Reading: Still Life

Moving: stress

Listening: KBCO

Learning: I think RDC enables my travel-stress

19 October 2000: 'Nother wedding (travel)

Sometimes I crave a wee Palm Pilot all my very own to jot down those delicious turns of phrase that would really make me readable to people other than me. But then I figure if I don't do it with a notecard and pen then I probably wouldn't do it with a Palm Pilot either.

So. Last Thursday I left Dot Org just before noon in that frenzied manner that I develop before travel, especially when I have to do it all on my own. I took the bus and ran the few blocks home and slammed my way into the house to my screaming bird, who is unaccustomed to my coming home at lunchtime but, I'm sure, would like me to do so more often. Furthermore he wanted to be on my shoulder, but he hadn't miraculously become shoulder-trained since the morning so that was nothing doing, frustrating him further.

The plan was to travel in khakis so I could wear hiking boots, because I'd want the boots Saturday night for the afterparty around the campfire along with my fleece pants and jacket and UConn sweatshirt. Cue foreshadowing. But it was sweltering in Denver, in the 70s, which is sweltering when you're frenzied and frantic, and I did not relish the idea of boots with wool socks. The other plan was that I'd arrive at the house, grab the suitcase, pluck buddy chow from freezer and drop into bag with other birdie supplies, and be out of the house by 12:15. Leaving work at noon never gets me home at 12:15, though, because apparently three miles are too many for a city bus to travel in fifteen minutes. Anyway, this plan got tossed out the window.

I am going to a Dot Org meeting in Boston in November. I need suits. I have the houndstooth one from Nordstrom that I bought for interviews, very formal and straitlaced, and the plum one I found also at Ross, which I cannot wear in the street without being accosted. Wednesday, therefore, I trotted out to Ross, where I get most of my clothes because I'm such a tasteful creature. I found two suits, or rather three but two were the exact same style, one green, one blue, in 10 and 12. I never try anything on there and brought both home, figuring one would fit. Happily, the fitting suit was the 10, and I wore that Thursday. I got a lot of feedback on it (all positive, thank you) and I wonder if this is because I have so few clothes that anything new warrants comment or because it's a really good suit. To look at my closet, I'd say I have a lot of clothes, but most of them are for summer and I currently do not fit into a lot of them. But I think it's a good suit. I have a figure that while bulky is Proportional, so I look good in tailored styles. Plus I've been wanting something with that New Thing of flowers or vines growing up from the hem. I'm sure I'm very trendy except six months later and that I'll hate it next week, but I've liked that look all season. Wearing the suit was a lot more tempting than khakis with boots.

Which meant that I could wear my purple jersey dress (another Ross find) to the rehearsal dinner instead of the peach linen, which meant that I'd wear the purple dress all day Friday and until the wedding Saturday (instead of khakis with different shirts), which people would just have to lump, because it meant I would be bringing, for a stay of less than four days, three pairs of shoes total instead of four: black pumps on my feet, silver pumps for the wedding, boots for the afterparty, instead of wearing boots and packing khaki bluchers and wedding pumps and rehearsal dinner linen mules. Which meant I'd have to pack the boots but at least not have to wear them. Which meant I had to tear apart my knapsack to fit them in. Which I did. Which meant Blake and I left the house after 12:30. During the lunch hour, Colorado Boulevard is almost as bad as it is at rush hour, but we made to Petsmart and got a honeystick for Blake, to occupy him for at least a few hours of his captivity. I thought I might stay on Colorado all the way to Hampden if 25 looked bad, but it wasn't so off we zoomed onto the highway.

Wheee, wheee, wheee, driving at 65 in fifth gear all the way to the junction with I-225, at which point traffic thickened and I shifted down into fourth. I am sure I shifted into fourth. I know I had trouble learning this in the first few months of having a fifth gear, and that once I tried to put the car into reverse while going 50+ mph and another time into second, but neither of those attempts to destroy the transmission was successful. If I can't shift smoothly from fifth to fourth, I can at least find fourth from neutral, which is where I generally pause for a split second. I cannot have shifted into reverse, because in fact I was still going forward. I cannot have shifted into second, because the rpms didn't fly through the roof nor the engine sound like Bethany's in "Dogma." So for some other reason having nothing to do with my shifting, the engine light flashed. Yes indeed. Flash, flash, flash, for several seconds during which my heart raced and my hands began to shake in that way which is so useful in crisis situations, because here I was with the stupid bird in the car and a flight to catch.

It stopped.

My heart and hands took rather longer to stop their undesirable activities, and we made it to the vet without incident. Blake started shrieking, which the tolerant, lying, or deaf vet folks heard as his excitement to go to camp. I confirmed this with Haitch a while later when I successfully picked her up from her house without the car blowing up, with Haitch who knows Blake fairly well but doesn't live with him: he absolutely has a shriek that he employs when you do terrible things like leave the house or when he figures out he's alone in a room for too long, a shriek that is different than his other vocalizations, a shriek that anyone ought to be able to tell is not a Happy Noise. But anyway, Blake was at the vet and Haitch and I were in my car since I dismissed the idea of taking her car from her house to DIA, and a while later we were on Peña Boulevard tearing up toward DIA.

