Letters From The Loft

Stuff From The Desk Of Chuck Thornton

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Journal Entry: Alaska Cruise - page 6

THE TRIP HOME AND REFLECTIONS

The morning debarkation was a piece of cake, which, coincidentally, was also my breakfast. Thanks to the arrangements made for those of us trying to furtively reach the 48 adjacent states without making direct eye-contact with a Canadian, we went directly from the ship to a bus to the Vancouver airport with no Canadian customs involved. Our luggage was also taken directly from the ship to our plane. So at about 9:30 AM, all we had to do was sit back and relax for five hours at Vancouver International until our plane departed.

This wasn’t as hard as it probably sounds to you Type-A personalities that actually think of your destination as your goal.  Sue and I are great at waiting. We sit, we read, we watch daily dramas unfold around us. After the past seven days, it was sort of refreshing to be sitting in an environment where no one was trying to force you to have fun.  And let’s face it; airports excel at providing a no-fun environment.

There were some challenges, mostly of the soft-drink variety. Diet Dr. Pepper was again in short supply. I spotted a bank of vending machines, and they all took US currency, but for some reason, the soda machines were the only ones that didn’t take paper money, which was all I had. So I had to go to one of the fast-food concessions to buy a soft drink. Aside from my reluctance to fraternize with the locals, I was afraid that these places would accept only Canadian currency. After all, at LAX I sure didn’t see any separate cash registers filled with bills that look like store coupons and coins with holes in the middle. LAX is an American airport and American cash seems to be the method of exchange, so I expected a corresponding rationale at Vancouver International.

I shouldn’t have worried. The lady at the counter was glad to take my hard-earned Yankee dollars for a Diet Coke (which, in Canada, has a French label. I can’t remember what it was called, exactly, but like all French words, they managed to spell it with two e’s and an accent mark). The catch is that my change was in Canadian currency, so I got stuck with these strange little coins that a three-year-old can bend between his thumb and index finger. Later, when we decided to have some authentic Canadian Fish & Chips (national motto: “You come for the fish; you stay for the chips, eh?”) the same thing happened: American money in; Canadian money out. I felt a lot like I was at Chuck E. Cheese’s, getting tokens. Luckily, in both cases, I had less than a dollar coming in change, so I didn’t end up with any paper money that looked like it should have Art Linkletter’s picture on it, but still… I knew what the folks behind the counter were thinking as they handed me my change: “Try to spend that back in the states, you hoser.”

The plane was ready for boarding right on time, and only one gate away from what was indicated on our boarding pass, and the flight was smooth. We arrived in LA at about 5:30 PM and went down to see if our luggage had made the same trip.

I find the human dynamic of the luggage carousel interesting.  It’s amazing that we can spend so much time picking out just the right piece of luggage to suit our needs, yet have such a hard time recognizing it in a crowd. The method of fetching luggage at the airport is sort of like fishing from the bank of a swift stream. Except in the case of your own luggage (which usually makes about as many revolutions as an average drive by Richard Petty), the rule is “catch and release”.  You snag something that might be yours, examine it, then throw it back, rinse, and repeat until you finally find the right one. Usually you can make the final determination by examining the luggage tag with your name on it.  If you’ve forgotten to tag your luggage in an identifiable manner, then you have to resort to opening it up and rifling through the underwear looking for a recognizable pattern. The saddest thing is listening to some rookie tell his wife, “Ours is the Samsonite.”

Our luggage was there, so we went out to the front curb, at the designated FlyAway stop to wait for the bus that would take us back to the terminal, where Ben would pick us up. The FlyAway buses are scheduled to run every 15 minutes at that time of day, but we had to wait close to an hour for ours to show up, possibly because it’s hard to keep a viable schedule when every piece of machinery manufactured by Japan and Detroit is sharing your route.

Still, as we rode from LAX back to the FlyAway terminal in the San Fernando Valley, and I saw the traffic that the ordinary non-chauffeured humans were fighting, I was still happy with the arrangement. I would never ask my family or friends to fight that kind of traffic just to pick me up at the airport; someday I might want a real favor and then realize I used it up on something as mundane as a trip back from the airport. Looking at the traffic on the freeway near LAX, it made me appreciate even more the natural beauty of Alaska, where glaciers moving at 7 feet per day were out-performing anything on the road down here.

We called Ben while we were still in route, and he picked us up at the FlyAway curbside and got us home safely. The house was in pretty good shape with Ben in charge. There was no spoiled food lying around; in fact, there was no food at all. Even the spice-rack containers were empty, and maybe it was just my imagination, but it seemed like there were more posters for missing pets around the neighborhood.

So all that’s left now is for Sue to unpack, restock the kitchen, and clean the house while I roll up my sleeves and make a few random reflections about the trip, in no particular order.

RANDOM REFLECTIONS ABOUT THE TRIP IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

I catch myself sometimes thinking that, as a couple that’s stayed together for 30 years, married only to each other, we’re something special. But then I realize that, although long-term marriages might be a bit rarer today than they used to be, I still come across lots of couples that have been married as long as or longer than we have. Yeah, I’ll then say to myself defensively, but we’ve known each other since high school. I married the first girl I ever went out with, and it’s worked out for thirty years. That’s something, I think proudly. But then, like before, I’ll realize that there’s also lots of married couples out there that started as high school sweethearts. We might be a minority, but that doesn’t make us rare or special.

And the fact is that we’re not a perfect couple. Anybody who’s exposed to us for any length of time knows that I don’t treat Sue anywhere near as well as she deserves, and I probably never will, maybe because I’m of the male persuasion, and more likely because I’m human, or at least genetically close enough to share one of the human race’s most predominant traits: I often forget to count my blessings.

I’m sure my description of this trip probably gives the impression that we were always busy, but there were opportunities for me to relax and surreptitiously watch my wife, usually while she was gazing out our balcony at the passing scenery. I’d look at her and think about our 30 years together and realize that, if I’m going to be perfectly honest with myself, I have to admit that, as a couple, we’re not that special.

But she sure is.

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