Gateway to the Universe

I have always loved the airport. It's a magical gateway to the universe. On long layovers, I like to walk up and down the concourses looking at the names of exotic destinations like Akron/Canton and Omaha. I look at the people waiting to board planes to Los Angeles and compare their fashion to those waiting for flights to Dallas or Detroit.

I often found myself surprised by how much alike those going to London Heathrow seemed to those going to Indianapolis. I would look at the names of the destinations above the gates on my way to Chicago or Denver and wish I could shift gears and jump undetected onto a plane headed for San Jose, Costa Rica instead.

I've always taken mishaps in travel in stride because I've never minded long waits in airports. There's no better place on earth for people watching, I thought. And the airport was always so much more diverse than my typical surroundings, especially in small mountain towns where the number of people representing most minority groups didn't even reach into the double digits. There were people with accents and different colors of skin, wild fashion, bad fashion, no fashion and new fashion in the airport.

Now that I am spending more and more time in the airport and examining the people who travel through it carefully to measure the likelihood they will part with their personal information in exchange for a fuzzy blanket with penguins on it and the dim hope of a free flight in the future, I'm rethinking the way I look at airports.

They're not nearly as diverse as I once thought they were. I work on the Frontier wing and nearly every Frontier flight in the country comes through Denver. The concourse also hosts a number of international flights from carriers like Continental and Lufthansa. With travelers from all over the country and all over the world, you would expect to hear more languages and see more colors. It struck me recently that the population in the airport is not at all representative of our overall population. It's not a whole lot better than the little mountain towns where I have lived. And there are definitely fewer Latinos in the airport than there were in Jackson Hole.

I know travel is a privilege and especially air travel. It's not something everyone can afford. It's not something everyone can even imagine doing. I've talked to hundreds of people on their first flights ever or their first flights in more than a decade. They never sign up for a mileage card. Never. It's as sure a sign they won't fork over their social security number as a sweet tea request was a guarantee of a bad tip when I worked in the restaurant. But they are interesting people to talk with. They're usually traveling for really big, life-changing reasons. A lot of people are hoping for a new job and a fresh start. Some are coming back from weddings or funerals or honeymoons.

The bank tells us we have a 90 percent approval rating for our credit card. I don't believe it. That's simply unbelievable in these times of limited credit. I told a woman who was applying about our hard-to-believe approval rating. She and her fiance were on their way home from Costa Rica. She agreed that the number seemed outrageous.
"But then it could have to do with the type of people who fly," she said.

This has certainly been an interesting job. I walk through security some days and imagine I'm there for my flight to Buenos Aires. I leave on bad nights wishing it was on my plane. I'm anxious to get going when I'm there yet a little reluctant when I'm in my real life with my friends and family. Four months seems like a long time. I went for four months the last time I traveled. But I'm older now. I wonder if I'll be able to make friends in the hostels the way I did four years ago. I wonder if I'll be able to tolerate dorms and long bus rides the way I did the last time I traveled. I hope my money will hold out.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing the airport as a gateway to the universe again this Sunday night. Working there has made it a bit more like an ugly limbo world between worlds, a place where my coworkers and I make inexplicable money getting people to sign up for credit cards, a place where angry travelers vent their hostility at me. I believe in mileage credit cards. I use mine and fly free all the time. I think I typically get more from them than they get from me. But the bank has to be making major dollars off most of the people we sign up or it wouldn't pay us so generously to do it.

Well, this was a little scattered. But this is what's going on. I'll write again before I board my flight.

Irregular

I am going to South America. I know I’ve already told you that. But now I have proof – a confirmation e-mail from Delta Airlines.

Since I’m sort of long on time and short on money, I opted to save $250 by purchasing a ticket that forces a 14-hour layover in Atlanta. I will arrive there at 6 a.m. and depart for Buenos Aires at 7:45 p.m. Rather than dreading a long boring wait in an airport, I’ve decided to welcome this as an extra leg of my adventure. I’ve never been to Atlanta before.

I’d love advice from those of you who know the town. For those of you who don’t, did you know that Atlanta is home to the world’s biggest puppetry museum? A quick visit to Atlanta’s Web site has given me 50 fun ideas for a day in the phoenix city. If I can squeeze it all in, I’m thinking I’ll do a Segway tour of the city, visit CNN and, of course, the puppetry museum. A Segway tour, that’s right. I know you’re jealous.

