These are things the elderly woman sitting beside me on my 3.5 hour flight from Houston (a stop-over on my flight from Philadelphia) told me. I won’t bother to detail which points I agree with or disagree with. The point of this exercise is that we are all bat-shit crazy, and should probably just learn to smile more and listen for the sake of the story.

• She was born in Chicago, but moved to Missouri
• She was 1 of 11 children.
• She acquired the job of head editor for her high school newspaper because the girl who had received the position originally was lazy. When a famous riverboat performer came to do an assembly at the school and refused to give interviews because of limitations on her time, she had offered to help the woman pack up her stuff, and in the process recorded short notes. When the performer noticed this, she suggested that because the packing had gone so smooth, she now had time for an interview. With story in hand, she took the position right out from under that other lazy gal.
• She has 3 children. One lives in Portland, one lives in Honduras working as a missionary and the other lives in California.
• There are various types of fish oil vitamins on the market, but only one in the US that uses purely Salmon.
• Her favorite bible passage is Matthew 21:22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
• While she and her husband and two of the kids were stationed in West Germany in the 50s, they took a two week camping trip through 9 countries. They purchased a German VW which they eventually had shipped back to the states when they attempted to homestead in Alaska.
• Cell phone towers only exist in the US. Everywhere else people just use their cell phones and there are no towers. She knows it sounds a bit crazy, but she believes the towers are probably used to track us using those very cell phones.
• She sold the German VW several years later for $500. A local car salesman had offered her only $150, but she felt she could sell as good as him and proved that. She was offered $250… she was offered $400… but she held out till the morning and sure enough got what she wanted.
• When she and one of her sons went to attend her daughter’s wedding in Honduras she had him stay with this older couple and a young man. Unbeknown to her, the young man had a sister, who on the second day stopped by, and though she spoke no English, and apparently he no Spanish, by year’s end and after three trips down, they were engaged.
• She hiked the base of the grand canyon in two days. It was her 3rd attempt. The first time, her group was too large with 28 individuals, so she offered to stay behind. The second time, her knee began to hurt right before the hike, and had to pull-out. The third time was with her brother. He had done it before alone in a single day. She says if she had done it alone, she would still be there.
• As a child, she wrote to the head of the local dentistry school at the haste of her mother, and he was so moved by the letter he allowed her to get braces at the school at no cost, even though she needed stage 3 braces, which the school wasn’t totally qualified for. She couldn’t stand the delay, so when not in the presence of authority figures, she would tie as many as 8 rubber-bands on each of the braces. When the braces came off, the doctor told her to put on some lipstick. “No, more he said. A girl is told she has a nice smile, she starts thinking about her hair – she cares about her hair, suddenly she starts dressing nice. Boys start to pay attention. She went from being on the 5th rung (1st Rung: Popular kids, 2nd Rung: Athletic Kids, 3rd Rung: Kids with money, 4th Rung: Nerds and Bookwords, 5th Rung: Nobodies) to the 1st rung – a real popular girl.
• 98% of women who have abortions are later diagnosed with breast cancer
• Sales runs in the family apparently, because when she posted her truck for sale (now living south of Eugene Oregon) a farmer from outside Portland drove all the way down after talking to her son on the phone, unaware that the voice on the other end was that of a 11 year old. He had to wait around till she got home from work to close the deal.
• People with Vitamin B deficiencies have a long canal running down the middle of their tongue. Upon closer inspection, my tongue suggests I am VERY deficient in Vitamin B and while she’s not saying this about me in particular… people like me are often short-tempered, easily irritated, and while they might be super nice to an old lady they don’t know, such as herself, we can be super cruel to our own mothers and the people who love us. It’s easy to pretend to like a stranger, but when we, the vitamin B deficient, know someone loves us, we can afford to be quick with them and often quite mean, because we know they won’t abandon us.
• By the very fact that President Obama can not produce a birth certificate, he must be a foreigner and untrustworthy.
• She hadn’t been raised religious, that was more her husband’s thing. But he had been attending a church and they asked if they could come over after dinner a few times a week to chat with her about God and her faith. They explained that they wanted her to sign this card to pledge her devotion to God. She said she would probably never do that, but agreed to listen to them, and invited them into her house. The first evening, they chatted a bit about life and family and work, but they spoke a good deal about God. When the meeting concluded, they asked her what she had though – and she said she wished they’d done 80% real issues and 20% faith discussions, and not the other way around. But she agreed to meet again. They did this for three weeks, when she suddenly woke in the middle of the night and knew she had to sign that card. She didn’t know why – she just felt compelled by God to do so.
• In response to an article that downplayed the use of vitamins in curing certain kidney ailments, she wrote an editorial that was read by a deacon in her Church, who apparently was associated with a vitamin company and asked her to become a rep, a job she has till this day.
• Many of our health issues comes from aluminum something both the industry and the government has been suppressing for almost a century now.
• She sold encyclopedias for a brief time, but never had much luck. The crutch of the sales pitch was showing how important it was for children to be able to get information when they are inspired in the moment – a service your local library just can’t provide. She never had a sale, although her husband did sell one set to a co-worker for her, but she doesn’t feel that counts.
• On the prior flight from Honduras to Houston, the gentlemen beside her was an intern for a senator, who had sent him there to monitor the elections. Apparently he was not associated with ACORN.
• She was married to her husband for 27 years, then one day he said he just couldn’t stand to be tied down any more and asked for a divorce. Several years later he came back and admitted he had been foolish and asked her to take him back. She said if he could be faithful and a good husband for a year, she would agree to marry him again. He stayed for five months and then left again. She gets asked out for coffee from time to time by gentlemen, and that’s all well and good. But coffee leads to dinner, and multiple dinners lead to the bedroom, and she has no intention of going there. Sure, she can keep a conversation with a guy like myself, but I’m her youngest son’s age, so the pressure isn’t there (and I shouldn’t be offended by that). If it’s God’s plan for her husband to come back, she doesn’t want to be tied down to someone else when it happens.

