Traveling

I enjoy being on the move. I haven’t spent more than 5 days in Lake Forest in my recent memory. I haven’t spent a summer in one location until this year, and I don’t  even think this counts. I love hopping in the car and driving a ridiculous amount of hours for something that I know nothing about. For me, it is about the journey and not so much the destination. However, having an amazing destination helps the excitement of the journey. Currently I am on a plane headed back to the Midwest. Honestly, I have dreaded this moment for about a month now and now that I am here it is not so bad. I am accustomed to plane travel having spent more hours than I care to recall flying to and from Boston for high school. I have become quite the adept people watcher. People watching is a great skill to develop because it helps pass endless hours (if that is your goal with your time), while also promoting some interesting inner dialogue. In my people watching, I tend to pick out that one eccentric person or group of people and watch their interactions. From there I make up a story of where they are from and how they have gotten to this moment in time. I try not to place judgment on the strange people during my travels. Who am I to call someone strange. I am currently wearing parachute pants, knowing on a whole baguette and carrying a pillow with Smoky the Bear sheets on it. I am a prime candidate for people watching. Goings on from my own life usually infiltrates the background stories I make up for the people I run into. So far this is what I got:

Maggie: she is currently gabbing on the phone in the back of the bus about how her good friend’s 12-year-old son went missing yesterday and she is going to go help him find it. While she yelled into the phone, “I am freaking out about this missing child,” I don’t believe that statement holds true because the conversation quickly changed to how she hasn’t called back the girl that she slept with last night. At this point in my people watching I have not actually laid eyes upon this person. She has a deep, rumbling voice, so I assumed that she was actually a man. When she started talking about one night stands, I furthered my assumptions (All the grinnellians that are reading this had their heteronormative alarm just go off. I know. I apologize). However, she lumbered up to the front of the bus and my assumptions were shattered. Maggie is a hulking woman with a buzz cut, men’s boxers, a couple piercing and is currently wearing a shirt that reads, “Chick Magnet” and has pebbles from the Flintstones picking up the family car. I am entirely allured by her shirt. I don’t understand it one bit and it seems to be an amalgamation of a bunch of non-sequitors. But hey, it fits what I know about her personality. I quickly realize that she is probably still drunk. She cannot control the volume of her bus, and cannot walk to the front of the bus without stumbling even when it is stopped. She is also having a real hard time with simple concepts, such as how to get to her destination. She ended up getting up and asking the bus driver how to get to her destination three times. So I decided that she probably was hitting the bars hard last night. She went home with someone and then got the call that the boy was missing. She, still drunk, decided to do her part for the cause and stumbled onto the bus. I think that in T-minus 2 hours she is going to regret getting out of bed, or start drinking again. In which case, she is going to be useless in finding this child. Also, if I was a 12 year old boy, I would be terrified of Maggie. Is she really the best person to be looking?

Frank: Frank is overly friendly. I am standing next to him in line for security screening. He says that he noticed the interesting design on the back of my shirt when I was checking in and would like to see it again if I would be so kind to take off my sweatshirt. I did. He then explains to me that he is from South Dakota and knows nothing about these parts of the country. I smile and shake my head. I didn’t know what to do with that information. Frank then turns to the people in front of us, a daughter and father couple, and starts talking to the four year old about her doll. It is interesting how unassuming this man is. He just performed two seemingly creepy acts, yet during both he seemed genuine and not creepy at all. So I conclude, he has lived in a small town in South Dakota his whole life. He knows all his neighbors and loves it there. Yet he is a successful businessman. In fact, I believe he is a doctor because he is loaded with prescription drug paraphernalia.  He has come out this way for some sort of conference but doesn’t like the haughty city doctors. He is perfectly happy to go back to his family and community and continue living the good life.

I wish I weren’t traveling in this method. Of course I am more of a fan of the slow moving method of walking and carrying all of my stuff on my back. I was even sad to see my 50lbs back be stripped from my back and sent down the conveyor belt. I feel like this plane ride is my final immersion into the front country. I am no longer required to be the mountain woman I was this summer.  I am watching the mountainous land that I explored this summer slowly turn into the prairie and farmlands of the Midwest that I systematically avoiding for a while. Alas, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. As I said, the destination adds excitement to the trip. So while I would normally not be a fan of heading in an easterly course,  and even less of a fan of stopping in the Midwest, I am visiting some amazing people that cannot be found anywhere else. For the next five days I am going to experience the best of Grinnell: all the fun and none of the homework.

Side note: about 15 minutes after I wrote this and shut off my computer our plane got struck by lightening. We were about to make an emergency landing in Madison, but it was too windy. Instead we landed in Minneapolis like we had previously planned. It was one of the bumpiest experiences of my life. The cabin broke out in cheers when we landed. I am glad to be on land once again.