Their Darling Special Boy

January 20, 2016

We're in the Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. Hung more than a hundred feet above our heads are a series of giant reader boards listing the morning's departures: Paris, Hong Kong, Beijing, Guangzhou, Pudong, Seoul, Tokyo via Singapore, Lima via Santiago. As Kristen and I shuffle forward through the long line at the security checkpoint my mind fills with scenes of cities half a world away, full of people speaking languages I don't understand, eating foods I never knew existed, giving me an extra-long glance because it's clear I'm not from here and I'm not sure where I'm trying to go. I'm standing shoulder to shoulder with cultures and ways of life with roots that date so far back they make the United States look like the world's little kid. Beyond the conveyor belts and body scanners stand upscale shops like Coach and Bulgari and Victoria's Secret, empty but open in the event you want a $10,000 watch or need to replace the push-up bra that the TSA just confiscated. Out the ten-foot-tall windows in front of us workers load a pair double-decker jets that hold more than 500 people and that will soon soar into the sky for fourteen-hour flights to Sydney and Melbourne.

It's all very exotic.

It's also nothing to do with Kristen and me. We're headed to Dallas.

The guy seated in front of me on the plane is the kind that wears his synthetic athletic shirt tucked into his synthetic warmup pants and hasn't been seated for more than three minutes before he starts bitching about something to the flight attendant. He has the distinct air of a person who will lean their seat back into your lap as soon as it's possible for them to do so and keep it there until he's told to return it to its upright and locked position. Just before we push back from the gate he switches seats with his twenty-five-year-old son, a heavyset bearded dude who's dressed the exact same way, plus a track jacket. Then the son – whose parents would probably describe him as their darling special boy – then switches seat with his mom, the guy's wife, who asks her husband over and over again in a high, nasally tone if he wants his bagel before telling him to call Jésus when they land in Dallas and remind him to shut off their pool. She's also dressed for a workout but doesn't seem to have done one in at least five years. The son is already so bored that he leans forward on the back of the seat in front of him, leaving a greasy forehead print on the screen embedded in the head rest.

By the time we've been in the air for ten minutes, the seats in front of us have both been reclined into our laps.

That's the kind of stuff that makes it easy to lose track of the magic of modern flight. I have to step away and remind myself that I'm sitting in a Boeing 787, the newest, most advanced jetliner in the world's skies. Its engines are so powerful, yet so efficient, but also so quiet that we don't have to raise our voices to talk to each other. Its wings are made of carbon fiber and bend up toward the heavens in subtle arcs on either side of us. The seats and carpets and bathrooms and overhead bins are so clean they look like they came out of the factory last week. The windows dim with the push of a button, blocking the sun but still letting me look down at the planet we're flying 41,000 feet above. I know we're at 41,000 feet because the photo-realistic map on the seatback computer that exists just for me says so. If I get tired of the map I can watch one of a hundred movies or even live television, beamed from the ground to a satellite and then shot toward my face on a screen that responds in an instant to a light touch from my fingertip. It's seventy-two degrees below zero outside, but the man next to me is studying the Bible stored on the iPad in his right hand and taking notes with his left. Every burp and nose pick and hairy butt crack (revelaed by the greaseball in front of me, of course) happens at a speed over the ground of 655 miles per hour.

Like I said, magic.

The airport in Dallas feels like stepping back in time twenty-five years: narrow walkways, low ceilings, the vague but constant smell of cinnamon rolls. It's dark because the windows are small and covered with dirt and bird shit. Old squiggles of glue stain the concrete support beams where signs fell down and weren't reattached. The most popular places to eat are McDonalds and Pizza Hut.

"There's a Fox News Channel Store over there," I say to Kristen. I never knew such a thing existed.

"What do you think they sell?" she asks.

"Only items made by people whose employers don't give them health insurance?"

The text on the back of the aircraft food truck reads, "Regulated Garbage." I could have told you that.

The next flight isn't quite as magical. The plane we're supposed to ride in has some unsaid problem that's bad enough they have to take it out of service. It's replaced with a tired MD-80 that has paint chipping off its nose cone and overhead bins that have started to change from white to yellow. Some kind of mechanical fluid runs backward along the trailing edge flaps in a dozen skinny lines. The engines sit just behind us and howl at full power. It smells half of fresh-baked cookies and half of used rental bowling shoes. But soon enough it all fades into the background. I look out at the tall and turbulent thunderheads looming ahead and know that once they're behind us we'll be in Florida, ready for an adventure whose details and character are unknown and unknowable. At this time tomorrow night we'll be on the road again, on the lookout for somewhere quiet to sleep. In my mind I see us: we're happy and laughing and almost running off the road but managing at the last possible moment to keep things upright.

When exiting the tail cone of a crashed MD-80, get a running start.

Jacksonville is easy. The airport is small and empty, the box of gear we checked back in Los Angeles appears on the baggage carousel roughed up but still functional, and the shuttle van waits for us at the curb. The driver is a thick Russian dude with a heavy monotone accent and thin patience. He speeds us away from the airport, flashing his headlights at cars going slow in front of us before tearing ass around them. We plow north past strip clubs and low-level chain hotels and a Waffle House, weaving lanes to the sound of adult contemporary love songs. When the radio station fades to static it's replaced with one where the genre is trashy R&B. As we approach Amelia Island a fart smell descends over the inside of the van, which I want to state for the record I had nothing to do with. ("Me neither," says Kristen after the fact.)

There's no food close to the hotel, just beer, so the bag of trail mix we bought at LAX becomes dinner. We go to bed hungry but resolve to demolish the free breakfast downstairs in the morning. I can't think of a better bicycle tour send-off.

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