Stateside

Back in PC after a whirlwind trip to England and Portugal, fighting jet lag and a torrent of work stuff that feels like drinking from a firehose.

But the view this morning was lovely.

First client call was literally as I was crawling out of bed, and just now finishing some paperwork after a mediation. Here's what I was drafting on the plane last night, which will just have to live as a draft that's the best I can do today. Maybe tomorrow will be a little more manageable.

Sitting wedged deep in the bowels of the coach section of a 737, somewhere over the Michigan lower peninsula. I’m running on maybe six hours of sleep over the last forty-eight hours or so, not so bad when I was thirty but grueling today.

This is a far cry from my flight a little over a week ago, a Virgin Atlantic Dreamliner that brought us from Boston to London. At Issac’s urging, we purchased “lay flat” seats in first class, which in theory allow for something like a normal night’s sleep on the long overnight journey across the Atlantic.

I have some experience with lay-flat sleeping accommodations on a very long flight. In 1989, our squadron flew home from Egypt on a C-141 at the conclusion of an exercise with the EAF. I was exhausted, and probably a little hung over from our farewell party in the tents the evening before. We would typically sit on benches along the sides of the cargo hold, tie our heads in blindfolds made of our flight scarves to the webbing lining each wall, and loll there asleep on long hauls. I tried, but this particular morning found it impossible to fall asleep, and longed for a place to curl up with my jacket crammed under my head as a pillow for a little shut-eye.

It was then that I noticed a sliver of space below a spare F-100 jet engine swaying in a hammock cart along the longitudinal center of the transport. It looked to be maybe a foot or two high, just enough space to allow a sleeper to stretch out on the cold metal floor and try not to think about the massive, probably eight ton turbofan gently rocking back and forth in the bumpy Mediterranean air. It occurred to me that if I hesitated someone else would surely notice the prime sleeping space, and with alacrity I slid under the engine and fell dead asleep for probably several hours.

This lay-flat seating in first class was nothing like that, or wouldn’t have been if Issac’s mother hadn’t married a Philistine. As soon as the 787 leveled off over the Atlantic, I deployed the bed with the push of a button, crawled onto the platform, and was soon snoring blissfully. Turns out there was a mattress pad, a pillow, and even a blanket for our coddled first class sleepers, but I was asleep before anyone could point out that my Spartan arrangement was not required. I also apparently missed a lavish supper and wine to lubricate the journey to the Land of Nod.

Tonight’s accommodations are a good bit more pedestrian, but it’s a relatively short flight to Atlanta, and I don’t figure on needing a long nap even if I truly am exhausted.

Last night we flew home from London, you see, and after our 7.5 hour flight pounding through the jet stream, being rescued by Olivia in the chaotic traffic of Logan Field on a Saturday night when two London flights arrived at the same time, I decided I’d had enough of sleeping in someone else’s bed, even if it was the familiar counterpane of Issac and Olivia’s guestroom, and insisted on John Wayne-ing the six hours back to Corning from Andover.

But for a steady supply of horrible tasting energy drinks, the trip would’ve likely ended in me asleep and our Ridgeline drifting over a cliff. But it didn’t, with P sleeping blissfully on her side next to me, and a four hour edition of Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History to keep me engaged with the riveting story of Japan’s final defeat in the Second World War, I kept it together until we pulled up in front of Tara at a few minutes past three, some twenty-five hours from my wakeup at the Paddington Hilton the morning before.

And there would be no sleep at Tara, at least not right away. It seemed our painter Chris and his lovely assistant Ashley, fueled by the pile of empty Mountain Dew Kickstart cans on the floor, had been up all night painting the family room in anticipation of our arrival the next morning. Our pulling up at three a.m. threw them off their game, but they recovered and talked us through their progress as all I could think of was crawling into my own bed and passing out