Day 254 - Home from the Trees

We spent the morning with my grandmother, stopped briefly back at my mom's, and then dashed off again to go to the jeweler to have some stones we bought in India set and to meet up with my dad for lunch before driving down to VA Beach to see Cz's mom. With a schedule like that, it is easy to see how it has not yet registered that we are done travelling. We may have made it all the way around the world, but we are in no way yet still.

Everyone we see seems to greet us with 'What a phenomenal experience', or something of that ilk. It was a phenomenal experience, but a part of me feels like I missed it. Throughout the trip, I was so focused on each country as we experienced it, or on planning the next destination that I never felt like I had the time to step back and reflect on the journey as a whole. As the months telescoped down into weeks, days, and finally just hours, I found myself wondering where all the time had gone. It felt like we had been gone only few weeks rather than more than half a year.

And that may not be entirely a bad thing. Part of the joy of taking time out of one's everyday routine is to live more in the moment. Living in the moment on this trip opened us up to a depth of experience that we probably would have missed had we been trying to keep the scope of the whole thing in perspective at all times. On the flip side, each section of the trip feels like its own entity. I have trouble connecting that we finished the Camino, rode camels in the Indian desert, walked across the Himalayas, and visited Korea's DMZ all in the same voyage. Because I never looked on the trip as a whole, I feel like I missed a significant part of the experience.

Perhaps that understanding is only possible in hindsight. It is not possible to be physically two places at once, just so, neither is it possible to be mentally two places at once. Ironically in eight months, the one luxury we never had was time. Only in hindsight, do we have the luxury of choosing to pull up a certain memory and mull it over. Or to sit with a cup of tea and reflect on the experience as a whole.

Over the next few months I plan to read through this blog (I haven't actually read most of the posts - I write them, Cz edits them, and off they go to the interweb without a second glance from me.) I think I might be surprised by what I find. By reading the blog, looking at photos, and trolling my own memories, I hope to be able to feel some kind of though line on the adventure. As I read and mull and jot notes and sketches, I hope that I can coalesce the experience into a travel book.

With luck, it will be a travel book that other people will want to read, and so be published. With even more luck, maybe enough people will read it that the royalties will help fund a trip to South America, or China, or Africa, or the Balkans... If there's one thing I learned planning and going on this trip it's that there are always more places to go.

There's an adage that goes something like "Of all the places I roam, the finest of these is home." There's another saying that says "You can never come home again." Both I think are true.

Home, when one is gone for more than a few months, takes on a tinge of memory and nostalgia. Even if home doesn't really change, it will not match the Home with a capital 'H' that has formed in one's mind. For me, home as I remember it has ceased to exist. Because we knew we would only be in NYC for 9 months, we subleted someone else's apartment, and when she returned, put our remaining books, clothes and tools in storage, never establishing roots in the big city. In January 2007, my horse died. For as long as I can remember, the front yard had been defined by the fences of her, and her predecessors' paddocks. Soon after we left in June 2007, the fences were finally pulled down. The landscape of my memory was irrevocably altered. In October, Home with a capital 'H', my childhood home, was demolished to make way for a new house. It is a good change - my mother is much happier with the new house, and it is a solid, well laid-out, good building - but it means that even without the filters of nostalgia, there is no way for me to return Home as I knew it.

Home with a capital 'H' now lies in the people we love - in the familiar faces and personality tics, in the cats who still find the warmest sunbeams, and in the daffodils that resolutely bloom along the now-gone fence lines. Because we left no home to which we could return in the city, it is now up to Cz and I to build a Home for ourselves. We have found the geography of our new Home in the form of four rooms and a two year lease in Manhattan. We have the foundations in each other, our families, our friends, and our experiences. With luck and time, we hope to build something beautiful with many windows to eight months where Home was nothing more than 2 forty litre packs and each other, and nothing less than the whole wide world.

Day 253 - Effin' Delta

But before I go on my Delta rant....

Our new apartment is on the 'A' train which runs directly out to JFK. It is also within walking distance to one of the express bus to LaGuardia stops. Which means that if anyone wants to visit us, we are easy to reach from either airport.

