Leave Atlanta 8:25PM arrive Dublin June 25th 9:25AM
The smog layer over Atlanta is substantial, I sort of want to hold my breath. One sort of forgets about these things until one returns to them. Also it is hot. And filled with people milling around and stopping in the middle of walkways, taking up the entire moving sidewalk. The pace of life changes is a soupy air whirling around air condition fans. I need to take my swift Yankee city paces in stride when dealing with those south of the Mason-Dixon, and the longer I am away the more I forget about it.
I read a little pamphlet on the way to the central food court. In 1925 the Atlanta airport was an abandoned racetrack acquired by the city when Mayor Walter A. Sims signed a five-year lease. Now, 83 years later, Hartsfield-Jackson International is one of the busiest airports in the world, serving almost 85 million passengers per year. As a Delta hub it has a special resonance for me personally, as we would often fly standby when I was younger, and Atlanta Airport (with its five concourses accessible via connected underground moving walkways) was hands-down my favorite place to get stuck if we had to be stuck at all. International airports also lend fantastic people watching.
After joking back and forth that we have real tickets out of the airport (even taking pictures of them to text to our friends), Mom and I split for a few hours to mill around before we make our connection into Dublin. I of course spent an obligatory period making my ritualistic walk from concourse A to E to Linkin Park's Reanimation -- the anthem of airport waiting.
I nose around two wonderful art exhibits along my way, which is admittedly something I was not expecting at the Atlanta Airport. The first: "Found Objects Transfigured," a collection of pieces that made chairs, sculpture and 2-D pieces out of discarded materials. The second: a collection of Zimbabwean stone Sculpture, which completely blows me away.
Of course, the real treat was to arrive in the international concourse. A wonderful gumbo of languages, clothing styles, and the frenzied distraction the accompanies all air travel, no matter where you're from. The gate next to ours was flying to Barcelona, and would repeat the boarding calls in Italian. There were a few flights that came in with families speaking foreign languages trying to find the baggage claims and things. And of course all the background people like me gawking at humanity positively glowing that were were all HERE. And we are all GOING SOMEWHERE.
I check my email here, in what Forbes describes as the No. 1 wired airport (based on passenger number). There are plenty of laptop kiosks, particularly in the international kiosk, next to windows affording views of the adjacent parking garage. There is not, however, plenty of internet. At least, not the free wifi I have come to assume will be transmitted through the very airwaves. It was an $8 charge for 12 hours of internet service. My thrifty tendencies lurch but in the end I pay for it anyway, reasoning that there will be no internet on the flight and possibly none at the hotel in Dublin.
I meet up with Mom later and have a quick meal at one of the buffet counters. Bourbon chicken, rice, veggies and a dissonant food cup bought for the look of the pineapple alone. Everything is devoured quickly. I am loaded down with snacks as it is: dried fruit, homemade granola and some yogurt bars that don't need constant refrigeration.
I don't think I've ever been fed a meal food on an airplane before this moment, and while it isn't really what Michael Pollan would describe as "food", I happily find it warm and deeply satisfying.
Most of the flight is an attempt to instill in the passengers a nighttime routine. We are fed dinner, then a midnight snack, then the lights are dimmed for bedtime. A flight attendant expertly beds down in an luxurious empty row behind us and I feel pangs of envy. I wonder if I should have practiced sleeping in a chair before this flight.
Mom and I mostly don't speak much during the flight; we listen to ipods or try to read when we aren't pretending to sleep. I do have her look out the window when we are flying over New York City (a spectacular sight of lights perfectly outlining the edge of the country) and again later when I noticed the moon reflecting on the ocean down below. I had expected to feel nervous over the ocean but I don't particularly. My generation really trusts technology, possibly to unhealthy degrees. At least in this case it makes my overnight flight merely uncomfortable, not anxious.
At dawn we are given little breakfast kits and I hungrily scan the outside world for the first signs of Ireland.
To my great astonishment the ground is not the even grid of farmland one finds in the USA but instead a pastiche of erratic shapes in every shade of green imaginable. Presumably (though this is more speculation than fact) it is because the stone walls have no permanent gates; to let the sheep out, one merely moves some stones.
Sleepy yet excited, we are shepherded through Customs (A STAMP ON OUR PASSPORTS! We show one another gleefully) and wait for checked baggage to catch up to us.
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