Day One: Midland to Dallas to Los Angeles

Greetings from the Novotel Citygate Hotel in Hong Kong, a beautiful if somewhat austere new complex not far from the airport. It was the best option after getting in at 8:00 without a booking (more on that later) and more than 24 hours in to the trip. My room is beautiful, as I say,m austere, but larger than I would have expected,with lots of glass and sharp angles, a flat widescreen television with enough channels to mix local flavor with my need for a news, sports, and information fix, and just the right comfort in amenities to make the slight splurging worthwhile. I am fourteen hours ahead of Odessa time, so while you all are finishing up your Friday, I am starting my Saturday, when I plan to head into the city for a long day of being a surreptitious tourist.

It was hard leaving Odessa yesterday. The good review (see my last post) notwithstanding, I was shocked to realize that leaving my new fiancee felt a whole lot different from leaving my girlfriend. Of course from here on out my days of five-week, three-month, and longer trips are probably over, or at least will be strictly limited, so I suppose I ought to appreciate that. Still, saying goodbye was tough. Also I should give a public shout out to my friend and colleague Jaime who brought me to the airport, and who has done a whole hell of a lot more for me these last two years than I have for him.

The Midland airport was just rousing itself from sleep when I arrived. Once you have taken enough flights from Midland at 6 or 7 in the morning you knowm what to expecty -- a lot of businessmen who are wearing the clothes they will return in, bearing nothing more than a messenger bag or briefcase, set to depart for a day's work in Dallas or Houston, affiliated in some way more than likely with the oil industry that gives our part of the world an airport, a university, hell, the two cities. I, meanwhile, am pretty certain that I have the longest itinerary that has strolled into the Midland International Airport in some time, and the reservations specialist assures me that I am right. Unlike the day's business warriors, have two bags, a reasonably efficiently packed rolling backpack that I just got on sale at Foleys in San Antonio ($40 down from $100!) and a heavy carryon, the bulk being caused mostly by books, periodicals, my toiletry kit, and the like -- books are my salvation, but when it comes to travel they are also my bane. And it will be worse when I return.

In any case the flight to Dallas was uneventful, the shortest flight and smallest plane I will see for weeks, and by the time we landed, Dallas was awake, its travel class moving forward with the sleep rubbed out of tis eyes, set for a big day on airplanes and in terminals paying too much for goods and services. I had enough time to waset a bit of time and money but not enough for boredom to set in, and the flight to Los Angeles was uneventful if slightly annoying. I was wedged in the middle seat in between a sullen old man swathed in a Florida State hat and bad breath and a slightly older women from Singapore who was flying to LA from Dallas to meet her mother, who was flying in to the country, and they would return later that day. An unenviable itinerary to be sure, but under the circumstances I felt I could be a little smug. The old man apparently does not fly too often, as he seemed perturbed when the woman asked halfway through the flight if she could get up and use the bathroom. It seemed a reasonable request to me, pissing one's pants generally not being an option I espouse on long flights, but the gentleman seemed put out. Maybe if he had brushed his teeth that week he would have ben in a better mood.In any case, I have gotten pretty good at working on plans, so i just alternated between a couple of books and a handful of periodicals to keep me occupied. At the end of the flight, when the man stood up, he seemed annoyed again when I asked if I could reach over to get my carryon from the overhead bin so i could get myself sorted. I hope he gets struck by lightning.

At LAX I scurried on over to the Tom Bradley International Terminal, thinking that it is odd to name the most international of all locations for someone who served in one of the most provincial of all political positions, and ready to deal with what I knew was coming next: Lines. International flights are all about being in a big hurry to be put through a whole lot of lines, delays, just-a-minutes, and we'll-be-with-you-in-a-seconds.

It was in that first line, to head to my gate, that I got a visit from that old friend, the travel sweats. If you have travelled a lot you know what Imean -- carrying bags, hurrying from place to place, walking at a slightly accelerated pace, dressed more thaqn you would be otherwise given the weather, standing in the midst of humanity that sometimes does not value hygiene as much as you do, and the periodic bouts of stress -- they lead to a slight film, a sort of flopsweat that is not all that noticable to the outside world but that reminds you that it will be quite some time before you hit a shower or a bed.

LA really is its own little world. Even in the airport the ratio of fake to real breasts rose significantly from my world in West Texas, or really, most of our worlds just about anywhere. One pair of young women were rocking the Paris Hilton-Nicole Richie look, replete with matching valour outfits (hip hugging and low riding, natch), those bad trendy sunglasses that Hilton has spawned, gooey lip gloss, and the requisite attitude and drivel in tow. It was almost impressive what ciphers these two were.

Once I crossed into that netherworld of the actual gates, I also was reminded of another of the more vexing and curious phenomena of global travel -- why do so many airports leave guests with so little options once they have crossed through security? Before the security check there are restaurants and stores and newsstands and just enough to do to kill an hour or two, provided you have the disposable income. On the other side, at least in too many airports? Nothing. Maybe an overpriced bar-cum-cafe with sterile furnishings and barely awake staff. One would think that the good folks at LAX would do more to make the departure hall a bit more of a wonderland -- foreign airports tend to be more mindful of these things, and it is a lesson we ought to learn.

Before long the departure gate started to fill up. The woman at the mic was getting frustrated with our lack of attentiveness to her rather specific details, I was getting frustrated because I kept being run bacdk and forth between the line and the desk -- I either did or did not need to exchange boarding passes; I am in Hong Kong now and I still am not certain of the answer. Eventually they let me on to my Cathay Pacific plane, two rows from the back, emergency row but with no extra legroom, and within a half hour or forty five minutes, we were off.

Phase one was accomplished. Next stop, Hong Kong.