Leaving on a Jetfire Plane

As I begin this post, I’m still in LAX, watching night fall. It is now exactly 8:10PM and I’ve been here at the airport for nearly six hours. Our flight won’t leave until 11:15, so I’m typing this out to keep the boredom at bay and to keep myself awake. I’m a little surprised, though. Usually, I’m so exhausted after the convention that I cannot keep my eyes open. But I’m fine right now. As to how I’ll be when we finally land in Milwaukee may be a different story entirely.

If the alarm went off this morning in our hotel room I never heard it; I was simply too tired to respond. But at around quarter to nine, I heard Prime stirring about and he told me to get up. It took a lot of strength to sit up in bed, push away the warm, cozy blankets, tuck Slumblebee into a nice safe bag pocket and stumble to the bathroom but I somehow managed to do so.

It didn’t take me long to get myself dressed and ready but by the time I was done, Prime was gone. He had taken a load of our BotCon loot to the local post office and was shipping it. In his absence I finished packing our luggage.

Since I had done a lot of packing the night before, it didn’t take me terribly long. All I really had to do was put my PJs away, get the rest of Prime’s clothes stowed in his suitcase, pack the toiletries and electronics, and clear out the mini-fridge. I was done in the matter of a half an hour or so and had just enough time to make one quick blog post before we would take down Alexa-1. After I had typed out my quickie, the phone rang. It was Prime.

He was running a bit behind and needed me to change the pick-up time for our SuperShuttle van. I told him I would, so I hit my email, loaded up the message, got our confirmation number and made the call.

I’ve often said I don’t have the world’s best luck with this sort of thing. Every single time I try to do something like this, it blows the slag up in my face. Today was no exception. The agent I got was slightly incompetent; she had no idea what the slag she was doing and said we were locked into our original pick-up time. Since I made the call on my cell and it was damn near out of minutes, I had to relent. Thankfully, Prime had made his first return from the Post Office and so said that he’d take care of it.

What took me nearly twenty minutes he had done in eight--six of which were spent on hold. He got someone who was competent, apparently.

Now that we had a bit more leeway, Prime took the second and last load of loot down to the post office and I checked us out of the hotel. After turning in our keycards, I hung around the hotel lobby and read the copies of USA Today and Time magazine that were there. When Prime finally returned, it was about ten ‘til one and I was slightly freaked out. I was a bit nervous that he may not have been able to make it on time, but Prime is in fact unbearably awesome, so I should have known better. He came bearing gifts: a footlong turkey and pepper jack sub from Subway and a pair of orange Fantas. We split the sub (his half had cilantro, and he is now slightly miffed that our local franchises don’t have it available; he’d get it ALL THE TIME if they did) and started drinking our sodas; at three minutes ‘til the hour our shuttle arrived.

Prime was greeted by the driver, who then took our bags and loaded us up. In the matter of a few minutes, we were on our way.

We picked up a few more passengers on our trip here, not including the three that were already in the shuttle. It was a full van by the time we were on the freeway. I’m surprised we even had any room to breathe. Other than that, the trip to the airport was uneventful, save for Prime nearly nodding off at a couple of points. (I do not blame him in the slightest; there were times that I felt like dozing off, too.) Once we got to the airport and got dropped off, we headed in to get our boarding passes printed out. Didn’t have to worry about checking in, as we did it electronically last night. We even got our seat assignments.

It took a bit to finally get to an Air Tran kiosk to print out the passes; some were being used, someone was trying to use one but failing and someone else was checking his bag and blocking another. The irritating thing is Prime and I were in line for that last kiosk, but some jackass cut around us and started using the thing as his fellow traveler was checking the last of his luggage. Yeah, thanks for that, by the way. We totally weren’t in slagging line for that kiosk. Jackwagon. After he was done, we got ours printed and headed to security.

