Lion and Magic Boy

I just got back from another 48 hours in Pennsylvania, and even though the reason for the trip was extremely nerve-wracking, I was able to make these observations:

An older couple got on the plane and sat next to me coming home.
He: Dockers, baseball cap (which looked odd and out of place on him; he’s probably used to suits in the boardroom).
She: Lots of makeup, huge diamond.
They: Never spoke more than three sentences to each other.
Me: I never want to be like this with my love.

Pennsylvania is intentionally impossible to navigate in. This keeps the natives there, as they are probably too confused to find their way out. For non-natives, this challenge can be life-threatening. How could you find, say, a hospital, if all the roads look alike, signs are spotty, and you’re forever driving inside a wall of menacing, choking green trees and undergrowth? I’m lucky I got out and got my children out before some sentient vine reached through a window and grabbed us, slowly sucking the life force from us while wrapped up in a cocoon of green leaves, eventually dropping our skeletons onto the forest floor below (Wait. Is that a movie? Should be.)

People make friends, or create alliances, quickly in the unnatural setting that is travel. I asked the woman using the hotel’s one computer (oh why don’t I have a laptop????) how long she’d be, thinking she’d bite my head off for asking. She was friendly and polite, and I said I’d check back in a few minutes. When I came back, there was a man camped out near her looking like he was next in line for the computer. Inexplicably, though, I glanced toward her and she stealthily moved a chair closer to hers and patted it, inviting someone (me?) to sit. Sure enough, when she got up from the desk, she motioned me toward her with an air of conspiracy, and I was able to slide in and print my boarding pass for my morning flight.

Mother-daughter team sitting next to me in the gate waiting area, waiting to board our flight, comparing notes from various celebrity gossip magazines. As if it’s important that no one has seen Tom and Katie’s baby since the birth.

Couple wolfing down breakfast from Chick-fil-a in same waiting area. Ew.

Note to hotel desk woman at Comfort Inn in Philadelphia: I hope your sinus headache is better.

Why do rental cars smell like that?

And hotel rooms, for that matter?

Regarding hotel rooms, how do you handle using the remote, knowing it’s published over and over that the remote is the most germ-laden surface in a hotel room (after dealing with and trying to ignore your knowledge of all the dead skin in the mattress/pillows, bodily fluids or whatever on the never-washed bedspread, not to mention BREATHING THE SAME AIR AS OVER A HUNDRED OTHER PEOPLE in the airplane, etc.)? Or letting your two-year old mouth it? Do you just ignore it, pretend it’s not happening, attempt to clean it, what? Good thing I don’t watch TV.

I hate traveling.

travel
hotels
airplanes
rants