Fortunately, our friend's apartment is near the 'E' train, which also goes out to JFK. Even better, our flight was midday, so we did not have to wrestle our packs and ourselves into a rush-hour train.

Once at the airport, the fun began. First, the computer had a little trouble finding our reservation - nothing major - we found it by typing in the destination and flight time. On to the gate, we went through security with no issues, but upon checking the notice board, discovered that our flight was delayed 15 minutes.

Cz moseyed over to the bookstore, while I sat at the gate to watch the pack. About 15 minutes BEFORE the posted boarding time, we hear our names announced over the PA being called to the gate because 'the plane is ready to depart and your seats are about to be relinquished'. I fuss and fret as Cz makes his way back from the bookshop, and we dash to the door.

I tell the guy at the door that the boarding time isn't for another 15 minutes. We 'discuss' the fact that there was no announcement that the flight wasn't delayed after all, and that the board is still showing the delayed boarding time. The two employees at the gate were really rude about the whole thing, and I might have cursed at them a little as I boarded the plane.

This is not the first time I have nearly missed a flight because Delta has failed to announce a boarding gate change or a departure time. It seems pretty par for the course on Delta flights in or out of JFK. And in general, when something does go wrong - nearly missed flight, lost luggage, etc, the customer service reps are thoroughly rude. Moral of he story is: If you can avoid flying Delta, particularly Delta into or out of JFK, do so.

Not that I'm going to follow my own advice. I have a Delta frequent flyer card, and a whole lot of miles built up. Delta may suck, but they are cheap. You get what you pay for, I guess.

As we lifted up through the clouds, we were able to watch the skyline of NYC receding below us. Unfortunately, we were to far SEE to see our neighborhood, but it was good knowing that we have a home in the city.

The flight itself was only about 45 minutes - we were on the plane from 3:45-5:30, and only 45 minutes of that was in the air - and entirely uneventful. We landed in Richmond where my mom was waiting as close to the gate as non ticket-holders could go. She managed not to cry. I was very impressed.

We spent the drive to Callao talking about the trip and watching the woods go by. Right now, her house is under construction, so she and my godfather are now living in a few rooms of a second old farmhouse on the property. It's been rigged up with heaters and and running water...the bathroom manages to be both the warmest and best-outfitted room in the house. We couldn't wait until morning, so with a flashlight, my mom took us around the property to feed her new goats saltines (even past their bedtime the goats love salty crackers), visit with the Brooklyn chickens (the little peeps we dropped off in June have grown into an giant rooster and two fat hens), and to see the new house. From the outside it doesn't look like anything special, but the interior is beautifully laid out, and every room has great water views.

We were only able to visit for a little while before heading to my grandmother's house which is not under construction and is nice and warm. Once again, we were greeted with much excitement. Unfortunately we were too tired to be really sociable. It's good that we have a few days to spend in VA, or everyone would only get a cursory hi-bye. As it stands, it hasn't really registered than we are back at our exact starting point. We have officially made it around the world.

Day 0 - Up, up and away

After staying up all night doing all the last-minute things I had planned on doing the 13th, it was off to the airport.

Up all night because I had forgotten my wallet in Virginia Beach, a three hour drive away. I would have just left it except that it contained the credit card used to book both my flight out of the country, and my onward flight to Paris. No credit card, no self-check in. So six hours of driving later, credit card in hand, I finally got around to packing, e-mailing, and tying up loose ends.

The drive to the airport was entirely uneventful, culminating in the predicted crying Mom goodbye with many photos.

We zipped through check-in, and were pleased to discover that not only do the packs fit neatly into the overhead bin, they even fit lengthgwise, promoting much goodwill among our fellow passengers trying to load their own packages.

Check in at Chicago O'Hare was another story. Because our transfer was from a domestic flight to an international one, we had re-clear security. The line, if it could be called that, was a slowly seething mass of disgruntled passengers, inching toward 4 security checkpoints. Again, once we were finally at the checkpoints we breezed right through but the wait to get there...

I can't really comment on the flight. The combination of no sleep and two Bonine (air sickness tablets) knocked me right out. Slept pretty much nonstop all the way to Warsaw. News on Warsaw next post!