HAO was listening to the messages on my cellphone. She concluded that RDC and I are perfect for each other, a statement entirely unflattering to the both of us. I was freaking about driving a car whose idiot light had flashed. It had pulsed for a half minute?--some eternal span of just a few seconds anyway--and then stayed off, but I Don't Drive with the Idiot Light on. Not, that is, Any More, which is Another Story from a Long Time Ago. RDC's first message was that he had arrived in DIA and would be waiting for me. He'd called me at work in the morning, from the Vancouver airport, to let me know that he'd made it through customs without hassle, but that he'd expected hassle because he'd had to run back to the rental car place to retrieve his forgotten cell phone and arrived at customs sweating, despite the 40-degree day. On my cell phone, RDC had left at least three messages: one, that all radar was down in southern California, and since our flight originated in San Diego so we might be fucked; two, that he'd heard that parking was really bad and not to park in Mt. Elbert; three, to tell me where the Red Carpet club was and what gate our flight would use. Haitch was listening and laughing and deleting and I was just amused that RDC called me--when he knows I don't use the phone while driving--to tell me whatever about radar and parking and so on that either I couldn't do a damn thing about (radar), could figure out (parking), knew (Red Carpet), or wouldn't need to know until I arrived at the airport (location of gate), where I could easily learn it on my own.

And I did park in the Mt. Elbert long-term lot, because both the $12/day garage and the $8/day economy and the $5/day Pike's Peak long-term lots were full--or at least I chose to believe the signs indicating all this. But we didn't have to wait at all for a shuttle and got to the terminal without incident, without Cassidy blowing up in the lot behind us as we were driven away. We got through security without my backpack or wheelie being searched, for the first time in a long time, and took the train to gate B. RDC's and my flight was still listed on time at gate B29, and Haitch and I got into the Red Carpet Club without a problem. (That was the only thing I maybe needed to know ahead of time, that he'd left our names at the desk. But even if he hadn't called me while I was driving the car with its flashing idiot light and a bird, I could have called him from within gate B for him to come down and get us.) I knew he'd be on the north side (because he's always on the north side) but he wasn't. He wasn't on the south side either. We went back to the north side and I called him and he asked "Where are you?" and I said, "Turn around you great galoot" because he was coming out of the bathroom with his back to me. It was my first cellular moment.

So. It was 2:30 and our flight was at 4:15. I had plenty of time to find a BJWL-object, should such a thing be available at DIA. I wanted some sort of Conciliatory Thing since I was feeling a smidgen guilty for breaking my word without a backward glance. Haitch and I went out in pursuit of that and lunch. I considered lovely sweaters from the Lovely Sweater Store (I made that name up) but the reason they were lovely was that they were hand-knitted and the one with labradors on it was over $300. Then I saw the Colorado Kitsch Store, also not its real name, and looked at various fake tawdry crap in there. I figured this would be good because it would offer things not available in Connecticut and plus if I found some Indian-type thing that would be a plus, now that she's part Cherokee. I shouldn't tease, but by marrying someone 1/16th Cherokee whose ancestor is described as having "come over on the Trail of Tears" as if that trek were some form of Mayflower, she seems to have become as Indian as she had once become Irish by marrying my father, and this amuses me. I found a Pueblo storytelling figure, a grandmotherly woman pimpled with disproportionately littler children who are listening to her story. I made sure the price tag was off before the person wrapped it, and I hove a sigh of relief. I had even planned space for the Object when I desperately repacked my knapsack, and this would fit in the allocated spot.

I had a sandwich and Haitch a slice of cheesecake, and then we retrieved our bags and left the Club, she for the unwashed masses at her Other Gate where her Other Airline would bring her somewhere Other than Boston, and RDC and I for B29. We had adjoining aisle seats, and here I disagree with everyone else in the world who prefers aisle to window. You have to get up for other people to pee, you can't look out the window, you can't use the wall as another seatback. However, aisle is superior to middle. We got our car from Alamo without incident--it's not the Massachusetts excessive taxes that are annoying when renting a car, it's Dollar--and signed me up as the sole driver.

Getting out of Logan is always an adventure; I remember its being so the summer after eighth grade when I went there for the first time, when my sister and mother went to England with CLH's friend and her family. Twenty years later, it's still a mess, and though I clearly remember one specific turn from this past July leading to the Mass Pike, this time the same turn (maybe) got us onto I-93 south. Hmm. I exited at South Station, figuring I'd be okay near there, near Summer and Winter Streets, near Fanueil, and drove without a clue through what turned out to be Downtown Crossing. I was very happy to recognize Boston Commons across the street, to realize that I could turn left onto Tremont, right onto Boylston, somehow onto Arlington, left onto Beacon, right onto Berkeley, left onto Storrow, when I realized that I had been aiming for Storrow because, also in July, I navigated from Back Bay to Storrow (I didn't remember Berkeley let onto Storrow; CLH had to tell me) to Logan. But now I was supposed to going away from Logan--and I was, having turned left and west instead of right and east, just not the best way. I figured Storrow had to lead to the Mass Pike eventually, and it did, even though I would have been much cleverer to turn left from Arlington onto Comm and take that all the way to Mass Ave and pick up the Pike across from Newbury. Anyway, there we were on the Pike. Pike to 395, past Thompson where the wedding would be to Dayville where we'd sleep.

Ah yes, the other complication. RDC had agreed that I could take the car Friday to go down to Old Lyme to see my mother and grandmother while he stayed in the hotel and worked. It was only after midnight on 395 that the matter of food arose. I decided that I would get up earlier and go to a grocery store and get him supplies before I scampered away. But as we drove into the parking lot, we passed the Laurel Inn, and plus, the clerk said, the hotel offered a continental breakfast. So he would be set.

When next you're invited to a wedding, and you're the best man, don't wait until the night you're so sick your spouse has to bring you to the emergency room to make your lodging reservation. Read the whole invitation and realize you could stay at a number of B&Bs in the area, none of which are the Holidy Inn Express. The only really scary thing was that the road was being torn up and I felt like we were back in Meagher County, Montana, which is yet another story, but it wasn't pleasant.

That's two stories yet to tell: how I learned not to drive a car whose idiot light stays lit, and what happened in Meagher County and how it's really pronounced.

Park. Bags. Key. Room--not in numeric order. Pee. Bed. Sleep.

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Last modified 24 October 2000

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