June 25, 2002 -
June 30, 2002

This trip begain in January, when it was raining at Houston International Airport, but that part of it wasn't any fun. Suffice it to say, a delayed flight would have left me waiting in Phoenix for thirteen hours or more, and my comical inability to ask airline reservations personnel the right question about re-booking rules gyped me out of seeing snow. However, that may have been just as well, since I did see snow, after a fashion, in Indiana, and when I finally re-booked for a flight in June I was more than ready for a break from working at Jungle Larry's and for a visit with Arlene in Reno, Nevada.

So instead of summer doldrums at the zoo, on a Tuesday morning I drove to Ft. Lauderdale to be flown, courtesy of Continental, first to Cleveland, where I had hardly any time to enjoy their smallish generic airport that, due to planned construction, cryptically labeled its concourses C through F with no A or B, then to Minneapolis-St. Paul, where upon arriving I found myself inside a kind of mall. Whether the concourses were an excuse for the mall and its shops selling stuffed dogs, moose-related T-shirts, and Land's End polos or whether the mall was an excuse for the concourses was left unclear. Unfortunately I had enough time to recover from flying-related anxiety to discover an appetite and have the worst Sbarro's cheese pizza ever. The short meal meant, however, that I had time to watch two hours of CNN's airport network, read all the Minnesota-related advertising suggesting that I rent a canoe and fish, and observe a Fanciscan monk (from the Bronx, his carry-on bag advertised), complete with robes fastened with rope, wooden rosary, and Teva sports sandals.

Finally (it was by that time 9 p.m. local time, and I was starting to get attached to the seat I'd staked out at the gate) I boarded a third plane (with the monk) and spent the last leg of the trip sitting next to a Reno resident who told me pleasantly that his descents into the city's airport were typically rough, due to weather from the west piling up against the Sierra Nevadas and spilling rudely over into the airfield. When we weren't yakking, I discovered the only possible comfortable position in economy class: leaning forward and cradling your head in your arms against your pulled-out tray table. I never could sleep on the plane, but it was better than sitting up, wondering how far was too far to recline the seat, for three hours. When the plane did land, it was, conrtrarily, the smoothest landing of the day—although the pilot of the Cleveland to Minneapolis leg was probably hampered by his smallish, skinny ERJ-310 (whatever that means) jet.

And, of course, the first thing everyone was greeted by as they trooped off the plane, sleepy and sheeplike all, were...their loving friends and family! No, it was slot machines. Of course.

Continue for disjointed commentary and pictures. And the suicide table!

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