We spent last week basking in the sunlight next to the beach. A much needed extraction from * broadly gestures to everything around me *. Vacations are bittersweet to me. It's a much needed break, but I then remember that I have a brain that wants to create and it only has that drive when it doesn't spend 8 hours a day on phones.
We went back to Garza Blanca in Cancun. It was one of those situations where we didn't want to have to make many decisions. We knew Garza Blanca and we knew we would have to do absolutely nothing all week if we wanted it.
And that's exactly what we did. We ate until full, we drank all day, we moved from the pool to the beach chair to the pool. We dodged a three hour timeshare presentation. A celebration that Dionysus would've been proud of. All in all, great time.
I can understand why some of Hemmingway and Hunter Thompson's best writings came while they were near beaches/the ocean. Something about the constant background noise of waves crashing helps calm your mind, focus. Stress leaves your body.
They also have this cocktail there called an Orange Blossom. I had been trying to find a recipe for it all year with no success. It's one of my favorite cocktails I've ever had. This year, I asked my boy Abraham (was also my boy last year) and he gave me a run down. It's got orange juice, lime juice, strawberry juice, mezcal, and a few other things. So I get to play around with some ratios in the coming weekends to see if I can make this drink.
Now the week fell apart on our departure.
We spent 3 hours in the Cancun airport, which if you haven't been there is chaotic at the very least. There's not really a quiet spot to duck into and there's dozens of people trying to scam you on various travel taxes and shady ride shares. There's thousands of American's that don't really know what to do with themselves so they pack into Margaritaville and Guy Fieri's American Grill.
Sal and I were supposed to be home by 8ish on Friday night. Keep that in mind.
We fly from Cancun to Atlanta. Customs was surprisingly quick to get through and Atlanta has one of the better baggage handlings for international travel. So it went quick. But then we had to get from the international terminal to terminal A with enough time to get dinner and get to our plane. We managed to do it, but it was literally the farthest gates apart could be.
We manage to snag Shake Shack right next to our gate. Their soda machine was busted, so there was mass confusion since no one wants to eat a burger without something to wash it down.
We load onto the place 6:10 CST (7:10 local).
Now Sal and I aren't sitting together on this flight. The airlines have started purposefully trying to get you to spend more money to sit next to each other. I have a theory that only a third of the flight was sitting next to their loved ones and you'll see why shortly.
At 6:45, we start leaving the gate, 10 whole minutes early. And then we sit until 7:15, when the pilot comes on and tells us there's a storm to the north and all planes are being rerouted around the storm and to the south of the airport.
If you remember 3rd grade geography, you'll note that going to St. Louis from Atlanta means you go almost straight north. But that's where this storm is. So what happens?
We get in a line of a hundred planes all trying to leave via the same couple of runways pointed south and it doesn't sound like we're far up in the line.
About 7:35, the pilot comes back on and basically says, "Hey everyone, so bad news, we've burned too much fuel sitting here to take an alternate route to St. Louis. So we're going to have to pull back into the gate and wait for a fueling truck to be available to come fill us up."
There's some sort of airline mechanic sitting behind me. He had been explaining how a bunch of parts work the entire time. As soon as they announced this, he said, "Shit, we just lost our place in line again."
We pull up to the gate, the flight crew hands out water and cookies to an airplane that is growing more and more humid the longer we sit there.
The crew keeps hopping on the announcement-a-phone and with surgical precision, calling out passengers that were ignoring their pleas to stay seat buckled because we were on a taxi-way.
Plane again pulls away from the gate and gets back in line. However, by now, there are flashes of lighting all around us. My rational science based brain knows that the tires on the plane have us grounded, so the likelihood of getting electrocuted via lightning is small. However, my caveman brain says I'm in a long metal tube with 200 people I can't stand, this would be the perfect time to kill me via electricity.
So we sit longer. Another announcement comes on around 8:40 CST that they still don't know anything and are working out a plan with air traffic control. This is when we are supposed loading our luggage into our car in St. Louis. But instead of that, I'm sitting next to Janet, who is pear shaped, spilled most of the way into my cramped middle seat, coughing all over me, while spitting the three bags of chips she asked for all over my legs and the seat in front of us.
Sal has someone ripping mad farts near her section. The air in the plane is becoming unbreathable with the sweaty St. Louis bound masses.
You start hearing murmurs of wanting to rent a car and drive or getting a hotel room before all the other flights get cancelled.
I stare out the rain soaked window across the tarmac. I can make out trees, nature. I think of my ancestors who hunted, sat around fires telling stories, and I longed for something I was never a part of.
9:45 CST. Another announcement. This time, something about federal regulations requiring us to pull into the gate after a certain amount of time. The passengers start metaphorically throwing tomatoes at these poor stewardesses.
We get hooked up to a gate by about 10:10. We think maybe we're all getting off the plane and can maybe stretch our legs. Many passengers skipped dinner, thinking they could catch a late one with their loved ones in St. Louis. We've all been living off 60 calories packets of Sun Chips and 80 calorie cookies for hours now.
Instead, we see two men quickly exit the plane and the seatbelt sign comes back on.
10:23. One of our stewardesses comes back on the announcements. She sounds shaken, like maybe she was fighting back tears. She then updates the passengers that we had an unruly passenger that had to be escorted off the plane.
On top of that, this crew had hit their daily max for work hours and would be leaving the plane. We would be sitting and waiting for a replacement crew.
10:47 CST... in the PM. (Original leave time was supposed to be 6:55) The new crew enters the plane. They are decorated like a five star general with all of their Delta swag and badges. They had sent in the vets to handle a hostile situation.
They apologized again. They redid precheck. They filled up the snacks. They did everything right, but the plane was already in a miserable place. There was not going to be anyone coming out of this situation thanking them, even thought I know this crew probably came in on their time off, thinking they'd get to spend the night in Atlanta. And now they were coming with us to St. Louis.
11:30, the plane begins to move. I brought my external battery and Sal and I were currently charging both of our phones and my Steam Deck on it. Bastard is a real hoss. We only drained it halfway on three full charges.
1:08 AM. We land in St. Louis.
People have a sheen about them. Mostly people are quiet. A man mutters, "Don't send me a survey" and laughs as he leaves. The stewardess does her best to smile but you can see that this would be a conversation of topic when they were getting drinks at the hotel bar.
The airport looks like the post apocalypse. There are rides that have been waiting for hours. People that were constantly getting texts, "I think we're going to take off soon." One girl is sleeping on a bench and the security guard wakes her up to see if this is finally the plane she's been waiting on.
We get our luggage and wearily get to our car that we parked in the main garage right off the terminal. I'm happy because the line to get on the shuttles to the other parking lots is long.
Of course, this flight delay has cost me another $26 in parking because the next day is upon us.
Sal and I get home sometime after 2. We had hoped to get Taco Bell on the way home, but them being one of the few late night places had a line around the block.
Instead we throw a frozen pizza in the oven, take a shower, and watch an episode of a show just to calm down. We went to bed after 3 am. Might as well had gone to Europe. It's now Tuesday and I feel like I'm still dealing with jetlag with only crossing a single timezone.
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