It was a good trip, and it got off to a good start. Vienna-New York, New York-Seattle with a three-hour layover at JFK, plenty of time to transfer, but not absurdly long either.

Security was mellow, except that in Vienna everyone had to take off their shoes to be x-rayed, then stand around in their socks afraid to make jokes like, “geeze imagine if that terrorist guy had hidden explosives in his shorts!” while waiting for their shoes to come out the other end of the machine.

Of course I was wearing Doc Martins. Lacelacelace.

The flight was good and uneventful, except for a little turbulence. Both girls were well-behaved. Well, we had to yell at Beta to remind her to wear her orthodontial retainer; she just got her braces off and is still getting the hang of that. Gamma was a little angel, coloring away, getting tangled up in her earphone-cords, eating her food. Doing very little sleeping.

Feeling awfully hot to the touch.

And coughing.

From Vienna to New York, I sat beside Beta. I was wearing an orange t-shirt. She had pre-ordered the vegetarian food, because the special meals (kosher, vegan, etc) are made fresh and usually served first. This particular meal included a nice salad with a balsamic vinegar dressing. Nearly black in color.

So I offered to open it for her – you know, the little translucent plastic cup sealed with the aluminum thing on top. So she wouldn’t, you know, squirt herself or spill a little if we hit turbulence or something. She’s only a kid after all.

I carefully peeled back the aluminum foil seal. This turned out to be this high-tech bi-material seal, aluminum and plastic. I peeled it back so carefully only the aluminum came off, and it was still tightly sealed with the plastic layer. So I carefully poked a little hole in that, rather than peel that back, because if totally peeled back I could, you know, spill it or something – remember, airplane, close quarters, knees and elbows everywhere – so I poked a little hole to sort of squirt it onto Beta’s salad.

I poked the hole clear through, but nothing came out when I tried to pour, nor when I gave it a little squeeze. I turned it so it was completely horizontal and tried again, but only a couple drops came out. Apparently a bit of herb was blocking the orifice, so I gave it a good squeeze to clear it and the container of black balsamic vinegar dressing emptied all over my t-shirt.

This got a good chuckle out of Beta and good sport that she is she promised not to tell anyone until we reached our final destination. I slipped a dark blue sweater over my t-shirt and no one was the wiser, except of course for my now balsamic smell.

The airplane was cool, of course, but it was a warm July afternoon when we arrived in New York and Alpha kept asking me didn’t I want to take off the sweater? I’d wipe the sweat off my forehead and say, No, no I’m fine and Beta would chuckle.

New York, New York. My kinda town. Vibrant and assertive. And fucking hot. Great place. We stood around on the curb in front of terminal 7 for a while waiting for the free bus to other terminals. We finally asked a guy where the free bus to other terminals boarded, and he just pointed to a sign “Boarding for Free Bus to Other Terminals” like he must do 100 times a day. Stupid tourists.

American politeness is a funny thing. Everyone was all “sir” and “ma’am”. You forget about that when you go away. And friendly. Friendly people, Americans, in certain situations.

We had to claim our luggage in New York, go through customs and re-check it. Feh. We were glad we hadn’t brought along Beta’s harp in its bulky flight case. That would’ve been a headache.

New York-Seattle I sat next to Gamma. Who was getting hotter, coughing and finally told me she had to puke. By that time I had the barf-bag ready anyway because I’m, like, psychic! But it was just a false alarm, just, I dunno, barely anything came out. So I put it back in the seat pocket. Later it occurred to me that airlines probably don’t replace the barf bags each flight if they look intact. So like if you were sitting in seat 18A on a United New York-Seattle flight and found something small in your barf bag? Sorry!

Then we arrived in Seattle, picked up our rental car (Ford Taurus) and drove to my sister’s house.

[to be continued...]