To borrow a quote from Tom Swick ("A Way to See the World", great book, you should pick it up), if you consider a trip to last from the time you leave your place of residence to the time when you arrive at your final destination, this has been, by far, my longest, and silliest, trip ever:

Sunday. After two sleepless nights in our stupid, loud, Sammamish Plateau apartment, we decided that we had enough. So we worked like maniacs and managed to get all our stuff into storage, the apt cleaned and our suitcases packed in one day. I’ll pass you the details about the storage unit that was too small and Chuck having to move all our stuff to a bigger one, half way through the move, or the cable guy who said he would come and never showed up, or the mattress I carried on a hand truck all the way to the Goodwill truck, to hear the turbaned-man who works there tell me in a singing Indian accent “No, no we do not take mattresses”. He was nice enough; he saw the look on my face and said I could leave it there and that they would dispose of it for me. What a shame too; it was a good mattress. But, we had no room for it, and neither the time, nor the money to get yet an even bigger storage unit. Anyway, Sunday night was our last sleepless night, sandwiched between yells of the fighting couple above and the bass of the dork below.

Monday. We waved our truck and Chuck’s folks goodbye, and the manager came up for a walk through. That was surprisingly painless. The lady from the office walked in and said, “Looks clean to me”. That was it. I am glad; by that time, our stress level was so high that I felt as though I had swallowed dynamite. If I had to deal with one more “issue”, I’d just open my mouth and it would go off. I was secretly hoping that the neighbor would come up to complain about all the noise we made while packing. I would have liked to blow up at him. It would have been pointless, but it would have felt good at the time. You know, wrath IS my favorite sin. But, neither of us got to blow up. Instead, we took the rental car Chuck’s folks had left us, and drove down the street and past the lake and away from the Plateau. It was like walking through the gates of a prison and finding freedom after years of incarceration. By the time we got to the end of the lake, I realized that I no longer hated all the Plateau yuppies, I merely felt sorry for them. They would stay there, stuck in traffic and their rich little lives, while we were out into the world, having great adventures. Ah! I felt smug for sure. We spent that night in a hotel by the freeway. It was not quiet, but it was peaceful nonetheless. We slept well.

Tuesday. We slept late, had breakfast, went to see a movie and made our way to the airport. We had a bit of fun getting our luggage over to the SAS counter – 2 hockey bags, crammed to the brim with mountain gear, and two suitcases with books, clothes, and everything else you can imagine you’d want to take if you were to be away for 9 months. The weight limit, I had checked three times, was 70 Lbs. Our bags’ weights hovered between 67 and 69 Lbs, but that was according to an old scale my friend Margaret had given me. I was very worried that we were going to be a few pounds over and have to pay the $127 excess baggage fee. We got in line, and both spotted the small red SAS agent immediately. His face was flushed and his hair was red and spiky, so that his head looked on fire. He seemed angry, spoke little and very conscientiously checked the weight of every bag he put on the scale. There was also a woman agent there, she seemed more relaxed and not so interested in the weight of any luggage. I kept my fingers crossed (which is hard to do with sweaty palms), but right as we got to the end of the line, the red man got free. We both looked panicked for a second, but, right then, a second woman opened another counter. I elbowed Chuck, “Go there, quick”. We were saved: that counter didn’t even have a scale. Our luggage was off, I felt relieved. We made our way to terminal S, had to wait for half hour for the security officer to fully search me and my bags until he found the mini Gerber knife in my bathroom bag – oops, I guess I had not considered that a less than an inch long dull blade could be construed as a weapon -, had sandwiches while watching the planes go by, and got onboard.

We left on time, at 7pm, and I soon dove into my new Harry Potter book. Time became meaningless. I looked up only occasionally, once to see to whom a loud strident voice belonged – it belonged to an older woman who was trying to talk to her husband across the aisle with her headphones on -, once for dinner – nondescript airplane food -, and once when the woman by the window nearest to us called the flight attendant over to very politely ask “excuse me, there seem to be a flame coming out of the engine under this wing, is this normal?” The flight attendant almost imperceptibly clinched up and immediately relaxed. It was the change in her jaw that caught my attention, nothing less than that can get me out of a Potter book. She kneeled in the aisle next to Chuck and, with a gracious smile, said, “I am sure it is nothing to be concerned about”. She then got up and walked away quickly, then came back even faster the other way and disappeared behind the first class curtain. Already, the older woman, who had heard, was shouting to her husband that two of the engines were dead and that we only had two left (Airbus 340s having 4 jet engines total). The word spread rapidly and I could feel the temperature rise in the cockpit, as it does when all the passengers get stressed during turbulences. The flight attendant came back, and the older lady – still with her headphones on – yelled, “Can this plane still fly with only two engines?” Good, now all the passengers who didn’t know knew. The attendant answered curtly, “Yes, it can fly on even one” and walked away. Not even a minute later, the captain came on the speaker and said “We are sorry to inform you that due to engine trouble we are going to have to turn back to Seattle, …” I didn’t hear the rest; I just kept on thinking “Seattle! No, not Seattle. Can’t we land somewhere else?” I had been very ceremonial when we had taken off. “This is it! We are leaving Seattle. We no longer live here. We are off to a new life, a new page, a new story”. I watched the ground go away and thought of all the good times I had in Seattle, of the friends I was leaving behind, which are few but very special to me, and then, I daydreamed about where our life might take us next. “Back to Seattle” was not in the plan, at all. But nobody asked me, and so, after flying for 2.45 hours, we flew back, all the way to Seattle.

Wednesday. We landed in SeaTac around 11:30pm. We were ordered to stay in our seats, informed that all the SAS agents had been woken up to assist us, and given candies. After a few minutes the woken-up SAS agents came onboard, all two of them. We were informed that we were to stay put in our seats until an agent came to us with hotel coupons and such. We were in the middle of the plane; it looked like we were going to be there for a long time. People trickled out at the rate of two or three every minute. The two little girls in front of us started to get restless. It was only minutes after the old man, husband of the strident voiced lady, had complimented the mother on how well behaved her daughters were that it started. “gedoffme, gedoffme, gedoffme”. One of the flight attendants came with a small toy to calm things. Hint: ‘a’ small toy. “Gedoffme” became “Iwantone, I wantone, I wantone”. This went on for about half an hour, until Mom decided to do something, which was to take the toy from daughter 1 to give it to daughter 2. The duo that ensued was composed of “But Mo-om”s and “Iwantmyown, Iwantmyown”. I was ready to snap. I wasn’t the only one too. People came by with dirty looks and heavy sighs, to see what and who the source of the commotion was, until the family was let off the plane. Our turn came around 1am. It was straightforward, “Here is your hotel coupon. We’ll call you when we have another flight for you”. We picked up our bags, waited for the second shuttle (the first one wouldn’t take us because we had too many and too big of bags), and got a room at the Radisson. By then it was 2am and I was buzzing with tiredness. Chuck showered, I called my Dad, who was at my grandparents’ place in France at the time, and collapsed.

[to be continued -> "Le voyage d'enfer - 2eme partie"]