Almost back to Eugene

All good things must come to an end, and Today it was time to say goodbye to the fattening comfort of Western Massachusetts, and say hello to the rainy purgatory known as Oregon.  I woke up at 5:30AM eastern time so that my mom would have one last chance to get food in me before I left.  Mmm... apple crisp for breakfast.  By 6:30 we were all in the car to the Hartford airport.  My mom promised she wouldn't cry, but she lied (this is sort of like that time Jim accused the kid in our dorm who killed himself of being a liar, because he had previously said he wouldn't kill himself).

When I boarded the plane, I thought I had finally lucked out.  Instead of an overweight, smelly, old man sitting next to me, I found a rather attractive young woman who was dressed far too nicely for a flight to Chicago.  I spent most of the flight trying to think up something to say to her, but no matter how good an introduction I thought I had, her boyfriend's hand resting on her upper thigh for the duration of the flight kept me from saying anything.

Then I was in Chicago for what was originally supposed to be an hour and a half layover, but naturally my flight was delayed by 45 minutes.  That's okay, at least I had good pictures to text to Nick.

And there were the bathrooms with the automated toilet seat changers.  In the absence of wifi, going to the bathroom is probably my favorite thing to do in an airport--provided, of course, that the bathrooms meet at least some standard of cleanliness.

After about 8 trips to the bathroom, it was time to fly to Portland.  I don't know who at United Airlines is in charge of picking the in-flight movies, but let me give you some advice: if half the movie is in Spanish with English subtitles, it probably isn't a great option to be watched on those tiny airplane screens.  After squinting for 5 minutes and still being unable to read anything, I switched over to the music channel that played Karma Chameleon 5 times on one flight, and shut my eyes.

Landing in Portland, it was actually a really nice day.  The sun was out, it was relatively warm, and I have to sit in an airport for three and a half hours waiting for my flight to a city that's only two hours away by car.

Fresh air: some day we will meet again.