This morning I hit 50 flights. It seems like I should have celebrated it as some sort of special event, but there really wasn't anything particularly remarkable about it. I boarded the flight early, which I suppose was a change of pace. I'm usually one of the last to go on, trying to savor every moment I have to stand. Hours upon hours in the air will do that to you.
I sat down next to a lady mumbling in Hindi, a language I recognized thanks to a close friend from India. She'd mutter a phrase out loud every few moments, not speaking in any particular direction. She spoke softly, but I don't think it was with the intent to keep me from hearing. She didn't even seem to recognize my presence at all. The rest of the flight would continue this way: Whenever I would take off my headphones and glance over, there she'd be, mouthing words to herself in a nonstop soliloquy, browned teeth pointing haphazardly in every direction imaginable.
I took out the notebook from my pocket to mark the moment.
My memory was the first casualty to fall to sleep deprivation, and I've found that if I don't write things down, I'll have forgotten them a few minutes later. So I've taken to recording everything in one of those small, index-card-sized pads. Flipping through the pages is like reading the diary of a schizophrenic. The writing is jagged and hard to interpret, the outcome of trying to write while I walk. Often there'll just be a few short words, jotted down with the hope that they'd be enough to clear the haze and retrieve an associated memory.
Usually they're enough to remind me, but occasionally I'll find myself staring at the writing blankly, as if I were reading a partial transcript from someone else's life.
I was flipping through the pages, piecing together hastily scribbled conversations, when the lady next to me decided to set down her half-full cup of water on the seat between us. Directly on top of the Kindle that Wired.com loaned me. I didn't realize that she had done so until a few moments later, when turbulence jostled her cup over, pouring water all over the seat.
"Aii!" she screamed, following with a jumble of words that I recognized as English but couldn't make sense of. She grabbed a handful of Kleenex from her purse and threw them onto the seat. Not dabbing or wiping, just dropping them on top of the water and ice. I honestly don't know whether she thought I'd be upset about it and wanted to help quickly or if she just didn't know how to clean things up, but the reaction was so funny that I couldn't be really be angry. We wiped the seat dry, and the Kindle was fine.
I took the tissues to the back of the plane to throw them away, where a flight attendant had watched most of the ordeal, laughing. "I didn't want to interrupt," she explained. "In case you were writing a story on her."
It's become increasingly difficult to go unnoticed among JetBlue staff. Something about the reception I received in Houston seems to have kicked off a competition among the facilities, each trying to one-up the others in hospitality. In Portland, Oregon, they located a couch for me. In Rochester, New York, the ground crew let me sleep on a love seat in their office. And in New Orleans, there was muffaletta and a po' boy waiting for my arrival.
At first I wasn't sure what to do with the attention. It was, to be honest, a little overwhelming. While I certainly appreciated the generosity and an opportunity to meet so many people, a question kept nagging at me: Isn't this cheating? But I remembered something that Wired.com photo editor and Raw File grand poobah Jim Merithew told me during the first night in Oakland, California:
"Where the story goes, the story goes. If you crack and go home, write about it. If you get sick and have to stop, write about that. Whatever happens to you is the result of this experiment. Don't force it into something it's not."
You may remember that the original premise, loosely, was to see what would happen if a traveler was stranded in an airport for 30 days. Hollywood's take led to finding an unused section of the airport where you build a fountain for Catherine Zeta-Jones. In reality, I was eventually discovered by an airline, who wanted to make sure that I could keep going until the trip is over.
Some will turn their noses and tag it as a publicity ploy. Whatever. My references to the airline are in passing, so if they're looking for a good return on investment, they could probably do much better than using me as their advertising medium.
I hadn't asked for any special treatment from JetBlue, really. And to be honest, I don't know how they found out about me after that first day, when the attention quickly faded. But through this blog and Twitter, people caught wind, the word passed along, and now I find myself in the strangest 15 minutes of fame ever.
Our plane touched down in New York, following an approach which I've become familiar with. The lady, who had resumed her quiet monologue after the spill, turned to me. I was still unable to decipher most of what she said, so I shouldered the burden of polite Americans everywhere and smiled agreeably. "Yes, yes I am. Yes. Mmm hmm. That is nice." Nod, smile, repeat. Isn't that the universal manner of welcoming foreigners?
I don't have the slightest idea what I was agreeing to, but it seemed to please her immensely. I won't be entirely surprised if I run across her in JFK tomorrow, holding the hand of the daughter I became unintentionally betrothed to. Or perhaps I approved the purchase of some land, or promised her a job in whatever industry she thought I worked in.
Or maybe it's the more likely explanation that we were just trading pleasantries. With the way I've attracted the surreal lately, it's hard to guess. Whatever it was, it's where the story goes. See you tomorrow.
Follow Terminal Man’s travels on Twitter @Flyered and check out his itinerary on Google Maps. Using a news reader? Here's an RSS feed of Terminal Man's posts. You can also track his flights on Wednesday to New York and Denver, and those on Thursday to New York and Raleigh-Durham through FlightAware. And check out his previous posts here.