As an avid traveler and west-coast transplant who is lucky enough to travel home to NY a few times a year – I am no stranger to airports.  I have run from one end of Chicago O’Hare to the other (only slowing to enjoy the underground laser light show) more times than I care to recount.  I have been re-directed, put up in hotels, paid-off for my seat and had my bags lost while in Europe for just a week. Earlier this year a flight to Amsterdam with a stop-over in Chicago resulted in additional stop-overs in Philadelphia and Manchester, England – a 24-hour flight adventure.  The combination of crabby travelers, relentless and often mind-boggling security procedures, utterly confused seniors and over-energized kids, all crammed into a prison-like mall makes the airport an unlikely place to look forward to.  That is, unless, you happen to be in Portland, Oregon.

I Look Forward To Going To PDX Airport

Whereas the requirement to arrive an hour or two early for the airport is one of those frustrating rush-and-wait situations, I actually give myself more than enough time to hit up PDX.  My flight this evening leaves at 10pm – but I actually got here at 7:30.  Why not?  I’m sitting at the Rogue, having a delicious beer and enjoying one of their mouth-watering bacon-swiss burgers.  The ‘Brutal Bitter’ is a spectacular pre-flight pint and absolutely crushes the typical 20-ounce of corporate swill with optional side-shot served at most over-priced “bars” in airports around the US.

Getting to PDX couldn’t be easier.  I basically walked four blocks from our studio over to the MAX line and took the red line all the way out here.  $2… sit down… 35 minutes later I’m at the airport.

And how and I’m writing this blog post?  Am I spending $9.95 for 2 hours of internet access?  NOPE…  FREE WIFI at PDX Airport!  I’m assuming they are aware they could charge for this – that they could join all the other airports in this country in sucking you dry of every last penny by forcing you to provide your credit card to some unknown entity.  My guess is that someone in the organization must have said, “Yah – but that would be a really shitty thing to do.”  And so PDX provides you internet at THEIR cost.  This allows me to get work (ie blog posts) completed while I await my plane – and another reason why getting to PDX early makes sense.

Best Non-PDX Airport Bar

I think of all the bars I’ve waited for planes in, my absolute favorite would be a little Irish bar called Murphy’s Irish Pub located just beside gate D10 in Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol).  I discovered it the first time when returning to the States after my 2-month stay in Barcelona. I returned for another cold pint in May when visiting Dublin and the bartender actually remembered me – now that’s a solid bar!  You literally feel like you’ve not only left the airport, but also Holland when you walk into this classic pub.  A good selection of Irish brews and always an interesting person to strike up a conversation with at the bar.

Worst Airport Artwork:

SERIOUSLY?  George Bush Sr. in bronze, looking like Clark Kent trying to find a phone booth.  The first time I saw this ridiculous statue at Houston Airport, I thought perhaps our former joke of a President had been frozen in carbonate like some sort of cold-hearted Republican Han Solo.  Of course Houston is Bush country – and this ain’t no joke.  Bush is the real deal and all man (regardless of what his casually curving legs might suggest).  I stopped to take a photo of this amazing work – and then realized folks looking at me taking this photo probably couldn’t discern that I was finding this work ridiculous, rather than trying to capture a great moment in my life.

Most Bizarre Way To Get Around An Airport

By far the oddest way to get around an airport occurs in Dulles Airport in Washington DC.  They call them the “Mobile Lounge Transports” – but I call them the really weird rooms that slowly roll across the parking lot.  First off – a lounge should have drinks – or at the very least good lighting. This is not a lounge.  This is like a large elevator that goes sideways.  A hallway would have probably worked better – but the rocket scientists at Dulles decided to create these outrageously large and completely bizarre contraptions to carry folks around their horribly laid-out airport. If you’re going to waste my time getting from A to B in an airport – it better be a monorail!  This is no monorail.