I do need to be careful not to spend the $250 I saved by getting the cheaper ticket. So I’d still love some help planning my big day in Atlanta.

I waited quite a while to buy the ticket for a few reasons – I wanted to make it possible for a friend to join me when she gets out of school in June. I wanted to give my knee a little extra time to heal and the medical bills time to arrive. I also wanted to spend some good quality time with my family, friends and that boyfriend I mentioned before. I’ve also frivolously planned a couple domestic vacations.

Delaying my departure has had a few side effects. Because I’m leaving later, I’m still in this country. This country is significantly more expensive than the ones in South America. That means the savings I built up to sustain me during four months in South America was at risk of dwindling rapidly.

So I have this job to keep the whittling to a minimum. I’m not waiting tables, but there are a lot of similarities between waitressing and getting people to sign up for Frontier Airlines Master Cards at the Denver Airport.

As in waitressing, there are good sections and bad sections and everyone wants the good section. There are also those people you work with who always make more money than you. It’s inexplicable. When you’re waiting tables with them, you wonder if they just turn their tables faster, talk sweeter, flirt more or trick their customers. You wonder what magic potion they’re taking. And how you can get your hands on it. The same is true in the credit card biz. There are those stand-out people who get twice as many people to sign up as I do and I don’t know why or how they’re doing it. I’m charming. I would sign up with me.

The airport, like a restaurant, is full of interesting people who are a delight to talk with. There are also a few rude folks. At least in the airport, the rude ones just walk past in a flurry instead of sitting in your section and complaining endlessly before stiffing you.

The feeling of working at the airport is also similar to that of working in a restaurant. I start the night worrying that I won’t make any money at all, that I’m wasting my time. I get to a certain point and know that I’m Ok, but still worry I won’t make enough to really make it worth it. Then I reach that magic number and start to wonder if I could leave at the end of my shift with a fortune, but usually end up falling a little short .

The biggest difference is that people go to restaurants because they want food. They don’t go to the airport looking for a credit card. That makes it a bit of a tough sell. Good thing I can handle rejection. Thousands of people walk past me shaking their heads every day. Only a few say yes. It makes me LOVE those people who say yes.

Another side effect of my late departure is that I’m homeless a lot longer. One of the most confusing questions people ask me right now is, “where do you live?” Nowhere, everywhere. In my car, maybe. At least when you’re traveling in a foreign country no one asks you such complicated questions. I spend a few nights on an air mattress in my friend’s house in Denver, another with a friend in Littleton, a few with Joe in Colorado Springs and some days with my parents. It’s exhausting.

I’m almost never alone except when I’m driving or taking a shower. And I know that when I’m traveling it won’t be much different. I will be in a different bed every few nights and on the road every few days, constantly moving. Though I will likely never be alone, I’m sure my chances of getting lonely will be a lot higher as I’ll be among strangers most of the time.

By the time I come back and try to settle down, I will have been without a regular life, without regular work or a regular place to live for eight months. Eight months. That’s a long time.

I’m not complaining though. Even though it’s exhausting, I’m loving this irregularity.

My boyfriend

Joe and I climbed into the back of the American automotive manufacturers’ biggest and fanciest creations the day after Christmas. My parents were in the front seats, my dad behind the steering wheel and my mom in shotgun.

We were driving this luxury behemoth of a vehicle to my dad’s sister’s ex-husband – uncle Gerry – on the east side of Illinois before going to visit my mom’s family on the west side of the state. It was just another typical Miller family road trip... but for one thing. My boyfriend was with us.

The weirdest part of this whole scene is not so much that my parents invited my boyfriend along on this trip or that Joe and I were allowed to rent our own hotel room with a king size bed while traveling with them or that my mom told my aunt Cathy it was OK for us to sleep together in the same room or that we had adjoining rooms at the hotel in Galesburg. The weirdest part is that I have a “boyfriend.”

One friend who met Joe on a fun weekend excursion to Chicago at the end of our Illinois adventure said he’d never known me to be much of a relationship person and asked how I liked it. I like it. It’s a lot of fun and not so different from being single except for the sleeping arrangements, which I rather enjoy, and always having someone to go on adventures with and share stories with. It’s nice and not that hard to adjust to in practice.

