there is a pain in the rump. I remember the olden days, when I was young and flying was something rather rarefied. People actually dressed up to fly. The flight crew was solicitous, respectful and attentive to your every need. They even served meals on the flight along with Highballs and Scotch.

I must have been all of five the first time I flew, back in 1965. We flew from Greater New Orleans airport to Las Vegas. I barely remember Vegas except I was confined to the swimming pool, snack bar and hotel room. Seemed pretty boring to me plus a sitter came in to watch me at night while my parents gambled and drank.

But the thing that stuck with the most was that flying was something special, privileged even. Now you're squashed into an airborne tin can with other sad saps, praying the flight attendant will take pity on you and bring you a soda, if you're lucky.

The flying part isn't even the worst part of it all. The worst has to be what you now have to go through at the airport. At least Redcaps are still there to tote your luggage if you need it. Monstrously long lines at the counters, pushed through what seems like cattle chutes into the security area where you must strip off your shoes and shuffle barefoot over carpeting surely rife with the foot funk, athletes foot of the masses and worse.

They xray your stuff and I always wonder how much residual radiation ends up in your laptop and other possessions. Last time I flew I ended up going through one of those silly newfangled body scanners that lets the TSA see just how weird your body is and if you're hiding something you shouldn't under your clothes. I worry about the long term effect of the radiation of those but it's preferable to the search....I flew a few years ago mere days after the infamous Underwear Bomber and set off some sort of detector at the airport with the cast on my fractured tibia/fibia. I got treated to one of those wonderful searches in a private room.

Flying home brings it's own extra challenges. We cannot get direct flights there, so changing planes it is, ending up on a very ghetto tree hopper tiny airplane. Usually there's turbulence badly during that landing at the airport on the banks of the Mississippi River from the buffeting winds off the water. Look, there's Exxon and their storage tanks, oh, there's the FEMA trailer park, oops, the River, ahh, the airport as the plane bumps around giving you the penny tour.

Jim's task is a grim one, to see if his mother improves or goes downhill and to try to help her as best he can. No one is quite sure if she's going to recover from this illness or if it's the end. I'm getting the sense that this may be her last year on earth but I'm hoping that I'm wrong.

I hope his flight was alright. I haven't heard from him but I haven't heard of any planes crashing either, ha ha.