As every stand-up comic in America has noted, airports are funny places....

I look around the airport terminal before we board. It's 5:25 a.m. Business folk in rumpled jackets slump over their laptops, lazily fingering their touchpads like a disinterested lover who is just buying time until the football simulcast. Total strangers are sitting next to each other in faux leather chairs colored like you might imagine a candle called "Blueberry and Jasmine" might be. They sit, six inches apart, reading their books or newspapers or staring at their boarding passes...clinging to their boarding passes...perhaps hoping that staring long or squeezing hard enough will magicaly rearrange the letters in "business class" to read something more favorable. They sit, six inches apart, awkwardly wondering whether or not to strike up a conversation. You never know, this may be your friend for the next three hours.

As we board the plane, we slowly shuffle by the pilot, who greets everyone as they walk in the door. Unfortunately, the line moves slowly enough that once he greets you, you've still got a good 25 seconds of standing next to him before you can move on. It's hard to imagine what to say to a pilot at 6:00 in the morning. I want to ask him questions like, "So, how are you feeling this morning? Alert? Well-rested? Steady-handed? Sober?" Instead, I ask, "how's the weather look for takeoff?" "Just fine, just fine," he responds, in a tone that sounds both authoritative and surprisingly distant. We now have 15 seconds left to kill, and I've run out of appropriate pilot fodder. I'll just stare ahead blankly at the line of people trying to shove oversized bags into undersized overheads.

Getting seated is a little bit like a microcosm of high school. You come in, unsteady and unsure of your surroundings, just hoping to find your locker and your seat without looking stupid. You're a freshman, and those already seated are the sophomores. But...once you get your stuff jammed into your overhead compartment, your smaller luggage stowed under your seat, and your tray tables in the upright and locked position, man, you've graduated. You're now the sophomore, and you get to sit and look fed up with those greenies just coming in the door.

As the freshman class passes by my seat, I see them looking at each row number and seat diagram (A,B,C on the left, D,E,F on the right) carefully, as if the ascending sequence of row numbers might suddenly skip a few, work backwards, or go to decimals. They'll be pleased to find that row 13 comes directly after row 12, and that D, E and F are still on the right side of the plane. Here's to consistency.

I sit down, and try to read a bit from "Dr. Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak. It's a brilliant read...absolutely brilliant...but it's a bit much to handle at 6:10 on a Monday morning. I fold the book closed. The passenger on my right is a very pleasant accountant in a floral shirt on his way to Cozumel. He's reading a book called "The Conspiracy Theory," which I hope is a bit more manageable at this time than "Dr. Zhivago." I hope he doesn't notice as I write about him...we're so close that our arms are touching, and you hate to make things awkward at that proximity.

Our captain comes on the PA and announces the vitals. 2-hour-fifteen-minute flight. 32,000 feet. Good weather both places. Please listen to your flight attendants. Enjoy the excellent in-flight service, including a "breakfast snack." Don't smoke. Don't tamper with the lavatory smoke detectors...and if you do, for the love of god don't lie about it, 'cause we'll know. I'm encouraged to close my laptop to prepare for departure. Apparently the screen of my 12-inch iBook produces too much drag. I'll be back in half-an-hour.

7:30 now. Once we takeoff and reach altitude, we're handed our "breakfast snack," which consists of a muffin the approximate size of my adrenal gland and a choice of beverage. I want a bloody mary. I order water. Five dollars seems a lot to pay for a bloody mary. I drink my water. I wish I had ordered a bloody mary. Now the flight attendant is gone...she's already three rows down and, worst of all, she's on the far side of the cart. Short of a tremendous gymnastic display on her part, there's no chance I'm going to get my bloody mary for quite some time.

11:52 - It's amazing how much a guy can write when he doesn't have anything else to do. On a plane from Houston to Las Vegas now. People seem a lot more aware...I'm certain that has everything to do with the fact that it's no longer 6 in the morning. "Finding Neverland" is playing on the in-flight movie. I'd like to tune in, but I'm rejecting it on the principle that movies that are free to view shouldn't cost five bucks to listen to. Plus, Stacy and I have been waiting to see it together.

I can't help but be a little nervous that I won't be able to relax in Las Vegas. Let's face it, that's what history would indicate. I dream of vacation, I plan vacation, I pack for vacation, I get to vacation, and my brain doesn't slow down throughout the duration. (Seriously, I didn't mean that to rhyme). Then, I get home and I walk into work, and everybody says, "welcome home, I"m glad you finally got a chance to rest!" and I feel just as tired as before, and now it's another six months until I get to try again. Maybe I'm just not cut out for vacation. Or, I've got to figure out a better way to do it....something that will get me out of my head long enough to be in Bermuda, or New Orleans, or Colorado, or, in this case, Las Vegas. I think the fact that I'm actually still at work will help...that is to say, I'm on church business for the first couple of days. That will provide a proper transition....brain says: "I can still work, but I can be on vacation at the same time." Should alleviate the pressure of enjoying myself a little bit.

Its my first time carrying a laptop, and I've got my iTunes playing. Elvis Costello is a fine, fine song writer.

I'm sitting next to a delightful retired Texas middle-school teacher...haven't caught her name yet, but I'll find out shortly. BTW: The guy on the last flight was named Ken, and I"m pretty sure the friend that he's heading to Cozumel with is a special friend. Ken seemed remarkably comfortable with long periods of silence without something to occupy his eyes, and I respect that a lot. Anyway, our Texas schoolteacher has a great story about teaching a remedial middle school class back in the late 60's...she says she kept plants around the room so it didn't feel "so institutional." One day, she noticed sprouts coming up through the soil around her potted plants. As the sprouts budded she realized that her seventh-period students had been planting marijuana in her class, in the hopes of harvesting it at maturity. Knowing it would do no good to say, "Stop growing pot in my class," she instead encouraged them to only plant "those little plants" (playing ignorant) in spots in the soil where it wouldn't choke out her plants...and then after all the students had gone she would poison the little sprouts one-by-one. When the kids came back and the plants were dead, she simply explained that many plants don't grow well in a classroom setting, and that they would be better off doing their little horticulture project outside. Her name is Harriet, and I get the sense it's a lot harder than it sounds to outsmart a classroom full of remedial junior high students.

That's a story worth writing down, I thought.

Plane lands...a strong list to the left on touch-down...and we exit. Welcome to Las Vegas.

Peace,
Justin