A girl walks backwards in place on the moving walkway, and a man in the next lane has a mustache that shakes my faith in facial hair.
"Did you hit yourself?" I overhear a mother say, "Now you know how it feels. It hurts, doesn't it? ... I don't need your slime on me!"
A woman lounges on the floor like a Roman chaise, waiting for grapes from nubile maidens. There's a reason the seats here have metal dividers, ma'am, and you have circumvented it.
On the plane, the girl in the window seat is drawing somebody. Probably not me... hopefully not, since I was eating a sandwich and haven't shaved in days. Or months, depending on your definition. But then again, air travel doesn't do wonders for anyone's appearance. I think I'd take it as a flattery—she seems skilled.
As the plane starts to taxi, she stops of necessity, but we seem to be delayed due to a mix of maintenance, weather, and personal politics. Flickering static and tumbling bass noise on the teevee screns, lights turning on and off, the cabin begins to remind me of Escobar, sans Scotch, sans soda, sans dancing.
Nevermind, she was drawing some sort of airplane wing-inspired nautilis curve study. A hype piece on the teevee screens placates the crowd in the wake of a high-profile plane crash and kills time on the ground during our delay.
Airport security isn't scare tactics after all, though I had firmly believed it was. 'Pro' travelers look back at poor schmucks getting stopped at the scanner, thinking, "Why can't they simply follow the regulations and breeze through as I do?" A culture in which compliance is valued and, dare I say, rewarded. This—not plastic water bottles and toenail clippers—is the real danger.
The drawing is abstract but taking form. Lines fill in even as the bumpy ground travel hints at an eventual liftoff. She mutters to herself, unsure whether to look out or shut the window. Praying, perhaps, and it is a choppy takeoff.
In ORD, my Gonzo twin dashes off to Frontera: a highly rated, tiny, packed restaurant, to try the signature Goose Island Marisol. It's expensive as it is delicious, but I have to grab a table as I seem to be in everyone's way.
I admire the light orange, the trace of unobtrusive mango, and the less-sour pineapple of the brew as I glance up at what are apparently decorative HVAC sculptures, a mural, and a teevee evidently showing teh mastermind chef blending fennel into a casserole. This place needs a delivery door. Four PM should be off-hours for a restaurant, but airports know no such thing. Description says "Latin-style White Ale," but it's godlen in body and wheat (grains of paradise?) is not overbearing, though there's a cling-ering sweetness that could be a wheat presence.
'Copperplate' (the typeface) is EVERYWHERE.
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