Dawn's Rosey Fingers

24 hours on a plane from New York to Xi'An, provided nothing was delayed and I didn't miss any of my less-than-2-hours connections. Yo. I knew I was in over my head as my flight from JFK to LAX could best be described as my "warm up." In Los Angeles, I had an hour and forty minutes from touchdown of my domestic flight to taxiing of my international flight to Beijing. Fortunately, we were a little over an hour late leaving JFK because "It [was] rush hour" and I had to change from terminal 7 to terminal 2 in Los Angeles. (For those of you not familiar with LAX, it's and airport of 7 terminals laid out in the form a rectangle lying long. The entrance is on the right, short side and terminal 7 is the last terminal on the bottom right corner of the rectangle. Terminal 2 is at the top left corner. I have consistently been assured it is faster to wait for the shuttle bus that runs every twenty minutes than it is to try and hoof it.)

So, as I'm sitting there in the tin can not doing anything because "it's rush hour" and therefore no one is rushing to get anywhere, it dawns on me, "Why is rush hour such a surprise?" I can understand if this is your first time flying you and you have never heard of rush hour that it might be a little confusing to be caught up in the mad dash of not moving. However, we are talking about United Airlines. I would think that if anyone does not have the excuse of "oops, I over scheduled because I am naive to the ways of airline rush hour" United Airlines is it.

Nonetheless, we eventually took off and, through the magic of air-travel-math, made it to Los Angeles only forty minutes late. Which left me swearing up a blue streak on the phone with my mother, the Jude, about having to hurry up and wait at 1 am West Coast time (4 am East Coast time aka, where my head and body are) for a shuttle bus that isn't showing and my plane that's about to leave. As I'm yelling at my poor mother about needing someone to hold accountable for the vast suckitude of my current predicament, the shuttle-that-would-not-come, showed.

Lugging my carryon bags and sporting my polar fleece because apparently air conditioning is not ever to be had in reasonable quantities, I start sweating like there was soon to be an embargo on sweating. Of course my gate would be the last one at the end of the terminal that is up two flights of stairs but, well, there is nothing to be done about that. When you're options are "suck it up and do it" or "give it up and go home," I tend to go with "suck it up." After all, you don't get any funny stories to whine and bitch about if you don't ever suck it up.

At last, I make it to my gate in the middle of boarding and discover that I needed to re-check in because of visa issues. Apparently, the airline needs to make double sure that you and your visa are getting on the plane that will be landing on the Mainland. Granted, it's only fair considering one needs a visa simply to land on Mainland soil and domestic flights have no need to check your visa. It sucked but as there was nothing to be done short of re-check in so I re-checked in and returned to the back of the line because I'm not going to be the girl who throws a hissy fit about losing my space in line through no fault of my own before I get on a plane with hundreds of witnesses for thirteen hours. Besides, the seats are assigned, they're not going to leave without me and there's always somewhere to put your bags, even if the flight attendants get stuck winging it.

And, I know I didn't mention this earlier but, for whatever reason, the dude who checked me in and assigned me seats was under the impression that I wanted window seats all the way through. At six foot one and a half, aisle seats are the only option I have at getting any leg room but alas, anyone under the five ten mark doesn't fully grasp how utterly painful it is to be pressed hard enough against the seat in front of them to lose circulation in their legs for hours at a stretch. Consequently, my ass was stuck at the extremities of the airplanes and smooshed against the wall. From JFK to LAX was not a big deal as, originally, the dude in the center seat was a Hassid and, as I am an "unclean" female, he forfeit his seat next to me for fear of the cooties, leaving the very cool guy on the aisle and myself extra room. Actually, the Hassid told the flight attendant to ask me if I would accept a window seat further back so that he may be surrounded by sausage. Considering the bravery he showed at not even looking me in the eye when someone else asked for him, I said "No." So, thanks to his sexism and coincidentally keen insight, I had plenty of legroom to spare. From LAX to Beijing, it was less-than-pleasant as, short of being planted on the tail wing, I was in the furthest seat from the entrance possible and the woman in the seat next to me was not concerned by my "unclean" status. The two hour flight from Beijing to Xi'An was the least comfortable as the seating situation was like that of the 70's and early 80's before the U.S. air carriers pulled some rows of seating to give each row a little more room. I literally did not put my butt down for two hours so I could cantilever my legs beneath the seat in front of me.

Legroom bitching aside, the flights were all extremely pleasant. Though there were babies on the planes, there were no screaming babies. Though there were children on the plane, all of them were well behaved and very quiet. The service was excellent even though I was flying in economy the whole way. I truly cannot complain about the things that could have been fixed during my flights.

As I simply hate plane travel, I dealt with it the same way I deal with all things I loathe but cannot change; I mentally checked out. I've learned as an adult, one has surprisingly little control over one's own body but no one ever has ownership of your mind. And as you may, or may not, have noticed, I have a fertile imagination. Once on the flight to Beijing, I went straight to sleep and slept for six hours. I would have slept more but I was hit with the scent of hot Camembert so strong it pulled me from my slumber. Normally, I love cheese but I was trying to sleep so I turned to scold whomever it was for putting hot, stinky cheese in my face like that.

Which is when I saw that everyone else was asleep, no one was offering cheese and the woman next to me had started to mouth breath in her sleep. I wanted to grant her the benefit of the doubt but when she licked her lips and closed her mouth, the Camembert scent vanished.
"Good timing. Just a coincidence." I thought, in denial. Her mouth fell open again and she was, once again, breathing through her mouth and I was, once again, overwhelmed with hot Camembert and the new sensation of my eyebrows on fire. Later, in deference to my fellow man, I offered her some gum upon descent, you know, "For your ears to pop" but she looked at me like I had offered her dog crap. "Therein lies your problem, sweetheart," I thought.
Nevertheless, I was awake, revolted and trapped. With nowhere to run and not even being half way through the trip, I decided to just retreat into the back of my mind. I wondered what was going on outside the plane, so I lifted the shade. I was greeted with one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen: sunrise over Siberia.

I was instantly back in Mrs. Adabbo's English class in freshman year high school. I think we were reading the novelization of the Odyssey and one chapter began with "As dawn's rosy fingers crept along the hills" The profound stillness of land fringed with the utter color explosion of sunrise overcame me. Even now, I tear up at the thought of it. It is raw, savage beauty we, with all our "sophistication" would patronize as the "simple beauty of nature." It is the kind of image that fits nicely in the generic desktop photos that come with computers. We gloss over the overwhelming power of infinite, hostile land immolating out of darkness and quaintly capture it as generic "nature scenes." Ultimately though, all our patronizing won't save us from ourselves.

Siberia had been, by design or coincident, our greatest protection against ourselves. Though a desert of ice and often perceived as vast, cold nothingness, Siberia in fact houses vast marshes covered over by ice. With our myopic view of pollution and global warming, we have warmed the Earth just enough to melt the permafrost, releasing more methane gas than we could possibly counteract. Watching that sunrise, I was reminded that no matter what we do, sunrise over Siberia is as close to eternal as I will ever know. We can melt the permafrost. We can melt the polar icecaps. Frankly, we can utterly destroy the environment that sustains us and the planet will simply, as George Carlin says, "Shake us off like a bad case of the flu." It is not the "planet" that we save with our "Think Green" campaigns. It is our own selves.