"Now. That's the key. Now, now, now."
— Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape, p. 30





Still Feb 28, 2009

Lots of mags in the airport with Barack Obama on the cover. And one with with Mrs. Obama (Vogue). In one shop a big cardboard cutout of President Obama. There was a strong sense of wanting to be more media-connected so as to hear more of his speeches, see more of the coverage of the economy.

Youtube is a great invention — low-res repeats of whatever it is you’re looking for. Kind of like what talking on the phone is becoming — you can access the exact person you want by phone anytime, no waiting, but it’s cell to cell and their voice is all grainy, or they break up from lack of reception, or there’s that weird digital lag that makes the pauses longer and makes you think they might be mad at you, or that you just said something that makes absolutely no sense.

It’s great! But it sucks. All at the same time.
*
It’s hard being away from the NYT. I’m going to have a lot to catch up on.

Big Snow 2009: Worse than Lent

"If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 28





On the drive home from the airport -- thoroughly relieved that we'd avoided becoming an overnight-with-two-kids-in-the-airport statistic — we were talking, driving in Grandma’s Volvo through the snow toward the Eastern Shore.

The snow was getting heavier, the temperature right at freezing, and the snow was beginning to stick. We were wondering what had happened to the plane coming in from Atlanta.

“You know, you could hop on the web from your phone and check the flight status!” my dad said, apparently forgetting about my experiment.

“I know,” I said. “I’ll just have to wait till we get back and you can look it up.”

“You know, this is worse than lent,” said my dad.

He suggested if I really wanted to get extreme I could give up voice mail too. I told him I had no interest in doing that.

His 90-year-old golfing buddy doesn’t own a computer. My dad this says it makes it much harder to schedule a game with him.
*
We got home fine, and it was fun to look over Dad’s shoulder at flightaware.com to see all the stats on the planes flying.

The plane got in from Atlanta, and our would-be flight departed at 9:01 pm from Baltimore, and arrived in Portland around 10, having had about a 70-knot tail wind.

Big Snow 2009: We Bail on Airport, but Where's Grandpa?

"Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in." — Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 61





After 20 minutes in the bathroom we headed back down to the gate.

An agent was there in the usual uniform. He showed that our plane had returned to the gate in Atlanta, having not left the ground. I let him know we wanted to bail and leave another day, and could he help me with that or should I go to the ticket counter?

Ticket counter.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” He asked with a smile.

“Yes. And I want to get my bags back,” I said politely.

“I don’t know if you can get your bags back….If my supervisor’s there, she can probably make that happen,” he said.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Miss April,” he said.
*
At the ticket counter a young man named Derrick was helping us. “You know there’s going to be a change fee for that?” I said fine, it was cheaper than spending two nights in a Baltimore hotel.

After he punched in our information his eyes got very big.

“What do they want — a thousand dollars to do this?” I asked.

“Almost,” he replied in a little voice.

I looked him right in the eye with the kindest and most direct gaze. “There’s someone here who can make that go away,” I said. “And I know this is not your fault,” I added.

“Just a moment,” he said, and went back to punching in numbers.

“Mom, is it over yet?” said the older son.

“Not yet,” I said.

“I’ll just hide under my coat until this is over,” he said.

I told the guy behind the counter what my son was doing. The ticketing agent really liked this idea. I told him spring was going to come, the planes would come, they would go, like clockwork, and everybody would be happy. He said he was just waiting for that.

“I got it down to $700,” he said, apologetically.

“Whatever happened to the change fee? You know, $75 to change a ticket?” I asked.

“Actually, I just waived the change fee,” he replied.

“So…if I hang around here for three or four more hours with my kids, my flight gets cancelled, I wait in line with a hundred other people, your airline will let me change my tickets for free.”

“Yes….that’s about right,” he said.

Just then Miss April came by and looked at the computer.

“What’s going on with these people?” she asked, looking at the computer and not at me.
Quietly he explained.

“What change fees, honey?” she said to him, typing away on the keyboard. “They’re not leaving because of the weather….” And I couldn’t hear any more.

The next thing I knew I had my boarding passes in my hand, I was on the flight in two days that I asked for and no cost to me.

But my dad was somewhere between Baltimore and the Bay Bridge, and we didn't have our luggage back yet.

Big Snow 2009: We Head to the Airport

"All things are vibrating energy fields in ceaseless motion."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 146



March 1, 2009. Sunday. Easton, MD. Heavy snow.

Still in Easton tonight. Waylaid due to major winter storm coming up the coast.

Spent the morning packing us up while the kids watched the History Channel—some show about loggers. About half of what they were saying was bleeped out. Every time one guy spoke you couldn’t even tell what he was saying because practically every word was censored. Nice! Welcome to Oregon!

I took apart our room meticulously — stripped all the beds, folded blankets, deflated the kids’ beds (with the six-year-old’s help — he helped open the valves on the Coleman beds and pushed and rolled the air out), sorted, organized, scoured all rooms for stragglers, packed, brought the linens downstairs and remade my bed.

Everything was in good order. Brought it all down, with mom’s help packed snacks, fed everyone lunch of leftover spaghetti, and drove to Baltimore.

My dad checked our flight on the internet before we left: on time.

It looked like our plane was going to fly north of the storm. It was coming up from the south, supposed to hit Balto around dark, and we were scheduled to leave a few minutes before 4 pm. Maine wasn’t supposed to get big snow till after midnight. At the time we left for the airport (75 miles away) 6-12" were predicted here, 10-14" in Portland during the day tomorrow.

With confidence, we headed off to the airport.

Warbirds Up Close....Really Close.

"How do you let go of attachment to things? Don't even try. It's impossible. Attachment to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them."
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 45



Still February 26
Maryland

My dad arranged for us to go in and see some pristinely restored and flying warbirds. The guys there spent over an hour with my dad, me, and the boys, lifting my sons into every cockpit and allowing them to have the canopies closed and to play with the controls. It was like being at Owl’s Head without the ropes.

We climbed into and explored a Spitfire, P-51 Mustang, P-40 Warhawk, L-39 (Czechoslovakian military jet), T-34 WW2 trainer.

There was also a DeHavilland Tiger Moth that was taken apart. We saw the upside down engine, the wings, the fuselage, the rudder, all take apart.