(Trying To) Leave America – Pt. I

This is how I looked at my 10-year high school reunion, a month before my trip.

The previous post was taken directly from my travel journal, back when I thought my global adventure was underway. Turns out, my domestic adventure was just beginning. When I got home, I wrote about my ‘launch’ experience for a travel magazine called BIG WORLD, probably published in 1996. Turns out, I have no actual copy but thankfully, had posted it on my ClizBiz site. So I typed it directly from there – tedius but fun. Unfortunately, it’s quite long so I’m chopping it up here for our 2009 ADD brains. Enjoy!

GROUNDED!

Africa was no problem for Heather Clisby. The trouble was getting out of Minneapolis.

After three years of working, two jobs, scrounging pennies, salivating over maps and fondling my passport, my dream was about to come true – one year on the road alone, beginning in Africa. Plenty of time for fantasy overgrowth. There I am! Swing from vines, one continent to the next, knife in my teeth, pack on my back, gory wounds at the knees, I wear a smug grin of underbrushed teeth! Bathing with hippos, flirting with death, drinking with doom – look at me, She-Ra! Queen of Excitement! Look how easily she deals with bizarre situations! Such brazen courage! Such a diplomatic hand! A-hem.

Yes, well, I was so busy becoming a legend in my own mind, that I conveniently forgot the true definition of adventure, unplanned event which one is totally unprepared for, at the mercy of an unscheduled situation. See also: surprise.

Not once did my comic book storylines consider what obstacles might exist between Point A (Los Angeles) and Point B (Nairobi).

***

It is, I think naively to myself, my last American meal. What could be more patriotic than sharing a Budweiser and hot dog with your mother? Goodbyes, hugs, a few tears and a final wave. I board the plan, tingling with excitement, a zillion thoughts ricochet within my skull.

The day has finally come, November 3, 1994. How could this possibly work – me, the world and everything? What if we don’t’ get along? The Northwest DC-10 bound for Minneapolis is completely full. The flight is scheduled for take-off at 2:35 p.m. but we remain earthbound in Los Angeles for 45 minutes.

After landing in Minneapolis, I catch Flight 656 for Amsterdam. The schedule take-off, 9:20 p.m., has been delayed for most of us coming from L.A. The first imbalance of many.

As I wait to board, CNN announces that Susan Smith has admitted to killing her children in order to make herself more romantically available. Stunned and heartsick, I congratulate myself for leaving such a troubled country behind. A bad taste comes to my mouth and stays there.

Northwest’s 747 is, once again, packed to capacity. There is a wide variety of accents and plenty of odd-shaped baggage – the usual flight-to-Europe scene. Initially, I am in the wrong seat which causes a furor in the French contingent. My linguistic skills are deplorable but if there’s one thing I can communicate in French, it’s an apology.

Or so I thought.

Leaving some of the loveliest-sounding profanities behind me, I locate my true seat, squished up against a window, in economy class, as always.

A German woman and her teenage daughter arrive in the aisle. She opens the overhead compartment and shrieks in the soothing German way, “Vat is dis?!” She holds my tightly compacted sleeping bag, scowling with a vengeance.

“Uh, yeah, that’s mine,” I murmur weakly. (Where is SheRa when you really need her?)

“There is now no room for mine things! This cannot be! I vill now call air voman to tell her,” she rages.

“Uh, but it’s my only carry-on and it’s not any bigger than …”

“Air Voman! Air Voman!” She is relentless. WWII flashback – I am the enemy. Fortunately, we won that war so my evil parcel is not thrown on to the oily tarmac. In fact, nobody bothers with her at all at the pushing crowd finally forces her to sit down…next to me.

Yep, elbow-to-elbow with the Baroness of Laughs for the width of the Atlantic Ocean. My tingles of excitement have become dull throbs of trepidation. Finally, we are in the air even Mrs. Klink (wife of a colonel, I decide) seems to relax a bit.

After about 45 minutes of heading eastward, the captain casually announces that the aircraft is experiencing wingflap difficutly and “Just to be on the safe side, ladies and gentlemen, we will be heading back to Minneapolis.”

TO BE CONTINUED ….