Going to the airport is a routine now ahead of these trips up north. I’ve taken up this habit of walking my wait for boarding my flights lately. I do this because of my back, and because sitting just isn’t great in contiguous segments. I am required to sit on the plane. I am not required to sit while I am waiting at the airport to board. I just need to show up when required by the time on the ticket to board.
It’s my time to put on the “phones” and go into a space, walking and watching. I swear, I could tell you more about the state of the airport and its inhabitants than anyone, except those like me who are roving people watchers… I haven’t spotted THEM yet, because if they are moving, it makes sense that they might be difficult to identify. Right?
So, I observe. I absorb. I think about stuff. My mind loosens, and the creative juices flow. Oh my goodness, do they flow. A recorder could attest to free associations… but, that’s really my brain on exercise, stormin’ and zipping around to those thoughts that bubble up most.
Thinking of things, in my “thingish” way, that Winnie the Pooh perfected long ago…
People…
People from different places and walks of life… People who look like other people in certain ways… People who look like they are on a mission, people at rest in the very quiet “D” terminal… which is a huge contrast to the very busy and congested “C” terminal… “E” is moderate, as it has lots of vertical space and lots of long hauls – the people are less compressed into small spaces…
Distance…
In about an hour I can cover almost three and a half miles – likely, if I race walked it, I could do more – but I don’t want to get that sweaty… Especially before a flight…
I compare this to walking to our local park and back, plus about a half mile more…
Art…
There is cool art in the “D” terminal. The “E” terminal has vast spaces and “premium” restaurants and shops… The “C” terminal is trying to catch up, but there is no “art” there – just redesign of the existing – to get it out of that “90’s look”, but “C” always will be the busy domestic hub for North America – all seem to be majorly “United” controlled except for the “D” terminal that has the other airlines who fly overseas. The non-alliance airlines are banished to “A” and “B”, or God forbid, “Hobby”, across town… Umph… Silly that we even have this perspective – pushed by “corporation” power-plays… I do NOT ♥ United… I do long for the old Continental…
“Hometown Houston”
Used to be that this was okay – Continental, being the hometown airline, it was a hometown airport. Not so much now. Its weird. Its complicated. It is still, the large corporate merger, working itself out.
Houston is a proud city. It does not like to be taken over by Chicago.
Its citizens rebel in passive aggressive ways, but if you want to fly anywhere, you kind of have to forbear the resentments. United. You complain, knowing that you are rebelling against a corporate giant the size of a small city. Ugh. Bad food, reducing comforts, and the expense… “Shall we beat you whilst you give us your money for the experience?”. Right.
But with this airline, there are the almost 40+ year employees, still there, flying and working the ground, who began work as soon as they graduated high-school and became eligible…
The “stewardesses” (now attendants) – inflight “coordinators” – etc., names of job roles change – they were, at the beginning, likely, svelte and curvy at the same time, as it was, back in the day, the habit of hiring – before the ERA of ’72 kicked in and discriminatory practices began changing like “la unda” (the wave)… No more that. It’s okay if you are my age, in not such great shape, and of reasonable temperament – well…at least not ranting….
Most of this is on the pages of the travel experience “opinionators” who wax on about this program vs. that one, but then this one does this and that, and if you put a spreadsheet to it, well… at the end of that evaluation, this one really is better…
Yeah, I get it… Good and bad with a happy paper and ribbon to tie it all up, and someone is still making money… That is what it is all about, right?
So, I digress… It was about the walk? Right? Right.
Each time I do the walk it gets more interesting. I think, really, it is more about my perspectives driven by the walk – and it is never the same… I don’t let it be one of too much binning and categorization, although, we humans tend to do this… I now look for the outliers. I think about the comparison to walks in years back and the sporadic periods of time spent in airports… over the years… before 9-11, when people smoked and things were still spinning from the glorious age of commercialization of air travel… Barely experienced in my teens… it was so very different then…
My first flying experience was flying from college home to spend Christmas holidays
Getting there was not as hard as returning without a ride from the airport – a boyfriend soon to be ex was a no show… Reached out in desperation to the roommate who lived not far, and the parents who rescued me… Caveat was that I had to stay over at their house, which was a bit weird, but I was okay, and accounted for, not hitchhiking, as my parents likely feared…
I was seventeen.
Not yet an adult, fully qualified, as that was being debated at the time… it was Vietnam war times… If you were old enough to fight, you should be old enough to vote, and drink, and get married… but not all the states thought that this was a good idea, and this came in spurts… like all other changes, from the left, and right to the middle… California and New York leading as always, the change waves…
Flying then was quite a different experience…as was life for us at that point…
It was during the interesting time – of Fleetwood Mac, and Rolling Stones… The Who, and David Bowie… Moving fast into the seventies… Before CBGB… Endless opportunities if you didn’t die in the process… Keeping ahead of the waves of revolution and transition, so as not to get run over by it was the trick – avoiding those situations that could get you into big dimensions of trouble… all of us had to navigate through these times in some form or fashion, it seemed…
But the quality and character of this has changed. Now, the dimensions of danger and violence in our world has moved to a level that for most of us, borders on out of control. Scary to those of us who live in what we think is a modern and civilized world that there are others among us who want to drag us backward and limit us to living in that hand-to-hand existence where someone or someones are in charge and stuff explodes to remind the world of this on an erratic basis just to keep this notion in the forefront of everyone’s minds…
And then there are the zombies. Thank goodness we have our own “house zombie” for protection… Halloween is coming at the end of the month… Must find a new suit for him! The girls will no doubt want photos again this year!
Again I digress…
As I roam, I think also about that Tom Hanks movie where he “lives” in the airport, his life and friends become that of those who occupy it 24X7, and they know him – and join together to be on his side – he is the “permanent” denizen of the environment and the perspectives reflected are those of a resident, as his evolves…
I can see how this could transpire, and imagine what it would be like…
So often, the employees are congregated to socialize, discussing what they did the night before, their boyfriends, their families, and the normal stuff you chat with co-workers about…
It probably is a tiring place to work for some. I see people resting in the quiet parts of the airport.
I look at the art that probably 95% of passengers that travel domestically out of this airport do not even know is on exhibit. It is beautiful stuff – highly modern art in genre and some very interesting works. Introducing art into spaces where people have to wait is a nice thing in a normally unpleasant and stressful environment. Every little thing helps…
