Wednesday, March 22, 2006
365 days later
A year ago, right around this time even, I got off of United flight 839, from New York-Kennedy to LAX...the first leg of a three-part trip that took me to Melbourne, Australia for a three-week tour.
It was a trip of a lifetime. Then again, being just 30 years old, any trip that takes over 24 hours from start to finish, is a milestone one. But it encompassed quite a bit more.
Australia was a place I had always wanted to visit. I made it happen. You see it in the pictures, in the movies, on television shows and the such. Sydney Harbour Bridge, kangaroos, koalas, the MCG, the Great Barrier Reef, Steve Irwin (ok, maybe that one's a stretch).
My mother gave me a leather-bound pocket journal book and suggested that I take it with me to jot down some of my thoughts along the way. At the time, I pooh-poohed it. But that small book - it reminded me of something that Hemingway or Salinger would have kept with them at all times - became my co-pilot. It started out with some small thoughts, which led to coherent (and semi incoherent) streams of words. Eventually, it became my eyes.
And most importantly, it became my voice. Now, that same voice - the one that has pretty much continually yelled, screamed, begged, pleaded, cajoled, encouraged, laughed, cried, explained, debated, and screamed some more in my head over the last 30 years or so - that voice has a vehicle. The voice has an audience. (the audience includes all you good, good people, and me.)
And the voice gave me a work that takes up 25 pages in a Word document, single-spaced with wide margins. It is my best work of my lifetime. But, again, being just 30 years old, that's a small sample size.
On occasion, when I feel I've hit a rut, when the roadblocks seem too high to clear, too wide to get around, I double-click on my "Oz Blog" to return to my happy place. I take in the words, it paints a picture, and I marvel at the experience and the words I used to capture it. It's the ultimate reset button on the Nintendo that is my head.
The Oz blog was the precursor to TLBR. So, as a sort of tribute to it, the trip, and all that has come to pass over the last year - and will continue to pass in the days, weeks and months to come - I'm going to drop in excerpts of the Oz blog.
Some of you loyal, royal readers out there already have a copy of it. Some of you will be reading it for the first time. It went onto "paper" unedited and uncensored, so it will come to you the same way. Apologies ahead of time for the f-bombs.
As always, comments are welcome. But most of all, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed living it, writing it, and revisiting it.
Best.
March 22
3:45 p.m., EST; JFK Airport - What is the deal with duty free? I love not paying taxes on stuff and am in full favor of tax-free goods, but I’m baffled by the selection of stuff they sell in airports.
Hard booze I get. Cigarettes I get. Beer and wine I get. But why perfume, cologne, and big-assed oversized packages of Toblerone candy? Are people really clamouring for cheaper Toblerone? What is Toberlone? Do they even sell it outside of airports? And watches. You might not be able to get Toblerone anywhere else, but I think cheap Timex’ are rather prevalent.
In the duty free shop at the moment is a younger English woman and her mom and they’re playing with a doll that farts. Kids love flatulence. Farts = funny.
4:31 p.m. – Officially just clogged my first toilet. More to come, I’m sure.
I’m also intrigued by another airport anomaly – Hudson News. They have the absolute monopoly on airport and train station newskiosks. So I’m strolling through the kiosk (my favorite word of the day) and see W Magazine. No, not about the President of the United States, but rather, a monthly with a large photo of Lindsay Lohan.
“Fake or real?” was one of the questions posed to her in the interview. I answer that question with yet another question: “Does it matter?”
5:15 p.m. – United flight 839 is boarding for the first leg of one hell of a journey. I thought I saw Elisabeth Rohm – the old blonde DA on Law & Order – getting on the plane. It wasn’t her, though.
Also, kudos to United Airlines for keeping up the separation of the classes. Memo to the airline industry: feudalism – that whole class denomination thing in England - didn’t work. Might be why you’re hemorrhaging cash by the billions. Of course, I’d love the bigger seat, free champagne, hot towel, and cold shrimp salad, but don’t feel like ponying up the extra 7 G’s.
