Ten Hours in the Portland Airport

Dispatch #1 from New York!

It took me longer than I expected to leave Portland. Possibly symbolic. For reasons both chemical and circumstantial (in preparation for my 6am flight, I'd stayed up until 3am abusing the hospitality of Beulahland and most of my internal organs - that's the chemical part; and even though I then managed the herculean feat of packing my last bag in half an hour and waiting downstairs in bleary-eyed readiness for a cab to fetch me, said cab never showed up - that's the other part), I missed my early flight out of town and had to reschedule for a midnight escape. But I couldn't hang out in my apartment until then, because the new tenants (Zach's mom) were excitedly planning an Ikea-fueled decorating mission that day. And I didn't think Beulahland would be too happy to see me back so soon. So around 2pm I set out for the airport in hopes I could jump onto an earlier flight. Which, of course, I couldn't. Boo. Hence the post title. But PDX is a fine and dandy place to work, it turns out. Has wifi, squishy chairs. All it lacks is a place to comfortably nap.

Anyway. I typed a bit and, the minute I got on the plane, fell into a mini-coma that lasted pretty much all the way to LaGuardia. Woke up, fetched luggage, caught cab to temporary lodging at the edge of Park Slope in Brooklyn. I haven't been to NYC since I was about sixteen. From a cab, the Statue of Liberty (Lady Tyranny) looks like a tiny little cake decoration. A nice brownish musty fog made the whole Manhattan skyline look painted on - the Empire State Building, totally fake. It was cool to see, but I didn't really feel anything until we went down into this underpass and came out and, kabamm, all at once there it was: the Brooklyn Bridge, mere feet away, out-glamming in real life every painting that's ever been done of it. I'm planning to walk across it tomorrow. And frequently thereafter.

No big adventures thus far, but I will attempt to report the cleaner ones of the many that are sure to occur. And some of you, I'm sure, will simply be relieved to be getting a small respite from the all-motorcycles all-the-time content of this blog. (Such a boring girl.) Cheers!