LAX has really improved their security over the last couple of years. The last time Prime and I were here, we needed a bin for damn near every item in our possession: one for Alexa, one for Prime’s wallet, one for my wallet, etc. this time, we needed only two. That’s a vast improvement. We were done in a few minutes. It probably would have been slightly quicker if I hadn’t opted out of the body scanner, but I don’t want to risk getting some weird ass cancer later on in life.

After we went through security and got our stuff, we headed to a nearby Starbucks and got a pair of fraps and sandwiches. I got Mocha and a turkey and cheddar while Prime got Mocha Coconut and a chicken ciabatta sandwich.

Now, I know what you may be thinking: Didn’t you just eat, like, a couple of hours ago? Technically, yes. But we’ve both been running on empty for damn near the whole trip. Yesterday, all I had was a cheese Danish, a dish of chocolate gelato and some popcorn. That was it. This is the most food Prime and I have consumed within the span of five days. And don’t get me started on the lack of sleep either. But again, I digress.

I think DA may have created a couple of monsters. Prime was loving his frap while I was in heaven sipping mine. Mocha = Awesome. I don’t really do the coffee thing but I make the exception for Starbucks. A Starbucks frap always puts a huge smile on my face.

We ate, Prime read, and then Prime tried booting up Alexa-1 and surfing the net. As always, the free Wi-Fi at the airport refused to let us do anything web based, so I grabbed Lexi and started up a blog post. (It’s the monstrously long previous entry that you may have read.) Prime finished his book and while I was tapping away, he went to a nearby bookstore and bought two more. As you can imagine, Prime is a voracious reader. He’s already finished one and he’s started on the other. Man does love a good book.

At around 8:30 Prime made another food run; this time it was Burger King. He got a chicken Tendercrisp sandwich while I scarfed a bacon double cheeseburger. I don’t often eat a lot of meat but my body seems to be craving protein right now. Who the slag am I to argue? By that time it was getting dark. It’s been noisy here in the airport; each and every announcer for the various flights have been doing their best to scream each other down. The passengers aren’t nearly as loud as some of these people.

It’s 9:45 right now and we’ll be on our way in an hour and a half, give or take. I’m still not tired. Usually by this time I am completely slagged and simply can’t stay awake. I’m remarkably lucid right now. I must have gotten a nice chunk of sleep last night or the food is doing me some good. I had originally thought that I might spend most of my hours here at LAX languishing in a seat and fitfully dozing. But that hasn’t happened. Instead I’m sitting here, blogging about my evening. That’s a really nice change. It seems to be helping my mood quite a bit.

I also can’t help but be surprised at just how busy LAX is even at night. It’s completely dark and there are still a lot of people here. It’s noisy and busy and almost alien to me. I admit, I live a quiet life and I prefer to be home at this hour and not an airport. But I’m not really going to complain; this is the most traveling I’ve done in my lifetime. It does feel good to see a different area of the country and get just a little homesick.

I can’t wait to scratch the cat behind the ears, though.

10:05PM and the place is a zoo again; we have two different announcers calling for two different flights, while other passengers are disembarking from their aircraft and filing through the terminal. Some are chatting with their friends and family members while others are chatting on cellphones. Still others are simply striking up conversations with fellow travelers. It’s a noisy, chaotic affair, traveling.

And I’m starting to enjoy it immensely. Even though I’m apart from the chaos, simply sitting in my seat typing I’m enjoying this craziness. But after a few minutes, everything settled down again.

We boarded our plane at 10:30. Our flight was uneventful; Prime and I listened to MLB Radio on XM. I slept for most of the flight until I heard an ad on the radio proclaiming, "This game belongs to Trevor Hoffman!"

Seems they had interviewed him sometime back. Now I wish I had XM, just so I can listen to MLB Radio. XD

Our drive back was just as uneventful. When we got home, Prime and I simply crashed. I was exhausted, but never happier.

I’m slowly coming down off the high. In a few days time, I’ll be back at work but that’s okay. I have the memories, some of which I’ll be able to post here as photoblogs. And of course, there’s always next year.

--Weasel, headed back to the real world with a smile on her face