5:51 p.m. – I’m a firm believer in something called “iPod karma,” at least with my own personal 20 GB technological marvel. Whenever I take off on an airplane, when the jets begin to open it up down the runway, I always pick a new song no matter if I’m in the middle of another one or not. And my iPod never disappoints. This trip’s selection: Ian Brown’s “My Star.” Quite apropos for the beginning of a 25 hour, 12,000 mile journey.
7:52 p.m. – Roughly two hours into the trip and we’re being served dinner. Airplane food gets a bad rap. Is it haute cuisine? Nope. Do I turn it down? Nope. Tonight’s choice is chicken or pasta. I chose the pasta. It was lovely and served by a flight attendant who fielded the first of my many dumb questions.
I asked the nice flight attendant if the pilots on the next leg of the trip – the 15.5 hour trek from LA to Sydney – sleep. She said yes, they do. (of course they sleep, you idiot, they’re human beings…just like they have a Fourth of July in England…). This flight attendant was very nice, unlike some of the other unfriendly ones I’ve encountered recently. But in light of my theory about flight attendants, I’ll move on.
Back to the ziti. It was good, but not like Mom’s. The salad was good too, but it’s not Frankie & Johnny’s. There was even this cold shrimp and celery thing, which was also good but certainly not 22 Bowen’s. And for dessert, there was carrot cake, which was also good but not Lloyd’s over by Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. On the iPod, The Jam’s “Pink Carnation” was playing, which is a good song, but it’s not the Beatles’ “Let it Be.”
Catching on to a trend here? I’m a finicky little bitch. Back to my Diet 7-Up.
7:58 p.m. – Chilling with the iPod, but I can’t help but notice that the monitors on this Boeing 757 are playing something from the Food Network, starring the lovely Rachael Ray.
8:02 p.m. – Chewing on the ice from my empty Diet 7-Up, watching Rachael Ray mouth the words about some breakfast place in Aspen, CO. Love. Her. Issues? Yep, boatloads. Yay, it’s movie time – The Incredibles. Will check in later.
8:20 p.m. – Ok if it’s 8:20 in NY, then it’s 5:20 in LA, and it’s 12:20 pm tomorrow in Australia. And that means…holy shit, there’s almost 23 hours to go. Fuck.
10:32 p.m. – The Incredibles was good. Now get me off this fucking plane. It’s starting to get “bumpy,” as the pilot called it. I hate “bumpy.” “Bumpy” sucks. And this is the third or fourth time it’s gotten “bumpy.” But on channel nine on the in-flight entertainment network, one can tune into the control tower chat. There’s nothing more confusing that air traffic control jargon.
11:20 p.m. – More iPod karma – Frank Sinatra’s “A long night.” No shit, Frankie. No shit.
11:45 p.m. – We’re landing soon, so the seatback and tray table have to be in their upright and locked position, and all carry-on stowed safely under the seat in front of me. All I can say about getting off this plane is “yay.”
People complain about the trip from NY to LA. Screw that. I’m losing an entire Wednesday. Not like in college if I went out on a Tuesday night and was hungover and didn’t want to leave my couch and wasted a whole day. No, there is no time during my day that it will be Wednesday.
12:27 a.m. EST – How am I still awake? How am I still on point? Feels good to just walk around a bit and get the blood moving. Saw the first bizarro person in the LAX terminal. A bizarro person is someone that bears an uncanny resemblance to another person that either I know or is famous. The first one: Bizarro Kurt Vonnegut.
This still doesn’t seen real. Been to LA a few times, twice as the final destination and couple times as a stopover. In about a friggin’ day, it’ll be really real.
1:00 a.m. – This 747 is dumb big, yo.
1:40 a.m. – They’re going through the whole safety presentation and I just couldn’t be bothered. They could be telling me the winning numbers for Powerball or Charlize Theron’s cell number, but I’m just not listening. Can’t focus, exhausted. Hey, wait, my watch says 1:41 a.m., WEDNESDAY…I have a Wednesday! Oh wait, that’s in NY. Alas, still no Wednesday for me. It’s quarter to 11 and by the time it might be 12:00 a.m. in LA, we’ll have passed into another time zone. No Wednesday for you, my friend. The safety speech finally finished. It took damn near 20 minutes. Just 14 hours and 40 minutes remain. Bollocks.