But in theory, it’s a little more challenging. The hardest part is getting used to being a couple in public. It’s that word, “boyfriend,” and all of the social implications that go along with it that are taking a little getting used to.

That word is such a foreign one in my vocabulary that I feel a little shy using it. When I introduce Joe as my boyfriend or tell strangers about my “boyfriend,” I feel a bit like a little girl admitting that she secretly shaves the fine blond hairs on her legs. It’s like I’m too young, not yet mature enough to handle something so serious as a “boyfriend.” The commitment invoked by the word is parallel to that conjured by the words “mortgage” or “career.”

Of course, I know this is ludicrous. I will be 29 years old on Wednesday. What 29-year-old woman hasn’t had a boyfriend? Most have had dozens of them. But I can’t help it, I still blush when I say it. I feel awkward trying to tell people about him. Maybe it’s because I somehow missed the practice many of my girlfriends had. I’m not sure why, but I’ve never really dated and I didn’t have my first “boyfriend” until two years ago.

I’m pretty sure most of my relatives had decided I was a lesbian. So it was pretty interesting introducing “my boyfriend” in the flesh to all of my aunts and uncles and cousins and even my grandmother. She raised her eyebrows and smirked at me when I told her who Joe was at the nursing home.

I suppose when a guy travels across the country with your parents to meet your aunts and uncles and visit your grandmother in a nursing home, he’s officially earned the title of “boyfriend.” I don’t know what else I could call him.

Pinball

I walked down the A Concourse last night, hungry and with aching legs, to Quiznos. I noticed another of my co-workers in a yellow button-down chewing on a toasted sub and asked to join him.

We chatted for a bit about various things. He lives in Aurora, just about as close as you can get to the airport. He proudly reported that it takes a mere 45 minutes to get from his home to our station in the airport. That’s as good as it gets.

I’ve railed against long commutes my whole working life and now I’m making the most ridiculous one there is. As a bonus, I am commuting from a different place almost every day. I cart this green rolling bag with a broken zipper everywhere I go. I went almost a month without doing my laundry and recently had to buy new underwear.

I confessed to my new co-worker over peppercini -stuffed subs that I have spent one single solitary night alone in a real live bed in the last five weeks. Otherwise I have danced from one bed to another with several air mattresses in between, never staying more than two days in any one place.

He was quiet for a few seconds. Then I noticed he wasn’t really breathing as he tried to decide how to respond.

“Oh, god,” I said. “It’s not like I’m sleeping around with a bunch of guys.”

This has been a fabulous domestic adventure. I’ve seen so many of my good friends and family and I’ve been able to spend some quality time with the people I’ve been missing, the people I try to talk to on the phone every now and then and visit once ore twice a year. It’s nice being able to come and go from my parents’ house without feeling guilty about leaving them. I’m “home” for a long enough period that we know we’ll see each other and won’t have to wait months for my next vacation.

But it’s also exhausting. I have watched four episodes of Glee and two of a British comedy called Fawlty Towers on the computer with Joe and otherwise haven’t watched so much 30 minutes of another TV show or movie. I have had zero passive entertainment in the last five weeks. The only times I’ve been alone have been in the bathroom, shower and during my long commutes.

“It sounds like you need a nap,” my co-worker said.

Indeed.

So I’m not waitressing, but I am on to another totally random job, getting people to sign up for Frontier Master Cards at the Denver Airport. I do believe in what I’m selling. I got one myself about six months ago. And even though it’s a pain in the butt to get there, I like working at the airport. It’s interesting people watching and I feel like I’m standing in the center of the portal to the Universe.

If you come through, please come find me and sign up. It’s a cutthroat commission gig, where I can make $300 a night or $20. Somehow, $20 seems more egregious when I have to go out to the airport to make it than when I had to drive down the street from my parent’s place to wait tables at Applebees.

I’m not yet finished ricocheting around the country. I’m heading to Aspen for another knee surgery next week and to Illinois to visit my grandmother, see family and catch up with friends in Chicago the week after Christmas. I don’t expect that I’ll get many nights alone until I leave for South America in February or time in front of the TV until I come back in the summer and decide what to do with myself.