April 9 – 10, 2022
The hours are stretching into something akin to days but much slower. It is a morning we are slogging through because it can’t come fast enough. It’s the day of our departure. It’s the day the Uber to LAX is on its way, the refrigerator is cleaned out, the backpacks organized. It is the day of dragging hours.
We purge our duplicates from our backpacks and small rolling suitcases. We want to carry with us our “tilichilis” from our routine, in essence, our comfort junk. Ultimately, we leave our backup 1st aide kit, my flatiron, my hair products, a second (and third!) tube of sunscreen, my extra Camino shirt, Luis’s dress shirt, his extra pair of shoes, a second jacket and a pair of pants. Then we weigh and measure our backpacks and our carryons and we are good to go. We are well under the luggage limit for the flight and we’ll figure out the switching out of items between the backpacks and the rolling suitcase on a daily basis, depending on the weather.
At LAX we tentatively approach the counter with our cell phones open to all the QR codes for boarding passes, negative Covid tests, proof of Covid vaccinations, digital Passenger Locator Forms, Spanish Traveler Health forms. And then don’t ask for any of it!
So we make the first foot journey of the day by walking and walking and walking to Gate 203. We walk so far, there aren’t even any cafes or shops out in this airport satellite. Because we are early we loop back to civilization in the international terminal, find a restaurant and settle in for a while.
Upon boarding I realize how full a plane can be. Luckily, we have window and middle seat. We take turns trading places. Luis and I synchronize our little screens to watch the movie Belfast at the same time. Goofy, huh? It is a moving story and I’m glad we watch it together so we can discuss it later. Maybe tomorrow. If we have time that runs at a normal speed we can digest the well-drawn characters and not have to yell over the noise of this jet. Then again, tomorrow we will still be flying and getting into Paris, to transit to Madrid. Madrid sounds like a good place to set our watches and to peek into our luggage to see what we brought that we don’t need and what we left that would been helpful.
I’m one of THOSE people who is so sleep- deprived I find a quiet corner of airport, lay flat with my knees up, place my head on my carryon, and fall fast asleep. Then we hear the cattle call for the flight to Paris in fast Spanish and faster French. We line up and off we go in groggy states of mind, our facemasks still firmly installed over mouth and nose and board another flight to Madrid where our bodies register wee hours of the morning and the clocks say late afternoon. Luckily, my pilgrim passport is packed and all it needs is a first stamp regardless of the time on our clocks. RoMA
Ordinary Gente 