2:10 a.m. EST; 11:10 p.m. PST – They have those nifty little progress screens which show the temperature outside the plane, the altitude, distance to and from destination, and time remaining on the trip. I like those.
But not as we taxi down the runway. A nice kick in the pants to see that once we pull back from the gate, there’s just 15 hours and 7,500 miles to go.
Oh, and the first feature film will be Fat Albert? Great, make sure you use the steel toed boots for that second swift kick to the groin.
3:05 a.m. EST; 12:05 a.m. PST…but 11:05 p.m. AST… - Just finished dinner. It was beef. It didn’t suck. Time to introduce some red wine and dextromorthapan into the diet. Dexy is the active ingredient in the popular cold medicine Ny-Quil that makes you go sleep-sleep.
Oh, by the way, Fat Albert is the worst movie I think I’ve even attempted to watch in 15 years. People should lose their job for this and be exiled to some random Elba-like island for this crap. Is Bill Cosby that hard-up for cash? Too many paternity suits? Damn, Bill, “Kids Say The Darndest Things” is easy money, like going to the ATM. Why do this to us?
3:10 a.m. EST – I’m so done with this movie. Back to the trusty sidekick iPod.
9:21 a.m. EST – Told you red wine and two ny-quil tablets work… So I have some good news and bad news for you. Because I’m a newly baptized optimist, I’ll give you the good stuff first : We’re traveled eight hours! Awesome!
Now, the inate pessimism is going to check in for a little point/counterpoint: that’s just slightly over half the way.
Ok, from here on out, I’m switching the blog to Australian time. So if you’re so wrapped up in the words that you’ve already lost track of time, well, you’re ahead of the game.
As I’ve been sitting for quite sometime today, I decide to get up and walkabout (first use of an Australian phrase) the plane. Feels good to have blood flow through your legs. How the hell do people make this trip regularly?
More tomorrow.
To the next step...one.
It was a trip of a lifetime. Then again, being just 30 years old, any trip that takes over 24 hours from start to finish, is a milestone one. But it encompassed quite a bit more.
Australia was a place I had always wanted to visit. I made it happen. You see it in the pictures, in the movies, on television shows and the such. Sydney Harbour Bridge, kangaroos, koalas, the MCG, the Great Barrier Reef, Steve Irwin (ok, maybe that one's a stretch).
My mother gave me a leather-bound pocket journal book and suggested that I take it with me to jot down some of my thoughts along the way. At the time, I pooh-poohed it. But that small book - it reminded me of something that Hemingway or Salinger would have kept with them at all times - became my co-pilot. It started out with some small thoughts, which led to coherent (and semi incoherent) streams of words. Eventually, it became my eyes.
And most importantly, it became my voice. Now, that same voice - the one that has pretty much continually yelled, screamed, begged, pleaded, cajoled, encouraged, laughed, cried, explained, debated, and screamed some more in my head over the last 30 years or so - that voice has a vehicle. The voice has an audience. (the audience includes all you good, good people, and me.)
And the voice gave me a work that takes up 25 pages in a Word document, single-spaced with wide margins. It is my best work of my lifetime. But, again, being just 30 years old, that's a small sample size.
On occasion, when I feel I've hit a rut, when the roadblocks seem too high to clear, too wide to get around, I double-click on my "Oz Blog" to return to my happy place. I take in the words, it paints a picture, and I marvel at the experience and the words I used to capture it. It's the ultimate reset button on the Nintendo that is my head.
The Oz blog was the precursor to TLBR. So, as a sort of tribute to it, the trip, and all that has come to pass over the last year - and will continue to pass in the days, weeks and months to come - I'm going to drop in excerpts of the Oz blog.
Some of you loyal, royal readers out there already have a copy of it. Some of you will be reading it for the first time. It went onto "paper" unedited and uncensored, so it will come to you the same way. Apologies ahead of time for the f-bombs.
