Written from memory 4/22/26, Portland.
The tramp writer is slipping, waning, falling into sloth and disrepair. With a new trip dawning in three days, the last trip, near two weeks gone, is already yawning, threatening to close its eyes forever. If I don’t write it up before the next, it gets dust-binned in Memory Hole Annex Z.
Mom has been suffering for a couple months, calling me daily to seek advice on dealing with back pain. It did not type for mechanical cause. When the diagnostics came in, My Brother, Tango, flew to Baltimore. The other family members were busy and/or emotionally disabled. I had one round trip coast-to-coast plane trip banked and had told him, “If something goes south with Mom’s health, I have one chance of coming back for a bit. You make the call.”
As I entered the hotel room in the Chehailis Rez. Casino, the night before Theresa’s funeral and burial, the phone vibrated on my hip. Answering it in the dark, I said, “What’s up?”
“Now’s the time.”
“I’ll see you on Tuesday or Wednesday. Send me the hospital address…”
The Wife bought a round trip ticket with Southwest: 8 AM to 10:20 AM Portland to Phoenix, 1:30 PM to 8:00 PM Phoenix to BWI, and then back again the following Monday night. It cost $468, about the same price as a four day train trip across the nation. As a science-fiction writer, I enjoyed the spaceport aspects of the airports. The security check was not as deplorably dehumanizing as it once was in 2017. I still HATE it, having to be disarmed of even a steel pen. The boarding process was of interest, as I found that a plane generally carried the same number of people as a train. Due to having to cram everyone in through a single hole, a train boards quicker than a plane, by about 20%. What is impressive, is that the airlines people are so much better organized than the train people, having a super efficient boarding process. Still, 270 people going through one hole in a giant steel bird takes longer than the same number of less organized people climbing into 6 doors on the side of a land dragon.
The plane has more carry-on luggage capacity than the train. The bags may be bigger. I now see that most of the passengers on trains have so much trouble with their luggage because they are used to more heavily assisted plane travel. Four stewardesses are ready to slam luggage into top racks with wide capacity, where on a train, one has to handle your own. Also, one climbs up into a train, where to board a plane, one rolls down into it. Four stewards to 170 to 270 airline passengers compared to one conductor or attendant for 74 on a train is not a huge manpower difference. But they are all together in the same space. The stowage staff features one Hot babe on the phone, one crone, MILF or cougar, one big broad, and one man, working as a team. The hottest mike babe was the Asian suffer girl on the return flight. A train conductor or attendant is usually alone.
Plane passengers are much more rude than train goers. There are more families of recent breeders, mostly blond, I note. The boarding protocol is the same with elderly and injured first, then by how much one paid for the ticket. There are more black passengers than on a train, and they tend to be highly needy. The staff had far fewer black staff than the trains. Of interest was that after the ticket was bought, one then had to buy a specific seat. That seat purchase determined your boarding order. One postmodern imperial plane difference over the industrial era train edicuit [tried spelling this 7 times!] is that active USG military board first! Supposedly the most able-bodied folks, are given feudal style warrior class privilege over those they supposedly “serve.” This strikes none of the slaves as odd and serves no practical pupose. Most interesting is that plane fliers are handled and behave much more like livestock than train riders.
Few look out the windows. No curiosity or care about how the machine works is demonstrated. Full immersion movie, music and video game play is the rule. Feeding is not individualized, but basket fed. The seating is jammed, with one hoping not to be seated next to a fatty. Three plane people occupy the space of one train person. The air system is supremely unhealthy, the air close and thick. The altitude change at 5% to 10% assails these damaged sinuses and ocular nerves. The flight part, however, is fun. The day before, Dog Soldier and I watched scores of air frames streak the sky with horizontal and diagonal clouds. I notice that the climb to 34,000 feet takes half hour and is conducted gradually, giving a nice view of the Cascades. We pass some 45 degree angle chem trails, which Dog Soldier and I notice took only a minute to transit hundreds of miles of sky from Mt. Hood to Mt. Saint Hellens. We never saw any of the many airliners taking off or setting down at PDX leaving chem trails, just as over Baltimore, Pittsburgh, San Jose and Salt Lake City. The chem trails are traced by planes moving at twice to thrice airliner speed.
Only able to view the ground taking off from Portland to Phoenix and from Phoenix to Portland, I noted that air turbulence over the Superstition Mountains is expected and roller coaster-like in intensity, which made me smile, wondering if Banjo’s Chosen Reptiles were down there thirsting for the fear- basted souls of gentiles.
Of course, this tech-tarded Luddite had to screw up. I went to departures to get picked up—after all, I was departing the air port. Ghost Girl One kindly informed the visiting primate, “James, it is an air port, not a car port.”
The Brickmouse and I did discover, that despite him having to circle back around to departures, that getting picked up at departures saves time, as so few people were congregating at arrivals in compressed time. I made the same mistake at PDX, to which the Eskimo Wife laughed, “Oh, My Yeti Honey—and I thought you were a whiteman when we met!”
Ouch.
