Chapter 10: In Flight

Lawna and I are sitting in the back of an American Airlines jet on the way to Baltimore, Maryland. I'm located next to the engine, so the noise is harsh, too loud to overcome with music without blasting one's eardrums, and since we are in the very last row, our seats do not set back at all. I love to travel, but I hate to fly. Flying, after all, isn't really traveling; it's just transporting. You walk onto a plane through a covered boarding chute and get crammed like sardines in a long tube with bad air, and then after hours of discomfort and noise, you emerge in a new place, often with a totally different climate. Flying is convenient and fast, but it is not traveling. There's usually nothing to see.
Once we land in Baltimore, we'll have a layover at a USO and then board a military plane to Ramstein.
On Saturday we were treated to lunch at Josephine Street Restaurant by Lawna's parents. My mother was there, but unfortunately my father could not make it. He was not feeling well. Brian was there with Tosh, and we all had a good visit. On the next day, Tosh's parents invited us to the Outback and we finally met her father. We have had a good send off all around. We have flown places many times, but always to return to San Antonio shortly after. It is odd to be going somewhere, not to return for at least three years (except, of course, to visit--especially for Brian's graduation).
Our last transfer in Dallas was a quick one, and we did not have time to get lunch. This flight is serving no peanuts, just drinks. We are both hungry. Hopefully the USO will have something good.

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It's almost 7:00 (eastern time) and we have about an hour to wait for our next flight, which will be on a military transport. We checked on our baggage with some confusion, never having processed through a PCS transfer before. It's a little different than civilian traveling. We made it through after consolidating some of our bags so that we wouldn't be charged overages, and now we are just waiting in an area of the airport that is full of service people in camouflage fatigues. We civilians feel a little out of our element. We are, of course, not in uniform, and we are older than most everyone else. Many of these service people look like my Freshman college students, only in uniform.
We don't know what to expect of the flight. Hopefully it will be reasonably comfortable and might afford some sleep. Lawna is crashed out on a couch, and I'm past being sleepy--that deadly second wind that one gets after days of little sleep. I slept about two hours last night, and just drank some Starbucks.
Airports can be unforgiving environments. I doubt that I will get any sleep until we reach a comfortable bed in Germany. I don't sleep we'll on the go. I tend to keep going through the fog, and fortunately I'm not piloting the plane.

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The plane turned out to be a commercial jet, much bigger than either Lawna or I had flown on before. It was filled to capacity with service people dressed in camo fatigues. There were only a few civilian passengers like us. The seats weren't comfortable, but after about five hours I began to nod off to sleep. I think I managed about an hour of sleep. The food was pretty good, and they flight attendants delivered regular servings of it. We finally landed around 11:30, German time. There was snow on the ground, and the temperature was pleasant, in the mid-thirties.

Chapter 9: Visiting the Old Haunt

I'm at UTSA today. Brian drove me. He has two classes to attend, and between classes we will have lunch together. I visited my colleagues at the Writing Program and caught them up on when we are departing. I still hope to see some other colleagues who are off teaching classes, but for the moment I'm sitting outside the Main building where I have taught so many classes, my hands chilled by the breeze that tends to whip between the Main building and JPL. It is a beautiful, clear South Texas winter day--chilly but not really cold. It's the kind of mild weather that San Antonio is known for and that I will probably not experience for a while in Germany.
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Ate lunch with Brian and visited with my office mate, Christina. I saw pictures of her new baby daughter, and we had a long overdue conversation. It is good to see her again, as well as everyone at the Writing office. I've been away from my job for only a few months, yet fundamentally I feel like a visitor, like a college kid returning to visit his high school. Colleagues are friendly and seem happy to see me, yet they all have something to do here and I don't. It's not that I am made to feel unwelcome--certainly not. It's just that the realization has descended upon me that I am no longer a functioning part of this environment. I don't even have a parking pass. Brian drove me, we walked to our respective destinations by a different route than I have become accustomed to over the many years that I have taught here, and I felt truly like a visitor, which, after all, I am. About twenty years of daily morning ritual has evaporated, and though the campus looks the same, my ritual connection with it is broken. That makes all the difference in the world. Ritual is deeply significant for most people, more so than we often realize until it is broken. People stay in churches with incompatible doctrines because of comforting rituals. The pain of broken relationships can be largely the result of broken rituals, because they become the heartbeat that a person lives by. The ritual of a job also runs deep, especially after twenty plus years.

Of course, Lawna and I will discover new rituals, yet we'll lead a somewhat out-of-sync existence for awhile until those new rhythms established themselves. The disruption is exciting and disconcerting at the same time. Of course, it's conflict that makes a fulfilling story and spins out the plot of one's life--the new adventure. The disruption of comfortable complacency. It's looking at the world through a new lense, from a new vantage point--as an explorer, a visitor. At least until it becomes a new home.

Good bye home. . .hello. . .

It really is time for a new chapter. UTSA is now Brian's place and not mine. Perhaps it will once again be my place in another three years, but today it is not.

