Anchors away

It is amazing to watch the anchors disappear on a long haul flying day like this. I woke up 15 minutes ago in this bright cabin and was totally disoriented: what does the light mean? Are they about to serve breakfast? Did I sleep away the flight? Then, a glance at my watch. Twelve. Twelve what? Noon or midnight? And where was it noon or midnight? My watch was set to California time, although I’m not even sure why. I have no clue about how California time relates to NZ time or to UK time, the two ends of this airplane ride.

And suddenly it’s all relative, all absurd. Time doesn’t mean anything at all. On the ground, where people are going about their days, there are kids to pick up from school, reports to write, operations to have and recover from. Here, in this enormous flying tube, there is only an odd rhythm of dinner and breakfast, dinner sometimes at midnight, sometimes at 5pm. At breakfast (when? Yesterday? What day was that?), the steward offered my seatmate cognac in her coffee because it was 1 in the afternoon. This most recent meal, a dinner, the stewardess was surprised that I didn’t want a drink. A quick glance at my watch told me it was closer to ten am than dinner time. Ten am where?

Hours, if you can count them, are stable. I have been traveling, on and off airplanes, for nearly 25 hours now. That makes me still seven or more hours from my destination. We’ll land in Heathrow and I’ll have to collect my bags and clear customs (because there’s an issue with which terminal I’m arriving into and departing from). Then I’ll board one more plane to Italy. One more two-hour flight across the English channel and south. Nothing, really, compared to what’s come before it, only my tolerance is seriously low.

My body, unanchored in time or space, has also been unanchored in health. I had a lovely first dinner in my premium economy upgrade, chatting with the really interesting woman next to me. Then, an hour into my first sleep (1 am in New Zealand, long behind us in the Pacific), I woke shaking in a cold sweat, light headed and with waves of nausea. I was instantly back at Ocean Road six months ago with a stomach flu, caring for Naomi and Michael who threw up every hour until they stopped throwing up just as I began. Was this a cruel joke, a stomach flu at the beginning of 13 days in Europe, at the beginning of 35 hours in transit? I tried (unsuccessfully) not to throw up as I fixated on what I would do: would they let me back on the flight after LA? Would I have to catch a flight home? What did my travelers insurance cover? I fell into a fitful sleep, shaking and miserable.

I woke 4 hours later, still woobly but no longer particularly nauseas. Instead, I was sneezing constantly, my nose running like a train. I vastly prefer this to the stomach flu, and so spent the first several hours relishing each sneeze (and there was lots to relish). Now, though, 18 hours into the sneezing, my nose is sore and red, and I am ashamed to say that I’m thinking about what a terrible sight I’ll seem in Milan. I don’t think the Milanese have sniffles and sneezes; colds are seriously out this season.

I decided when I booked these tickets that I would fly around the world. So I headed out east over the Pacific and landed in LA. Next I’ll fly to Heathrow and then Milan, then Milan back to Heathrow after the conference. After the workshop in Oxford, I’ll head out of Heathrow towards home, still traveling east. I’ll have a layover in Hong Kong, and then back to Auckland. A circle. This idea appealed to me because I’ve never done it before, and because (geeze, more petty thinking right here in one blog) if you fly through the US—even if you don’t stop over there—you get twice the bag allowance. I didn’t need two bags on the way to Europe (in fact, I have packed the smallest bag ever), but I want to reserve the possibility that I’ll need two bags on the way out!

Transiting through LA, though, turns out to be something I’ll work hard not to do again. From the plane they directed us away from the long and irritating customs lines where foreigners get their fingerprints taken and their irises mapped like high-tech criminals. We went instead into a holding “sterile” gate, where the customs agents checked our papers and told us to have a seat. The shops and food and sunshine—limited though they may be at LAX—were separated from us by a frosted glass wall. I asked how to get to the airport proper (I needed to buy a book). “You can’t get there from here,” the attendant told me, with a totally straight face.

“I’m sure there’s a way, I assured her. I can see it. Do I have to clear regular customs in order to make it happen?”

“It can’t happen. It’s impossible,” she asserted. “Next customer.”

And so I sat, trapped in a little room and suddenly craving the luxury of an airport I had always thought of as a pit. The food places were terrible, true, but they sold food; I had thrown up my dinner and declined breakfast. The shopping was over-priced and the service was rude last time I was there, but the guide book to Italy I needed was right through that glass wall, right over there. It is unanchoring beyond belief to wish to go to LAX.

Unanchored is what I am. It is 7:30 Wednesday, on a cold winter’s evening, in New Zealand. My children are eating dinner and getting ready for bed. It is 9:30 Wednesday, on a warm spring morning, in Milan. Fashionable Italians are drinking cappuccino in the sunshine. And I am just one rumpled, sneezing ex-pat American about to eat breakfast. Let the adventure begin?

(ps posting this from Milan, so I must have made it all the way. Ciao!)