Total travel: 34-35 hours? Final prize: 1 chilly Kilimanjaro beer.

Kili deigned to come out for my first run

I have heard that flying via Turkey instead of through Amsterdam you can arrive from Moshi to the US in one day. After who knows really how many hours travelling, I am thinking this is an option that should be explored. I did manage to sleep about 3 or 4 hours total in all that time--something only slightly better than nothing. Unfortunately for me, I had a skirmish with the flight security leaving JFK getting onto my Amsterdam bound plane during which they refused to allow me my carry one, forcing me to cough up an obscene amount of money to last minute check it. Of course, I had not planned on checking it, so it had many of the non-expendable items--ie documents to prove my existence, camera equipment, hard drives, drugs, and cold hard cash. A veritable goldmine for some thief with very low standards.

I imagine had I not been agonizing over the it's travel and appropriate off loading at JRO I might have slept a bit more on either said planes.

At least as I tried to distract myself from analyzing over and over how I might have negotiated the situation differently, I had pleasant seat mates on both legs of the journey.  Traveling to Amsterdam I sat with a formerly of South Africa woman and her husband who were off to visit her newly immigrated to Europe sister and her 90 year old father who had travelled from Africa as one lust huzzah.

And the next leg was satisfyingly empty that I was able to have a free seat next to me. The man across from that was kind enough to collect things for me on the rare occasions that I dozed off.

I am not doing a terribly good job recovering from the jet lag, but if I can make through without passing out in the mid afternoon I should hopefully readjus.

upon flying

cocooned, sounds absorb into the placenta of oxygen so carefully packed around us.

we are neither here nor there. an in-between space where time is irrelevant, simulated at the discretion of the bored attendant who flicks the light switch.

a modern marvel, that surely someday will appear barbaric, hurling ourselves through space in a ridiculous tube.

i watch the other passengers slip so easily into unconsciousness. their entire existence in the hands of the onboard computer.

my own joy or sorrow held at bay, just outside the sliding window, like the gremlin riding gleefully on the outer wings. it peers at me, content to cackle and hop, mocking my disconnected face just through the glass.

and i do not scream, alert the attendant with his tray of drinks. i have no will of self preservation, only the disassociation of nothingness. The Nothing is coming, or going, it is hard to say which.

and so i do not sleep, but wait placidly on the edge for what will occur to occur. inevitably, i will leave the cushion compressed around me and will be met by all the things i checked at the gate. the fear, the excitement, the pain, the despair, or sweet relief.

sad KLM

 

flying dutchman

sadly, KLM had no bloody marys for me. and to add insult to injury, i had to use 2 sets of headphones in order to make the european plug work. ghetto.

 

"delicious meal" = "chicken mustard"?

they also had some of the scariest airplane food i have had in a while.  from some unidentifiable chunks of chicken in sauce, to an egg salad with RAW salmon. Raw fish on a plane?? um... yeah. i'll stick to the baby bottles of red wine.

poison eggs