As always, comments are welcome. But most of all, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed living it, writing it, and revisiting it.
Best.
March 22
3:45 p.m., EST; JFK Airport - What is the deal with duty free? I love not paying taxes on stuff and am in full favor of tax-free goods, but I’m baffled by the selection of stuff they sell in airports.
Hard booze I get. Cigarettes I get. Beer and wine I get. But why perfume, cologne, and big-assed oversized packages of Toblerone candy? Are people really clamouring for cheaper Toblerone? What is Toberlone? Do they even sell it outside of airports? And watches. You might not be able to get Toblerone anywhere else, but I think cheap Timex’ are rather prevalent.
In the duty free shop at the moment is a younger English woman and her mom and they’re playing with a doll that farts. Kids love flatulence. Farts = funny.
4:31 p.m. – Officially just clogged my first toilet. More to come, I’m sure.
I’m also intrigued by another airport anomaly – Hudson News. They have the absolute monopoly on airport and train station newskiosks. So I’m strolling through the kiosk (my favorite word of the day) and see W Magazine. No, not about the President of the United States, but rather, a monthly with a large photo of Lindsay Lohan.
“Fake or real?” was one of the questions posed to her in the interview. I answer that question with yet another question: “Does it matter?”
5:15 p.m. – United flight 839 is boarding for the first leg of one hell of a journey. I thought I saw Elisabeth Rohm – the old blonde DA on Law & Order – getting on the plane. It wasn’t her, though.
Also, kudos to United Airlines for keeping up the separation of the classes. Memo to the airline industry: feudalism – that whole class denomination thing in England - didn’t work. Might be why you’re hemorrhaging cash by the billions. Of course, I’d love the bigger seat, free champagne, hot towel, and cold shrimp salad, but don’t feel like ponying up the extra 7 G’s.
5:51 p.m. – I’m a firm believer in something called “iPod karma,” at least with my own personal 20 GB technological marvel. Whenever I take off on an airplane, when the jets begin to open it up down the runway, I always pick a new song no matter if I’m in the middle of another one or not. And my iPod never disappoints. This trip’s selection: Ian Brown’s “My Star.” Quite apropos for the beginning of a 25 hour, 12,000 mile journey.
7:52 p.m. – Roughly two hours into the trip and we’re being served dinner. Airplane food gets a bad rap. Is it haute cuisine? Nope. Do I turn it down? Nope. Tonight’s choice is chicken or pasta. I chose the pasta. It was lovely and served by a flight attendant who fielded the first of my many dumb questions.
I asked the nice flight attendant if the pilots on the next leg of the trip – the 15.5 hour trek from LA to Sydney – sleep. She said yes, they do. (of course they sleep, you idiot, they’re human beings…just like they have a Fourth of July in England…). This flight attendant was very nice, unlike some of the other unfriendly ones I’ve encountered recently. But in light of my theory about flight attendants, I’ll move on.
Back to the ziti. It was good, but not like Mom’s. The salad was good too, but it’s not Frankie & Johnny’s. There was even this cold shrimp and celery thing, which was also good but certainly not 22 Bowen’s. And for dessert, there was carrot cake, which was also good but not Lloyd’s over by Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. On the iPod, The Jam’s “Pink Carnation” was playing, which is a good song, but it’s not the Beatles’ “Let it Be.”
Catching on to a trend here? I’m a finicky little bitch. Back to my Diet 7-Up.
7:58 p.m. – Chilling with the iPod, but I can’t help but notice that the monitors on this Boeing 757 are playing something from the Food Network, starring the lovely Rachael Ray.
8:02 p.m. – Chewing on the ice from my empty Diet 7-Up, watching Rachael Ray mouth the words about some breakfast place in Aspen, CO. Love. Her. Issues? Yep, boatloads. Yay, it’s movie time – The Incredibles. Will check in later.
8:20 p.m. – Ok if it’s 8:20 in NY, then it’s 5:20 in LA, and it’s 12:20 pm tomorrow in Australia. And that means…holy shit, there’s almost 23 hours to go. Fuck.
