A Baltic Diversion
30 October 2018
The North Atlantic Arc Home
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Tuesday 30 October 2018--There's a weekly column in the Travel section of
the Boston Sunday Globe called The VIP Lounge, in which prominent locals
are asked about their travel preferences: favorite vacation destination, best
childhood travel memory, what you can't leave home without, favorite food, guilty
pleasure, etc. One of the standard topics is aisle or window. The folks who
choose the aisle cite the ability to stretch their legs out (and, I suppose, trip the
flight attendants) and ease of visiting the restroom. Most of the ones who
choose window say they want to lean against the wall and try to sleep. Only a
very few say they choose the window for the reason that I do, to look out. If
there's anything to see, I want to see it--geography is why I travel. I usually pick
the north side of the plane so the sun isn't shining in on me, but sometimes take
the other side if I think there are better views to be had. And I always have my
camera at the ready, or at least I have ever since the time I had a great view of St
Kilda with my camera in the overhead. Sometimes I see recognizable places;
other times, I have to refer to google maps later to identify what I've seen, even
places I've actually been to. Mapcarta is a great resource for identifying, say,
the name of an obscure lake in an uninhabited part of Greenland.
My rescheduled itinerary is through Atlanta, an airport I've never been to before, and the flight arc is a new one for me. I've driven through Arnprior and Belleville, Ontario, but have never seen them from the air before. South of Lake Ontario, I have no idea what I'm looking at. Atlanta is a very large and busy airport, the primary hub for Delta, but it's orderly and easy to navigate, its seven parallel concourses connected at their midpoints by a tram: Nine flights up and nine flights down. I recognize Philadelphia and New York in the dark. At Bradley, having cleared customs in Atlanta, I have only to pick up my bag and go. I am standing by the entry port of the carousel when it starts up, and my bag is the first one out. I grab it, turn, and hold it and its matching carry- on in my extended arms in triumph. "Who's number one?" a nearby fellow traveler asks with a smile. "I am!" I declare. I have a phone message from Bobby. He's waiting for me in the cell phone lot. Unfortunately, he seems to have changed his cell number in the past year, and I only have his old one. I have to wait nearly half an hour for him to call me again, wondering why I'm taking so long. So it goes in travel, a series of victories and defeats, large and small. Your flight is canceled, but you get to spend an extra night in Amsterdam. Your luggage comes out early, but you have to wait for your ride. That's life, isn't it? See you next time. 2019 |
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Gardenstown
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Caithness Coast
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Dunnet Head & Orkney
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Scrabster & Thurso
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Strathy Point
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Kangaarsuup Tasersua, Greenland
I am not making this up
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Arnprior, Ontario
Madawaska & Ottawa Rivers
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Belleville, Ontario
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Gainesville, Georgia
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Atlanta
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Leaving Atlanta
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Philadelphia
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Metro New York
2019
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