Alas, farewell Roadrunners!

Chapter 8: Cleaned out

Yesterday more movers arrived to take the remainder of our household goods. It was a long day, and the house looks so much different--so empty, even though we are not moving everything. Lawna and I are now sleeping on an inflatable bed, which is really quite comfortable, and we are picking our clothes from fairly neat piles since our dressers are gone.

Lawna is back to work today, and I have some more arrangements to make, for plumbing services and to try to convince AT&T to unlock our new I-phones so that we may use them in Germany. So far, they have been stubborn about it. We won't use our cell phones to call home--we'll have Vonage and Skype for that, but we want to use them locally. They are new phones!

I have been watching the disturbing news story about the Carnival Triumph cruise ship and the stranded voyagers aboard. I'm sure the conditions must be terrible. On our recent cruise with Princess, we were detained from docking at Galveston for a full day because of heavy fog. These ships carry only enough food for the duration of the cruise. By around 1:00 our ship had pretty much run out of food, and we were quite hungry by the time we hit shore. We saw one family that hoarded several large pizzas and then left much of it uneaten. If conditions had become really dire and we had been driven to cannibalism, then that family would have been the first on our menu plan. Fortunately our bathrooms did not become overtaxed in the single day of our delay, but I can understand how it could easily happen. Perhaps these ships should keep emergency chamber pots in their supply rooms. Seriously! A ship can only carry stores for so many people for a finite amount of time, and occasionally a ship is bound to become stranded. And, the sad part is that many cruise customers are particularly vulnerable seniors. Of course, sometimes they are also the most resourceful, having lived their early lives making do with less.

My sister Jan and my brother Eric are meeting with me for lunch today to visit one last time before I leave. About a week to go!

Chapter 7: Clearing it out

On Friday Lawna and I drove up to Dallas (I always forget just how long that drive is!) and dropped off her car to be shipped to Germany.

Today, movers picked up essential household goods, and then on Wednesday they will arrive to pick up the rest. We've been busy sorting through our shamefully large pile of belongings, performing a cleanup that we should have done long ago. It is an intimidating task.

Also, of course, things have begun to go wrong around the house, just when we are trying to save money for the trip. Our bathroom faucet began to leak last night, leaving a puddle under the cabinet. The HD TV appears to be going out--bands of noise block out the picture for several minutes until the image "breaks in." Also, my car air conditioner stopped working while we returned from Dallas. The next day, it appeared to work fine. Just get us out of here!

More sorting tomorrow, and then on Wednesday the movers arrive to take the furniture and other big items. For two weeks after, we'll be living without a lot of our stuff, kind of out of suitcases, sleeping on an inflatable mattress until our departure. I never thought I would be doing this at age 59. We both thought we would never leave this house. It's really exciting, and just not happening quickly enough. Brian is starting to move things around to make the place his. It will be odd to return after three years.

Chapter 6: Gearing up

I'm sitting outside on a bench by the Honda service department, waiting for the mechanics to finish servicing and inspecting Lawna's car. We will be bringing just one vehicle, and it needs to be up to German inspection standards to be admitted into the country. Hopefully, our Texas standards will be enough for them. It will receive a final inspection in Dallas before it is shipped.

Once we arrive, I'm hoping to get by with public transportation, which I hear is much better in Germany than here. I have heard conflicting reports about how necessary a car is in the Ramstein area. If I absolutely need a vehicle, hopefully I will be able to get by with a Vespa or a moped. I really don't want to have to mess with a car. They are expensive to maintain and basically a pain in the ass. I'm not a car person. My stepfather has already bought my Honda Fit, so that's out of the picture. I did like that little car, but all kinds of changes are coming fast, so I can't afford to be too sentimental. It's only a car.

Brian and I brought the dogs and the cat to the vet a couple of days ago. Both dogs are getting old, one with a heart murmur and periodontal disease and the other with arthritis. We're leaving Brian with a pair of senior citizens to care for, and Michael's young, healthy cat. It's a lot of responsibility, but they will keep him good company while we are away. When we were gone on the cruise, he told us that he missed us and that the house was kind of lonely. We will certainly miss him too, but it's not forever, and he'll have some good transitional experiences of responsibility to get him ready for when he really launches independently. In the meantime, he has another year of college to work on at UTSA. We'll be flying home for the graduation.

February 25 is our departure date, and we still have plenty to get accomplished. We're still deciding what to bring and what to leave behind. I keep changing my mind. We don't know how much space we'll have, so it is hard to gauge. The government is paying for the move, so we hate to leave anything behind that we can use, but we also don't want to lug over a bunch of stuff that we won't have room for. If it turns out we have plenty of space, then it will be on us to make any later shipments. We need to decide smartly.

Oh well, it's just stuff!

The car has checked out, except for a misaligned back tire which they are now fixing. The car should be good to go. Now we just have to get ourselves ready.

Auf Wiedersehen!