Husband and I just took another vacation out in Arizona and New Mexico. We have a great time on these road trips, and frequently rent a motorcycle for a day or two to explore scenic routes and do our version of Easy Rider without the bandanas and bloodshed. The roadblock to all this merriment is getting me on the plane in the first place.
I’ve written so many entries about my air travel neurosis that I can’t link to them all here, but if you did a content search for “fly” they’d pop right up. At the beginning of this trip, I was using the free wireless connection at JFK’s JetBlue terminal when Daughter emailed a message about an art show I might like to attend. I answered right away that it sounded like a terrific event, and as I was finishing my response, the boarding announcement filled my ears and my insanity kicked in. I wrote Daughter that we were at the airport and had to get on the plane and if anything happened, she should remember where I told her we keep the safe deposit box key and all our important papers. Then I signed off.
When I awoke the next morning in Phoenix, I logged onto Gmail and there was Daughter’s reply staring back at me saying, “Yeah, that was pretty scary. Don’t do that again.”
She’s absolutely right, of course, so I would like to publicly apologize to Daughter and promise that I will try and keep my panic wrapped in a neat little ball in the pit of my stomach and not worry her again, although I never said being my daughter wouldn’t have its scary moments.
On the subject of scary, Husband and I had our usual turf war in the rental car when I kept asking to relieve him of driving, and he came up with one excuse after another as to why that wasn’t a good idea. The truth is, Husband finds my driving alternately annoying and terrifying. You should see him in the passenger seat when I’m passing a truck at 80 miles an hour. His internal organs are bubbling.
The thing is, I never even WANT to pass the stupid truck. I only do it because he says something like, “Are you happy riding in this guy’s fumes for 40 miles?” Happy? Happiness is relative. I’M ON VACATION. I’d be happy hanging off the back of his truck in my underwear.
I do understand Husband’s concern, though, because my depth perception isn’t what you’d call stellar, and on those endless two-way, two-lane highways the Southwest is famous for, it’s not always easy to judge how far away oncoming traffic really is. Husband sitting tense in the passenger seat always reminds me of Annie Hall, the classic Woody Allen film. There’s a scene where Woody’s character is talking to Diane Keaton’s brother, Dwayne, played by a very young Christopher Walken in an early act of casting brilliance when you consider his later roles.
Anyway, in the middle of the conversation, Dwayne says something like, “Sometimes, when I’m driving alone at night, I see a car coming toward me and I have this sudden impulse to swerve into the oncoming lights.” And Woody looks at his watch and says, “I have to go now, Dwayne, I’m due back on the planet Earth.”
I guess you’ll be going now, too.
Daughter’s Fotos take us to 5 Ptz, a graffiti mecca under the 7 train in Queens
around the corner
NeoPen
Japan-Ricans
Muro
overview