LEAVING ON A JET PLANE... PART TWO

Now we're through security, and into the main part of the airport.

And this I simply love.

It's people walking briskly and purposely to their gates - or at least trying to appear purposeful as they try to find out where their gate is.

There's your gargantuan restrooms that echo with banging stall doors and people trying to fit their carry-on luggage in the actual stall with them - I still believe they are designed to overcompensate for the broom closet restrooms on the planes.

And my favorite - all the food. Overpriced, over processed, over packaged dry sandwiches -- huge cookies all wrapped in cellophane - grande size sodas - huge bags of candy, sweets and squishy fish and worms. And since it's impossible to get any food through security, you are at their complete mercy.

The restaurants, I must admit I avoid. Everyone seems to be drinking and using an obscene amount of condiments on huge slabs of meat (I'm predominantly a vegetarian) and suddenly becoming extremely friendly with any attractive stranger standing near them at the bar (and I'm predominantly non-attractive).

And then everyone stages themselves in the waiting area by the gate. The first-class and first-time fliers put themselves right by the gate, carefully sitting in the sling-type chairs with a minimum of one empty seat between. The coach fliers, and those who fly regularly, sit in the remaining rows, with college students folding themselves to the floor so they can keep logged in with the internet.

And I sit as far away as I can while still being able to dimly hear the announcements. I can't figure out to this day why the first-class people are boarded first, and why they WANT to be on the airplane when the rest of us, at least on smaller aircraft, are forced to slowly move past them and (inadvertently?) bang them with the carry-on luggage.

Although I completely understand why people pay the extra money for first-class - each time I squeeze into my seat and hike my knees up against the seat in front of me, I wish wish wish I could have gone and gotten a first-class seat - I hate feeling like a pretzel scrunched up with warm bodies pressing me back on every side.

I try to be an agreeable seat-partner - I don't try to take up extra space, I do keep my elbows in, I don't play with the lights (although I absolutely MUST have the air vent blowing right on me - the only way I don't get airsick).

But by the end of even the very short hops from Tucson to Phoenix, or LA to San Diego, I am already weary of every one's deodorant scent, and what they ate before the boarded, and am convinced I've caught pneumonia from that dude coughing in the row behind me.

So the final ending is landing, tumbling out of the crowded plane, gathering your belongings and running into the arms of someone you love at that destination.