10:32 p.m. – The Incredibles was good. Now get me off this fucking plane. It’s starting to get “bumpy,” as the pilot called it. I hate “bumpy.” “Bumpy” sucks. And this is the third or fourth time it’s gotten “bumpy.” But on channel nine on the in-flight entertainment network, one can tune into the control tower chat. There’s nothing more confusing that air traffic control jargon.
11:20 p.m. – More iPod karma – Frank Sinatra’s “A long night.” No shit, Frankie. No shit.
11:45 p.m. – We’re landing soon, so the seatback and tray table have to be in their upright and locked position, and all carry-on stowed safely under the seat in front of me. All I can say about getting off this plane is “yay.”
People complain about the trip from NY to LA. Screw that. I’m losing an entire Wednesday. Not like in college if I went out on a Tuesday night and was hungover and didn’t want to leave my couch and wasted a whole day. No, there is no time during my day that it will be Wednesday.
12:27 a.m. EST – How am I still awake? How am I still on point? Feels good to just walk around a bit and get the blood moving. Saw the first bizarro person in the LAX terminal. A bizarro person is someone that bears an uncanny resemblance to another person that either I know or is famous. The first one: Bizarro Kurt Vonnegut.
This still doesn’t seen real. Been to LA a few times, twice as the final destination and couple times as a stopover. In about a friggin’ day, it’ll be really real.
1:00 a.m. – This 747 is dumb big, yo.
1:40 a.m. – They’re going through the whole safety presentation and I just couldn’t be bothered. They could be telling me the winning numbers for Powerball or Charlize Theron’s cell number, but I’m just not listening. Can’t focus, exhausted. Hey, wait, my watch says 1:41 a.m., WEDNESDAY…I have a Wednesday! Oh wait, that’s in NY. Alas, still no Wednesday for me. It’s quarter to 11 and by the time it might be 12:00 a.m. in LA, we’ll have passed into another time zone. No Wednesday for you, my friend. The safety speech finally finished. It took damn near 20 minutes. Just 14 hours and 40 minutes remain. Bollocks.
2:10 a.m. EST; 11:10 p.m. PST – They have those nifty little progress screens which show the temperature outside the plane, the altitude, distance to and from destination, and time remaining on the trip. I like those.
But not as we taxi down the runway. A nice kick in the pants to see that once we pull back from the gate, there’s just 15 hours and 7,500 miles to go.
Oh, and the first feature film will be Fat Albert? Great, make sure you use the steel toed boots for that second swift kick to the groin.
3:05 a.m. EST; 12:05 a.m. PST…but 11:05 p.m. AST… - Just finished dinner. It was beef. It didn’t suck. Time to introduce some red wine and dextromorthapan into the diet. Dexy is the active ingredient in the popular cold medicine Ny-Quil that makes you go sleep-sleep.
Oh, by the way, Fat Albert is the worst movie I think I’ve even attempted to watch in 15 years. People should lose their job for this and be exiled to some random Elba-like island for this crap. Is Bill Cosby that hard-up for cash? Too many paternity suits? Damn, Bill, “Kids Say The Darndest Things” is easy money, like going to the ATM. Why do this to us?
3:10 a.m. EST – I’m so done with this movie. Back to the trusty sidekick iPod.
9:21 a.m. EST – Told you red wine and two ny-quil tablets work… So I have some good news and bad news for you. Because I’m a newly baptized optimist, I’ll give you the good stuff first : We’re traveled eight hours! Awesome!
Now, the inate pessimism is going to check in for a little point/counterpoint: that’s just slightly over half the way.
Ok, from here on out, I’m switching the blog to Australian time. So if you’re so wrapped up in the words that you’ve already lost track of time, well, you’re ahead of the game.
As I’ve been sitting for quite sometime today, I decide to get up and walkabout (first use of an Australian phrase) the plane. Feels good to have blood flow through your legs. How the hell do people make this trip regularly?
More tomorrow.
To the next step...one.
