Guadalajara 2019 - Guadalajara Bound, Finally

I wake up in the Super 8, shower, dress, pack my carry on and head downstairs to the usual "breakfast included" breakfast. The eggs are cold, the rolls are frozen, the yogurt is o.k., it's kind of hard to screw that up. I am instantly convinced that the other diners voted for Trump, they also talk funny. Southerners sometimes have a graceful drawl, Texans twang like an out of tune guitar. As we ride together in the airport shuttle I discover, to my horror, that this loud, twangy group are on my flight. Fortunately the flight is only half full so I only need to deal with the obese, unkempt men, one wearing the worst, most unconvincing toupee I think I have ever seen and women with hard hat hard hair in the shuttle.

The flight is uneventful, 2 hours pass quickly, due in large part to the games you can play on the screen mounted on the seat in front of you. Immigration and customs are a fairly rapid affair and at around 4 I am dropped off at the guesthouse, a mere 20 hours after my initial, expected arrival time.

The owner of the establishment provides me with volumes of information in a record amount of time. The guesthouse is a hacienda, built around 1880, the rooms situated around a courtyard. A lovely fountain, water jets out of ceramic faces set in the wall into a pool below, graces the ground floor. Mexican tile trim, traditional Mexican furnishings and painted ceilings give the building a historic, which it is, charming, south of the border feel. Large terra cotta jars grace the public areas. Glass plates with swirls of color, produced locally, decorate the walls. Plants in colorful pots line the second floor railing and sit on shelves set in among the faces of the fountain. In my room the ceiling is painted to look like a blue sky full of wispy, white clouds. A large set of french doors with multi colored panes, which look out on the courtyard below, takes up much of one wall. Reproduction light fixtures provide illumination. The colorful sink and accessories are also traditional, superb examples of Mexican craftsmanship and locally sourced. The attention to detail is impressive. I unpack and begin to plan my activities during my visit.

Guadalajara 2019 - Rambling Thoughts While Air Borne

There are thoughts and experiences that are common and reoccurring to me during plane travel. Inside the cramped confines of today's "airbus" concept you taxi away from the gate at a speed approaching the crawl of a car trapped in a rush hour commute. Then the giant metal tube you sit within gains speed and somehow, although it has been explained to me I still do not fully understand it, leaves the ground and flies. Clouds take on the appearance of soft snowdrifts. Sunsets, which when viewed from the ground fill the sky, are seen as thin bright ribbons of color. When flying at night you see clusters of light, varying in sizes, which are cities and town. The illuminated grids become fainter and fainter as they ripple out to suburbs, exburbs and then dark rural blackness. Air pressure changes, your ears "pop'.

Of course the class system still exists. There is the upper crust, first class, with their more commodious seats and pampered service. Not to mention the drawn curtain that exists to separate "us" from "them". Us, the great unwashed, families, budget minded tourists and business travelers not yet high enough on the food chain to sit in front of the curtain with the titans. They dream of the day when they will be able to travel two abreast instead of three.

And me, holding my left elbow close to my body as I write in my southpaw script, trying, often in vain, to not bump the person seated next to me as I set rambling thoughts to paper.

Guadalajara 2019 - A Night in a Dallas Airport Super 8 Hotel or I'm Trying to Get to Mexico and This is as Far as I Got

I struggled with my bags through 3 inches of fresh snow to get to the airport. I checked the flight when I woke up, I checked the flight before I left the house, despite the weather the flight was still scheduled to leave on time. I received an email during the bus ride to the airport, the flight was delayed by 50 minutes threatening my chances of making my connecting flight in Dallas. I conferred with the helpful woman at the desk when I arrived at O'hare. After looking at alternatives we realized due to the brutal weather conditions that had settled over Chicago my best bet was to get to Dallas, hope I could connect and if not figure it out from there. While we were talking the flight was delayed another 20 minutes making the connection virtually impossible.  By the time I got to the gate the plane, originally scheduled to depart at 1:10 was now leaving at 2:45. I received an email at the gate informing me that the airline had rebooked me on a flight out of Dallas the following morning. A helpful gate agent printed the new boarding pass for me. I phoned the guesthouse in Guadalajara letting them know that instead of checking in that evening I would not be getting there till the following afternoon. Back to the gate, the flight was now delayed till 4. I got on my phone and perused hotels in the Dallas airport area. I settled on a Super 8 with an affordable price and a shuttle to and from the airport.

I read, my husband had picked up a promotional copy of a novel I had tossed in my bag at the last minute, it is not bad sci fi. I write, I eat half of one of the sandwiches my husband had thoughtfully prepared for me. I discretely check out the short, muscular guy sitting across from me wondering how he got his large thighs into the skin tight jeans he is wearing. I wonder how he is managing to sit down in them. Later I discover he is a rather affable sort, we exchange light conversation as we are both in the predicament of having to check our carry ons at the gate rather than carry them on.

They announced that the plane is en route to O'hare. It arrives, we board and we sit another 45 minutes. The captain comes over the intercom system explaining that the extreme cold is making the deicing of the plane problematic. Around 5 we are finally  in the air. 

I look at my fellow passengers. I notice that a majority of them appear to be one time defensive football linemen gone to seed. I notice that 2 of the largest ones are seated next to me making the already cramped conditions of the plane even worse.

Finally we arrive in Dallas. I check on my bag which is spending the night at the airport to be put on the plane in the morning. The baggage agent refers to it as "the bag that is going to Mexico". My bag has a title. The van picks me up and I am deposited at the door of a faceless concrete structure, my home for the night. I check in, assist a tiny woman on to the elevator who is attempting to maneuver a bag as large as herself and take a look around my no frills room. I check the bed for bedbugs, a ritual I have become accustomed to in our post DDT world. There was a nice body creme in the room which I used after my shower in the morning. My toiletries, except for my toothbrush and toothpaste, were spending the night at the airport with my bag.

The room is a bit chilly. The view is of the almost identical motel which sits across the parking lot. The breakfast, included with the room, is mediocre but edible. The water pressure in the shower is not great and the mineral laden Texas water has been softened giving it that unsettling silk like feel. All that being said it was cheap and beat the alternative of sleeping propped up in a chair at the airport.

I felt a certain sense of pride in my resourcefulness and resiliency. Keeping my cool and utilizing only my phone I managed to stitch together a plan to keep a roof over my head and eventually make it to my destination despite the obstacles thrown in my path. My younger self might have crumpled and had a meltdown during the arduous process, but, I kept a steely reserve and made it though. With my age comes a realization that life sometimes creates hills which, once ascended, leave you stronger as you go down the other side of them.