Going there and coming back are two
entirely different things.
In a little over three weeks Loraine
and I will leave for our little week and a half getaway in Belgium,
Luxembourg, France, and Germany. We're looking forward to it, and it
should be a grand time all around. In fact, I'm in the middle of
putting together a preview of the journey for our trip blog, and
I'll share it here soon, as well.
Of course, to get to Europe and back
you have to fly. You, in fact, have to do a LOT of flying. As I've
been getting ready to go I've come to realize that the flight there
is a whole lot different than the flight back. And here's why.
On the flight over, you're excited.
You're full of adrenaline. You're ready to start a new adventure.
And because it's an overnight trip, you try to sleep a little. It
doesn't always work, but even if you lay there for a few hours with
your eyes closed, that's most of the flight over.
But on the way back, not so much. Your
trip's over, and you just want the flight to go as quickly as
possible. But because of the way the schedule goes, it's a daytime
flight. You can try to sleep, but it really doesn't work. It's just
one very long flight in the middle of one very long day with several
flight. This year, for instance, we'll leave London around 11am and
get into Chicago at 2pm, which makes it an 8-hour flight. This is
AFTER getting up really early and flying from Dusseldorf to London,
and before we make the final flight from Chicago to Marquette.
See? Not quite as exciting as flying
into Dusseldorf to start a new adventure, is it?
Over the years, I've developed a system
to try & get me through the long flight back to the U.S. You
know how you have to pack a lot of toys for kids on a car trip?
Well, for the flight home, I basically do the same for myself. I
always take the newest Vanity Fair magazine and save it for the
flight home. I get a bunch of logic puzzles from a great website so I can do them during the flight (and this year, I even remembered
the answers for them, too, unlike (ahem) last year). I also stick a
couple of 5-part episodes of the old radio show “Yours Truly,
Johnny Dollar” into my iPod. All that is shoved into my backpack
before we leave, and isn't touched until our flight home is in the
air. Between all that, a few meals, whatever magazines the airline
has in the seat, getting up to stretch a few times, and (assuming the
person in front of me doesn't lower their seat) writing the final
blog of the trip, I can usually make it through a loooooong day.
Of course, then once we're in Chicago
(and through Customs) we have five hours to kill before our flight to
Marquette, but at least you can wander around an airport and kill a
little time that way.
However, I'd prefer not to think of the
flight home just yet. I'm ready for it and my backpack is packed for
it; I'd just rather not think about it yet. That's a month and a
three days away. It's the flight over that's the important thing
right now, and that's a mere 23 days from today.
It's starting to get close!
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