We have leapt off the cliff and are now in free fall to our final destination. Whether it’s a cushiony, soft landing or a rock face remains to be seen.
This is being written from the decadence of the LAX Air France lounge where we have been happily stuffing our faces. Absent Paris, I could live here.
Yesterday we moved from OC to Long Beach, shedding the last of our ephemeral possessions, and gasp, our rental car. Homeless and carless is not a good way to exist in SoCal. So perhaps it’s for the best we’re leaving.
We test fit the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (what I’ve taken to calling our massive luggage) into my sister’s car, along with our carry-ons and book bags and somehow it worked. I think some TARDIS-like folding of space was required….but whatever.
We will be landing in Paris on Saturday the 17th. This coincides wonderfully with a bunch of protests planned by a number of groups for….who knows why? This usually isn’t a big deal and is just France being France. It’s what they do. These things vary from entertaining to annoying. We’ve been in them before, including one outside our hotel where we watched police shoot off tear gas and flash bang grenades. One has a duty to absorb local culture, no?
This Saturday has the potential to be annoying for us since we are being taken by car to our hotel (due to the accompanying Horsemen) and surface streets may be snarled. I suppose it’s the driver’s problem and not ours, but we are going to be damned tired. Normally we’d do the Metro, which should be unaffected, but the Horsemen make that impossible.
My sister picked us up and the luggage actually all fit. I don’t think I really believed the test fit. The whole LAX experience was eerie. Traffic from Long Beach to LAX was light. And the dreaded loop road into LAX was almost pandemic light. Was there a zombie apocalypse we hadn’t heard about? We quickly made it to the Bradley International terminal, and even found a friggin’ spot to pull over! This was a “winning the lottery” level run of luck. But wait, there’s more!
We were able to get the Horsemen, and their friends, on to a couple of luggage carts without issue. And it was a quick, short push into Bradley. Again, almost no wait at all in the Sky Priority check in line….AND….The Horsemen all passed their weigh in thus Air France relived us of the pigs. And they didn’t even ask to weigh all the carry on crap we had, although I know we were limited to 40 pounds. We might have been pushing that, but if they didn’t weigh us, it didn’t happen.
Our blissful waltz though life continued through TSA where we just walked right up to an agent. No wait. Our final win was getting through TSA with our CVS-size supply of pharmaceuticals. I really wasn’t ready to do any explaining. Why, yes sir, I DO need all those drugs, ‘cause I’m old and decrepit.
From there, giddy from all the wins, we made the long slog out to the new west terminal and planted our asses in the AF lounge. We first sampled the lounge last October for our one month Paris trip, and it’s really one of the better ones at LAX.
It feels like the worst of everything is now behind us and now just have to endue a 10 hour flight, and navigate the protests to get to our hotel. Oh yeah, and jet lag. There’s ALWAYS jetlag, and for us, it kicks out butts.
That’s all I got until the other side…I must go off and feed my face some more. And it should go without saying, kids, don’t try this at home. Leave it to us purfessionals!