January 9-- DTW

From Mike-

Airports are a lot like time machines.  You step into this manicured world of chrome, black vinyl, and soft, calming voices (over the intercom) and wait your turn to be transported into a different time—as in, different time zone and level of modernity-- and place, as in, like, thousands of miles away, often across oceans, deserts, and wastelands.  It’s magic. 

We are currently in the McNamara terminal at Detroit Metro Airport.  We’re quite a bit early.  The word was that there was horrific traffic between Howell and the airport, so we left early.  And now we have a couple of hours to burn.

The tip of our plane’s tail can be seen out the window.  Big ol’ thing.  It’s attached to…what?  A 757?  What does that even mean?  If I really were to be dropped into a different time (as in different century) and tried to share some things about my world and its workings, I’d be totally screwed.  Burned at the stake for obscene levels of idiocy.  Start with:  a jet engine.  I know there’s like fins in there.  And high octane fuel (what the hell is octane?) and I know the basics of Bernouli’s principle of airflow and lift, but to put it all together into a machine that has the mass of a freight train and the ability to scream along at something like five hundred miles an hour at a height of 20,000 miles per hour?  Fugeddaboutit.

All of this brings me to my fear.  I haven’t mentioned this to Rebecca yet, but figure a universal safety valve in this hair-trigger balancing act called modern society is to voice the things that can go wrong; that somehow the accident gods will see to it those particular things don’t happen.  I’ll typically start a flight with a question like: What, exactly, is the cause of death in most commercial airline crashes?  The point of impact?  Burns?  Having your air ripped out of your lungs by zero atmospheric pressure?  And, invariably, I get a short frown from Rebecca, followed by the inevitable, “Why do you have to do that?” and wondering how soon after take-off they will uncork the wine.  But my current concern is not so neat.

My recent concern has to do with stepping into the time machine (and going through the great sucking vortex of high speed travel in zero atmosphere across multiple time zones) then, shortly after stepping out of the time zone in a different time and place, experiencing a seismic shock along the lines of a world-wide terrorist strike which renders all flights and modern modes of transport, communication, etc., null and void.

And there we’d be, stuck in a place in which we literally were incapable of making it home without our trusted time machine.  At this point, it need be said Rebecca looked over at what I am writing and said, “People won’t want to read your blog if you write too much.  Not that it isn’t fascinating…”

I think I’ll go use the toilet.  A technology I totally get.