There’s nothing weird about flying as a group when you’re travelling together. But, such an event is not as simple a task for my friend and I as it is for many groups because I moved to Oregon and she still lives in Colorado. An insider tip for anyone who is wondering: To fly from Portland to Manchester is the same price as flying from Denver to Manchester. But that would mean travelling separately and meeting up in a foreign airport after changing flights alone which caused some nervousness on her part. Logically, since we were travelling west-to-east, and togetherness was a requirement (though she did say ‘Well of course I would prefer to fly together but I can’t force you to fly with me.’), I spent an extra $300 to take four extra planes to- and from Denver.
I haven’t always been afraid of flying. In fact, for about a hundred flights I didn’t even flinch. Something happened (something that I cannot pinpoint) though, and by this point, I was horrified by the very mention of an aeroplane. Domestically, I’ve been taking trains or my car to avoid to stress of air travel, but that wasn’t going to work overseas because my friend had time constraints and she needed us to do everything together. So ship travel wasn’t an option either and I was advised by all to just suck it up and fly. “If you want to see the world” others would advise “you just have to get on a plane. Just sleep through it.” Yeah that wasn’t going to happen sober. But I had no choice but to at least try. The recurring nightmare that almost had me cancel the entire trip countless times had to do with the ten flights it was going to take to complete this journey, though.
Yes, that’s right. Ten flights. In order to save as much money as possible, we had booked through Swiss Air and that meant we had to stay in Zürich for seven hours on the way out and Chicago for four on the way back. My flight itinerary looked like this:
Eugene—Seattle—Denver—Chicago—Zürich—Manchester—Zürich—Chicago—Denver—Seattle—Eugene
In grand total, counting layovers and early arrival for check-in, that accounts for 60 hours of travel on or around aeroplanes. For those keeping track, that’s 2.5 full days. It makes me sick just thinking about it. But it was worth it for Noel Gallagher. Or, well, let’s just say thank God I didn’t do the calculations before I left.
The first step was just to get to Denver via Seattle.
The first plane, out of Eugene, was one of those propeller planes that I believe are colloquially called ‘puddle jumpers,’ and I had to walk out on the tarmac to board because it was too small to reach the corridor. While I sympathise with the plight of something too short to achieve normal tasks, that didn’t stop me from quaking with horror over the size of this little tiny bird.
Armed with an advanced copy of Noel’s new album Chasing Yesterday and my notebook, I forced myself to ‘suck it up’ and I did surprisingly well.
“Just bumps in the road” I would chant to myself while the reassuring voice in my ears sang to me that we can’t go back. I buried myself in my writing and added about ten handwritten pages to a story I’ve been working on.
In Seattle, I almost missed my connecting flight for the sake of a postcard. It was the grave mistake of misreading my boarding pass and thinking I had time for browsing the shops. But, once I ran to the gate in a haze of apologies for being the last one to board the much more normal-sized plane, I actually handled myself just as well as I’d done on the first flight. I was really proud of myself. I was going to be okay! Flying isn’t so bad, I falsely thought.
I just kept thinking about what John Cusack’s character, Lloyd, said at the end of Say Anything, “High-level airline safety tips: If anything happens, it usually happens in the first five minutes of the flight, right? So, when you hear that smoking sign go ‘ding,’ you know that everything’s going to be okay.”
Boy, do I wish I’d had a Lloyd on my flight to Zürich. Because, while that logic may have worked domestically, I had the worst time of my life once we left North America. But I did make it to Colorado all right.
Because it was cold outside and my friend feared there could be ice on the clear highway, her father drove to the airport to pick me up. This is the same man who had to get up at 04:00 the next morning for work, and I felt immediately terrible when I saw that he had come all the way to DIA at midnight to get me.
He carried my luggage to the car and, for the next hour and a half, we travelled the empty roads back to Littleton, putting us in at about 02:00. He even carried my bags upstairs for me. What a gentleman.
The next day, my friend had off of work so we did some final shopping for the trip. She hadn’t even pulled her suitcase out yet, so we had a long list of travel necessities to get on her list.
My biggest concern during travel is food. I am a vegan (it’s easiest to say it this way) and that is the most difficult diet I can think of. You would not believe it, but milk is in pretty much everything. I don’t eat meat or eggs because the doe eyes of ‘livestock’ make me weep with sympathy, but milk is something I am actually allergic to. So it can get dangerous for me out in the world.
Anyway, because I was afraid to starve to death, I decided to buy 30 vegan-friendly protein bars to bring with me. They’d take up space on the way, but, by the end, I would have gained more space for things that I buy along the way. It seemed pretty clever to me. Plus, I’ll be able to consume at least 500 calories per day. By no means is that enough, but it will keep me alive in a situation where, say, Glasgow is fresh out of fruit and veg and all Scottish bread is filled to the crust with eggs. I go to great lengths to ensure my survival.
So, during that free day, I went searching for protein bars and lipstick (I brought about as many shades of lipsticks as there were days of the vacation. I’m not ashamed: my lips looked fabulous); and my friend went for toiletries and a travel pillow.
Important side note: Travel pillows are useless.
She didn’t start packing until the night before we left after work. Our flight from Denver wasn’t as early as we had imagined (13:55) so she kept putting it off.
She got off work at 18:30 and we had a dinner with her parents and two brothers. I thought it was eerie how little we talked about our trip. It was like no one wanted to acknowledge it. The brother that would be joining us in England a week later asked me what British money looked like and I showed him. Her other brother told me that he wanted me to move back to Colorado. I spent years thinking he didn’t like me. So, if I died on this trip, at least I’d have the knowledge that he didn’t.
She started packing at about 20:00. I taught her how to roll her clothes to save space and our only problem was when we were dividing up the tickets and she insisted that it was unfair that the tickets had my name on them but her address so she should be allowed to keep the packaging that they came in. I don’t see this logic but relented anyway.
I swear I only slept for four hours that night. Sadly, not because of my excitement but because of my dread for the upcoming flights. That is a lot of flying. I had to tell reassure myself constantly as I laid in her parents’ spare bedroom that I would be just fine and I would be able to handle the flights like a champion. That was, sadly, a lie.
backtomacc 
One thought on “27 February – Flying to Colorado took two planes. The entire trip was going to involve ten.”