T minus 6 hrs to take off

Approximately anyway.

For me one of the hardest things about air travel is all the waiting. I’m ready to roll but the flight doesn’t leave until 4:15 pm. So I’m sitting here trying to fill the time to keep my nerves on an even keel. So I’m watching TV — Just one of the Guys is on, one of the more unsung teen movies of the 80s; and before the the final episode of West Wing — and reading and posting to twitter and facebook every mundane action of mine, and txting my wife that I’m lonely and nervous and the house is too quiet.

And there’s still two hours before my cab arrives, which will put me at the airport approximately 3 hours before my flight takes off. Talk about being early, right. I’m a chronic early person but even I admit this is a bit much. Thing is I’m far more paranoid about something causing me to miss my flight. I do have to check in for the second leg of my trip, from SLC to Alaska, because I couldn’t do it online. Couldn’t choose my seat for the first leg of my flight, from Detroit to SLC. That just added to my anxiety.

But there’s very little to be done about it. I probably should have slept in this morning or come back and napped after dropping my daughter off at school this morning but I was too wound up. I could only manage to shut my eyes for about 15 minutes. Then I finished shoveling the driveway.

Now I’m blogging to pass some time but so far I’ve killed approximately 13 minutes. Ugh

Yokon ho! Yokon ho! It’s off to Alaska I go….

…48 hours from now I’ll be on a plan heading from SLC to Alaska. Flight from Detroit leaves at 4:15pm. I’ll be leaving early, early for the airport because I’m so paranoid about missing my flight. Not the kind of drama I care for. I’ll grab lunch at the airport, kick back with a book and relax. I’ll be doing the same in SLC, because the layover there is some 3 hours. Again, I don’t mind since it will give me more than ample time to navigate a strange airport. By then I’ll be read for some dinner, I’m sure.

The flight from SLC to AK will be much longer, but I’ve been informed that the plane is a 757 and as such slightly roomier than most other flights. Plus, each seat has it’s own TV screen and apparently cable, at least for the first part of the flight. I’m hoping to catch some Zzzz anyway. I’ll be arriving in Anchorage approximately 12:30am and my friend and I hope to head out by noon later that day. So I’m going to need all the sleep that I can get. We’ll be driving 16+ hour days. Whew! And with no delays we should hit St. Louis just in time for me to hop a flight back to Detroit. Yahoooooo!

Thanks to my wife for helping me pack. She’s an ace packer. And just aces all around. Feeling better with that taken care of.

Here’s a map of the route we’ll be taking.

Yukon ho!

Like Calvin and Hobbes in a Sunday comic strip I’m striking out for the Yukon.

Actually, I’m flying to Alaska to meet a friend from college ( let’s call him …John b/c, well, that’s his name. what are the odds, right) to help him make the drive from AK to St. Louis where’s accepted a new job. He and his wife have been living in AK for about nine years now, I think it is, and finally decided it was time to move back down to the lower 48.

Maybe about 12 or so years ago I had the chance to move to Alaska with John. This was before he was married and I was just out of grad school. I had no real reason not to go, but I balked anyway. Not exactly sure why. Perhaps that shall be the subject of my therapy session today. We shall see…

Anyhoo…I’ve always regretted not taking John up on that earlier offer, even though he was there only about 6 months and I likely would not have stayed on my own, but you never know, right. I could have at least said I’d lived in Alaska for a time. With that in mind, I didn’t want to let this opportunity pass. Fortunately, I was able to get the time off work and my wife was more than understanding about the trip. In fact, she said she’d be pissed at me if I didn’t go, which makes me wonder if she’s just trying to get me out of the house. I wouldn’t be surprised — I learned along ago that I’m the kind of person that others need a break from, from time to time. And John was willing to use his frequent-flyer miles to pay my airfare because there is no way I could have afforded a ticket to Alaska right now.

So I’m pretty much all set. Just need to pack and be on my way. I’m not taking the laptop. If I do any writing it will be with the low-tech method of pen and paper, although John will have his so I may be able to post about my trip. Most of the trip is going to be about driving, though. But I will need something to read, especially since I have a more than three-hour layover in Salt Lake City. Originally, I thought to reread “Girl with Curious Hair,” by David Foster Wallace as well as J.D. Salinger’s “Nine Stories,” but then we got in the new edition of “On the Road.” This is the “original script,” the way it was before it had been edited. Apparently there was content that just couldn’t be pub’d at the time. But it’s in there now.

I have never read “On the Road,” if you can believe that. People are often surprised to discover that I haven’t read it. Not sure why. I guess I just seem like an “On the Road” kind of guy. I’ve tried to read it a few times but there was something about it that I just couldn’t get into. That happens to me with some books. But that was before. Now I think might be the right time to try again.

In any case, I’m now toggling between excitement and nervousness. I don’t travel much, especially on my own, especially on airplanes — my wife is the expert traveler. Hell, my daughter has logged more miles in the air than me, and she’s only soon to be 9. It’s kind of sad really. But that’s a subject for another navel-gazing post.

Yukon ho!