Wednesday, September 30, 2015 To Frankfurt, To Frankfurt

Is there a certain insanity in going to Europe when you can no longer walk? When your body requires two half-hour naps daily? When you can no longer write or type? Of course there is! There is also a certain insouciance and joie de vivre. I thumb my nose at the nasty people who insist that I’m a cripple and now must do nothing but sit in a wheelchair until I die.

Travel for me requires accepting and operating under a completely different mindset. At home I have the power chair Sven. Sven gives me lots of the autonomy. I transfer in and out of him, make my own decisions about where I will go and when and buzz around the house and even the city. Travelling, I must adapt to amazing passivity. Losing agency and any pretense of autonomy, I sit in a manual chair awaiting kindness’ push. I get a lot of enforced rest. Anything I want I must request, reduced to waiting upon the whims of others. Sitting passively for a nine-and-a-half hour flight gives one good practice in patience. But my co-travelers regain control of their bodies when we land; I do not.

Who must agree to my mad travel schemes? Only the Bear, my delightful companion and love of my life. I would never want to journey anywhere without him and he has kindly agreed to push Bird, the manual wheelchair that we’ve named for her many flights overseas and that she permits me to still soar. Despite living in a manual chair, at any moment, I must flawlessly execute sit-to-stand. Sit-to-stand is a very difficult move at the best of times, made more difficult when your brain discredits the sturdiness of your hips. Physically, I must be able to walk ten feet between the bed and the bathroom. I rely heavily on the aid of Tinky the Walker. We take Bird and Tinky with us on all of our adventures. Both bear numerous scars courtesy of the airlines. Sven, my power chair, justifiably fears flying and stays home. Pearl, as a minivan, weighs far too much for airline transport. She remains in her garage and talks to Gimmy the Camry. She tries to put Gimmy up to mischief, but fails.

Enough woolgathering! Back to our Denver departure. Late afternoon, we take a cab to the airport, then go through the security hassle. At DIA, hordes of TSA employees carefully investigate every bit of Bird and me. After wasting a good bit of everyone’s time, they wave us through and we proceed out to Lufthansa’s boarding area.

Walking no longer an option for me, I’m forced to rely upon aisle chairs. As such, I’m the first to board. Bear follows in my wake. For the blissfully uninitiated, using an aisle chair involves two strong people (airline employees) who approach with the chair then strap you securely into it.  They roll the appropriately named chair along the aisles of the airplane. Once at your assigned seat, they lift and deposit you in your place. Once the aisle chair deposits you in your airline seat, you’re expected to stay there. How do I go ten hours without using the bathroom? I wear an adult diaper, of course.

By the time they finish strapping anyone in, they could just as easily transport a corpse on the chair. Keith wants to buy me a gag, so that I would also be silent while tied up. We all have our fantasies, but his will come to naught.

But why have aisle chairs at all? Airlines, of course, function primarily as cargo carriers. You may be human cargo, but are cargo nonetheless. The airline will deliver you to anywhere you contract. You entered into a contract when you purchased a ticket. Read the stuff with the ticket carefully and you’ll see a contract.

For years I thought that the airline was called Lufttanza or “Air Dance.” What a cool name, eh? I speak with a very German stewardess who corrects me. “No, we are Lufthansa.” Or “Air Company.” Boring! “But we have a stylized crane (bird) in our logo. Don’t you like the crane!?” the stewardess continues somewhat fiercely. Not desiring to be thrown off the plane, I hastily agree but silently remain disappointed.

Once deposited in my seat by the airline employees, Bear and I watch our co-travelers find their seats and settle in. I’ve never seen so many people on an airplane. We’ve paid for bigger seats or at least seats with more legroom room than given to the average bear. The seats give us an empty three feet in front of us. We have the sole unoccupied seat on the plane next to us, since apparently no one wanted to chunk out the extra $100 for the seat. But I tell you, we have more room than Economy Plus and we find it well worth the moolah.

The plane departs promptly at 5:30PM. I think all flights to Europe fly overnight. The flight crew keeps giving us more drinks. Every time a wine glass empties they refill it. I ask one of the attendants if they’re trying to keep us sedated. “Is this a plot?” I ask. “Yes,” she admits. I laugh. “No,” she then avers, “I mean no, no, no.”

Lufthansa also has individual computer screens at each seat. You can choose from a very wide range of movies, TV shows, music, spoken word etc. to entertain yourself. My screen is broken. But I hate TV anyway so it’s okay.

Duly sedated by both alcohol and Ambien, I sleep through much of the flight. Thank God for Ambien.

