The airport experience turned me into a frenzied writer. Writing? Yes, writing, since I didn't have a computer since leaving San Francisco, all of this since then is in writing somewhere. I wrote it knowing I'd be transfering it to computer screen. Why did I need to transfer it to computer screen? How else would anyone else read it? I'm not writing this for my health, dammit!

burning airlines:
I used to fly United all the time. My first flight to Japan in November was booked on United. Missing that flight was my own dumb fault, but the bad memory had me re-booking on Northwest, and what a mess that was. Bastards. For this flight to New Jersey, United has since declared bankruptcy so I booked on Continental. What a mess they made, too. Bastards.

Dear Northwest and Continental Airlines,
Can you please make sure your fucking airplanes work BEFORE you put them on the tarmac? Is that asking too much? Because it's the very least most of us expect. If your plane can't fly, figure that out before you take it out of the fucking hangar.

Continental had me running between the north and south terminals of SFO to get me on another flight. I finally got on another flight. A United flight. From now on, all I fly is United.

It's like all those years of flying United has become expected of me on some intangible plane, a new definition of corporate takeover. If I try to fly something else, nothing good can happen. When the flight was delayed for seven hours, Continental bent over backwards to get everyone else to Newark through Cleveland on other Continental flights. They ran out of seats before they got to me. Like I had "regular United flyer" written all over my face. Go back to where you came from. You're not one of us.

on the air:
It was sunny this time as the plane lifted into the sky, and it flew east over the East Bay. I could make out the spans of a bunch of my cycling courses in San Francisco, Oakland Hills, Berkeley Hills, Contra Costa County, and Morgan Territory. I can't wait to start riding again.

I know this area. I can call it home in a way I can't New Jersey, the "Garden State", for those of you who don't know. So why does it feel like it's killing me? It's like a black hole where I don't belong and nothing good will come to me. Don't answer that, I know the answer. Pathetic. I can leave the Bay Area and do what? Or I can stay and let it kill me?

January 1, 2003: Like, 3:00 A.M.
United did what Continental could not, albeit 4 hours late. If I had booked on United, I wouldn't have been late at all. My brother picked me up at the airport without a hitch, but it was too late to head to Philadelphia to spend New Years with our other brother there. So we just went to our parents' house, all of it ordinary and polite, a subtle forced pleasantry. I played my part and didn't let things get uncomfortable, kept conversation going (the TV was on as backup), and help out and be pleasant.

My father slipped on ice several weeks ago and hurt his back. He isn't getting it treated, so he's still in pain and walks like . . . an old man. Dude is 70, he is an old man, but he's taken up ballroom dancing. He shouldn't be shuffling around like an old man.

We watched New Years in Time Square on the TV. We drank champagne. They are lightweights and the champagne went to their heads and they retired soon after, leaving me to finish the bottle in the familiar silence and smells of this haunted house.

Our family moved into this house 22 years ago. I can only take a very brief inventory of memories and all that happened in this house. I look at us now, and yea, this house is haunted, but in a way unique to each of us.

Exhausted, I pulled my comforter out of the cabinet, turned off the lights and collapsed into bed. Then I turned on the light, hunted down my pen, and wrote all this down. Now, I will turn off the light and collapse exhausted into bed.