— 

i had to stop in phoenix to meet the baby and have a beer with her father. when your friends have babies you should meet them. so that years later when you see them and they have sentences you can say, “i remember when you were this big” and hold your hand a couple feet from the ground. they can then look at you with a blank stare and think, “why does he think i care about this?”

the way there wasn’t exactly a great time on a plane. frontier is the airline that behaves as if it were designed by the loneliest and most bitter and incompetent elementary school principal in north dakota, and that’s me putting it nicely.

you fit your bag into an unforgiving metal box before boarding a plane to prove that you don’t have to double the price of your plane ticket by paying for a carry-on bag, all the while some probably underpaid schmuck yells “shame” and throws fruit at you if you can’t squeeze it in there. my bag fit, i was one of the last people to board, and there was all sorts of space in the overhead departments, so i tried to throw my backpack up there before a flight attendant jumped out of seemingly nowhere like a troll from under a bridge and said that i simply could not behave that way. that we’re trying to have a civilization here, or something.

the chair didn’t budge backwards a millimeter, let alone have a button for a little reclination. the man sitting next to me was probably snoozing before takeoff and he didn’t probably have any bad intentions on the matter but in his dreamed state he couldn’t help himself from continuing to spill over into my middle seat.

they don’t even have the decency to drip some half strength hot bean water and call it complimentary coffee.

thank goodness the flight was short and i had a good book with me. i had some playlists saved on my phone to tune out the conversation behind me. which again had no poor intentions but i found insufferable in the way that we often find things when we can’t quite peg why they bother us. we are so annoyed and then we can’t explain quite why without sounding like pricks, so we are more annoyed. and then we attribute this double shot to the talker.

the talker in question had that often unbearable chattiness of kind-hearted midwestern people. this woman gave a two hour talk, with minimal participation from the other participators, about everything ranging from her career as a secretary to how her and her husband travel with their horse trailer and which freeways out of denver have the better options to eat and piss to how she had to keep answering the same questions to her doctor over and over to what she seemed to assume was a little known fact for a plane full of people flying into phoenix: that they do not participate in daylight savings time in arizona. these are the parts i was unable to drown out, despite my efforts. turbulence hit and i was praying it would rattle her vocal chords shut.

when the plane gets a good shakedown i always find myself thinking how dumb i’ll feel if it crashes. “coulda just stayed home! home was nice!” then again i don’t know if i believe i’d feel anything of the sort after the event. i’d either feel nothing (dead) or i’d feel like i received a miracle from every deity at once (survived a plane crash).

i reckon the type of conversation (monologue) the talker was in was more common when people didn’t have smartphones. could not just google map the rest stops out of denver, so would like that info. and we all probably had more tolerance for those conversations then. i should have had more tolerance.

i will tell you to never fly frontier. i will against my best advice likely do it again. in fact i did it again the next day. it was the cheapest way to get to los angeles. another short flight, with sympathy from the gods. and i had to get to los angeles in order to get to shanghai and i needed to get to shanghai in order to get to laos. nonetheless i found myself a tad concerned about who would sit behind me on 14 hours over the pacific.

— 

the first somewhat jarring cultural experience of a trip in which i plan to be in countries where i’m very much an outsider was the southern part of venice beach. i did not forecast so much noise and chaos. i attribute this to my country bumpkinness. while i have spent a fair amount of time outside of the country i still am at heart someone who grew up 10 miles from the nearest town and that town had 4,000 people. i have never seen so many healthy and unhealthy and fortunate and unfortunate and happy and sad people taking up the same space. added on to the fact that such remarkable amounts of noise are incongruous with a gorgeous sunset.

a pack of joggers in chic athleticware, hipsters out for picnics, two gruff guys with a fire in the sand cooking food, skaters in clean vans shirts, skaters straight out of dogtown and z boys, occasionally someone just yelling at the sky, couple zombie walkers, and lots of riff raff meets steampunk looking white dudes with face tattoos and filthy clothes and custom bikes and what appear to be well fed dogs.

but it does make sense everyone is here. there’s a reason for it. a clear coastal sunset with palm trees and mountains off to the north is fucking magic. not quite sure they all saw it, but they could have.

once inland off the beach it was trendy quickly. it was like bougie parts of san diego meets patagonia vest boys of north loop minneapolis. sleek restaurants with patio heaters and cute waitresses. i had a mexican dinner that made me happy. i stayed up most of the night snacking, wanting to be tired enough to sleep as much as i could on planes. 

— 

the morning meant an hour plus walk in inglewood through a neighborhood of mostly spanish storefronts. kids waiting to go to school. i wanted to get some fresh air and also some edibles for the long ass flight.

at the gate there were piles and piles of boxes of marlboro reds from duty free and i immediately realized a missed opportunity. i should have bought them and sold them to backpackers. i have never had much of an eye for business opportunities. i read an article about germany warning its citizens to be cautious about traveling to america. about how it might be hard to get in. it will be curious to see in the coming months if all the petty retaliations taking place by the american government spread and countries start making it harder for travelers to go anywhere at all. to prove a point. it would be a shame if i get stopped at a border because these motherfucking mendacious fucking toddlers now running my country can’t stop with their dick measuring contests.

in the terminal, at 10:47, i took one of the little gummies, and at 11:51 i decided i thought it was working because i got curious and desirious about the upcoming airplane food. there is no reason to be desirious about airplane food.

*narrator voice*
“he didn’t know it then, but he would never make it to laos. michael fell asleep in the airport lobby and was taken into custody, ultimately leading to his deportation to el salvador as an alleged member of the tren de aragua gang. it was within those prison walls where he earned his unfortunate nickname among the inmates: tossed salad.”

by the time i sat down at 62C there was a passionate argument unfolding between an airline attendant and a tiny old asian woman in the aisle right next to me. i of course couldn’t understand a word of what was going on but i found myself siding with the attendant. i also found myself thinking if the altercation rose to fisticuffs i’d be taking the little old woman at -250. she had the spirit of a matador.

adding to the situation was that i couldn’t stop giggling like a kindergartener. this happens to me sometimes and admittedly not always at the most proper times. everyone in the vicinity must have thought i was laughing at the fight — fucking asshole american — but i was not laughing at the fight! i was laughing at funny texts i got from a couple friends about how high i felt boarding the plane.

when the woman in 62A got up and moved to a row that wasn’t fully occupied i wanted to kiss her. three to a row for that many hours would be bad. and the dude in the middle wasn’t nearly as small as the little old lady in the fight. but he wasn’t taking the hint. he wouldn’t slide over. i was very confused for quite a while. i really thought we had a situation of an mvp performance and a questionable decision to not seize a victory. but my man lived up to it. he scooted over fifteen minutes later and after looked at me for the first time with a big smile and a thumbs up. there is a god.

— 

after takeoff i expected to look out the window and see water immediately. that’s because i am kinda simple minded about these things. despite the fact i’ve crossed the pacific a few times before i just assumed a flight from los angeles to shanghai would mean going west right off the coast. but things are relevant here that i can’t quite wrap my head around, like the curvature of the earth. so the flight tracker showed us fly to alaska and turn left. the whole experience of flight is always a miracle to me.

i find tall buildings and very large airplanes confounding. i simply don’t understand why more of them don’t just crumble to the ground or flop out of the sky like a winged duck. physics means nothing to me. i think plane too heavy plane not go go and maybe a breeze could tip that tall drink of water over. stands too high.

— 

it smelt quite good when they started pushing the little carts down the aisle. it tasted much less so. but it played its role.