#6 - Airports

March 31st, 2008

When I was 22, I had only been on a plane once. It was for my family’s pilgrimage to Orlando. Most likely it was Winnipeg -> Minneapolis -> Orlando; I remember that the carrier was Northwest. I had only previously seen airports depicted on movies. In traditional storytelling, there are only three plots to choose from: Man versus Nature, Man versus Man, and Man versus Clerk With Big Hair Who Refuses to Rent You a Car. In movies, airports are places where the scene is either 5 seconds of someone crossing their legs while reading, a place to say good bye, or a crucial plot development where an employee hinders the protagonist in some way.

I remember several things. I was amazed when they said the word Detroit over the PA system. I’m one flight away from Detroit! Amazing! There were more people in one wing of waiting lounges than there were in my hometown. There was a discarded Minneapolis Star-Tribune on the seat beside me. There was coffee, people running with briefcases, well stocked arcades, and a constant sense of novelty. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was my first taste of ‘city’ in the Walt Whitman sense.

I didn’t fly again for another ten years. I was a poor university student, and a plane ticket was an unfathomable expense. I then flew to Toronto for a sporting event, and I reflected back on my first trip to Orlando. The new feelings were somewhat tempered by adulthood I understood that, yes, this is boring. I understood that the pantomimes required in the interests of security were dehumanizing. I understood that I wasn’t sitting on a couch watching TV. The original feelings were present, and have remained after the 50+ flights since then. Seeing Parisians buying french fries at McDonalds, seeing immigrant families with full suitcases, seeing the flight from Narita to Minneapolis emptying out and its occupants going to the nearby Chinese noodle restaurant, and reading the newspapers of the world are all wonderful things to me.

There’s another thing I like about airports — the reason I’m there. Flying to a another city in less than a day’s time in astounding. No more on that topic, though, for that would be another entry in this blog.

Entry Filed under: Travel