Friday, March 7, 2014—Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jog

We awaken. After a minimal last breakfast on the road, we load ourselves once again into Pearl. With barely suppressed excitement, she heads north toward Amarillo. We’ve reached the last day of our long journey, and we all know it, none more than Pearl. Reaching I-40, we drive a bit west to Cadillac Ranch.

I’m excited by today’s only planned stop, Cadillac Ranch. For the uninitiated, in the 1970s an art group buried ten Cadillacs halfway in the Texas dirt, nose first, the fins and back of the cars remaining above ground. I read about Cadillac Ranch as a teenager. I remember the breathless excitement and buzz around who could possibly afford to spend that much money on art. I mean Cadillacs? The American dream car?

The creators of Cadillac Ranch must have spent all of their money on Cadillacs and allocated nothing for site preservation and defense. Boy am I disappointed! The boys approach the sculpture, noting many pieces have fallen off of or have been stolen from the cars, diminishing the whole. A cattle fence blocks Sven and me, keeping us out, but doesn’t stop any determined ambulatory person. Assholes have spray-painted all over the cars. Stalactites of paint drip off of the old cars. Yuck! The self-same vandals can’t even take their trash with them. Myriad empty spray paint cans litter the ground. (I later read that the artists encouraged vandalism of the vehicles. Yuck! What an ugly part of humanity. Why can’t people just leave things be?)

 Disillusioned, we jump back into Pearl. We stop at the next gas station to buy Advil, ice, coffee, bad donuts made from repulsive quasi-edible oil products (the Bear’s favorite) and tea.

We hope that luck rides with us for we have seven hours home at the very best. Unfortunately for us, the weather prophets have predicted snow for Denver.

Circling Amarillo, Pearl turns north on route 87. We plan on taking 87 through both Texas and New Mexico, then picking up I-25 where Colorado starts. But for now we’re still in Texas. We see a lot of last year’s dead yellow brown grass.  The land begins to roll. We see cotton fields, green and irrigated, the only green in the landscape.

Slowly, as the land rises, we begin to see mesas and scrub brush cloaked in winter’s brown. Off the roadside, we find dried deep red gullies and every once in a while a canyon. Pearl cruises through brilliant late winter sunshine oblivious to the clouds ahead.

We cross into New Mexico. Excitedly, we see mountains in the distance. Do we see glimpses of home? Uh-oh, not mountains—clouds. Pearl takes us farther into the state. Now we really do see a mountain here and there. First we see conical hills dotting the land, then more mesas higher and higher. Oh boy, we’re 20 miles from the Raton Mountains, where Colorado begins. We smell home! We see rain ahead but we have been seeing it for the past two hours. Pearl still basks in the sunlight.

Colorado now, we approach cloud-covered Raton Pass. As we ascend, driving up and over, we encounter rain and rain and rain. Dejectedly, we pass Walsenburg again. Educated now, we don’t stop at the atrocious Alpine Rose Cafe for tea. Per Bloodroot, only non-foodies and other war criminals eat there. The rain slackens a bit then takes a breather. We stop at a roadside rest and cook lunch.

After lunch, back on the road again, snow begins. Heading ever north, we merge with heavy traffic. I-25 forcefully teaches us that we really live in one big city that starts in Colorado Springs and ends in Fort Collins. A mere ten hours after we awoke in Texas, we land at our house. Boy is it good to be home!

What impressed me? The beauty of America, of course. I treasure my memory of Taos museums, Carlsbad Caverns, Big Bend National Park, Johnson Space Center, Lake Fausse, Avery Island, the Laura Plantation, historic battlefields, Sixth Floor Museum, and Poverty Point.  I loved meeting the different people in Terlingua, Texas, and Lafayette, Louisiana.

What touched my heart the most? I still think about how we live in the Denver wealth bubble, certainly compared to northern Louisiana. I hadn’t realized that the bubble didn’t extend beyond here. I am saddened by too much of our country living in poverty, still divided along racial lines, even all these years after we tried to change it.

We spent four weeks together, didn’t kill each other (though greatly tempted) AND still speak to each other, despite visions of duct tape covering mouths.

What treasures now grace our home? Looking through our new trinkets, we find a NASA Johnson Space Center Christmas ornament, a Laura plantation ornament, a Tabasco magnet an Alamo mission magnet and a Poverty Point State Park magnet. Keith believes that the refrigerator will fall through the floor due to the weight of the magnets. Altogether, this trip yields a coffee table book on samurai armor, eight more magnets, three coffee cups, a sweatshirt, a polo shirt and three Christmas ornaments.

And we have seen a part of America I never dreamt of seeing. I overcame my fear of Texas and Texans. I realized that I still don’t like drunks (New Orleans). I love history. We saw some official history (the battlefields) and unofficial but equally real history (the Laura Plantation & New Orleans parks). Life is good.

Fin