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How to kill time at the airport: 1. Go back into the city & 2. Feed the mice August 10, 2002 ~ 4:54 a.m. I arrived back in London yesterday. What an experience. Not a horrible one. But an experience all the same. My scheduled taxi to Logan airport arrived half-an-hour early. I arrived at the Icelandair desk and was told that the flight was delayed by two or three hours. Before my jaw could hit the floor, the other man at check-in laughed and said, �no, no. It�s only a one hour delay.� That I could handle. Now I was told to arrive at Logan three hours before my scheduled 9:30 p.m. flight, but stringent security measures were non-existent. At least around Aer Lingus and Icelandair they were. I easily checked my suitcase through and brought my carry-ons with me to the restaurant. I killed a whole hour in there. And it wouldn�t have taken a whole hour if they hadn�t taken for goddamn ever to take my order and serve me the check afterwards, but hey � that was one hour dead and buried. But now, it was only 7:00. I still had two hours at my disposal before I even had to arrive at the gate. Could I really cool my heels at the airport for two listless hours? Anyone who knows me well already knows the immediate answer to that question: No, non, nein, nyet. My impatient nature made that scenario impossible. And so it was that I went out to the traffic islands in the avenue by Terminal E and boarded the shuttle bus to the Blue Line Airport subway stop. I was going to have one last, unexpected reprieve in Boston. I rode the train into Government Center, walked out onto City Hall Plaza, sat on a flight of concrete stairs and finished the game of �Space Invaders� that I�d started on the subway. Made it through five levels and collected 11,800 points. Not bad. Closing my wannabe GameBoy and dropping it back into my knapsack, I could hear some jazz pumping on the other side of the City Hall building. City Hall Plaza is the site of many a concert during the summertime. As I sat down on a pillar to watch and listen, a jazzy version of �America, the Beautiful� was performed. What a patriotic way to end this vacation back home, I thought. In order to steel myself for the never-easy and much-hated goodbyes to family and friends and the long flights ahead of me, I had dropped a few Valiums before leaving the house. That, combined with the beer I drank in the airport restaurant, left me with an aggressive thirst. I crossed Cambridge St. and went into an Irish pub, of which there is no shortage in Boston. I ordered a large Coke and the first few sips were heaven. The 6th inning of the Red Sox-Oakland game was on and just as I finished my Coke, I saw Casey Fossum give up a two-run home run. Here it is, the typical Red Sox late summer meltdown, I thought and went back outside. It was now 8:30. The evening was pleasantly warm but dry. The humidity that had cloaked the city for a week had been whisked away the previous night. I took one final, loving look at the city around me. I felt like just hopping the subway to Harvard Square and head back to the house from there. But alas, I had a wife and a job waiting for me in England. Reluctantly, I descended the stairs back down to the subterranean world of the Blue Line. I got back to Logan Airport�s Terminal E only to discover that they still didn�t have a set gate for the Icelandair flight and the departure time had been delayed by another half-an-hour. I sat on some seats between gates 5 and 6 and read Stephen King�s �Dreamcatcher.� A mouse suddenly hopped down from the radiator by the wall, criss-crossing the floor for food and then retreating back to his safe haven by the radiator. The mouse kept doing this over and over. I took some cheese crackers out of my knapsack, broke one up, and threw the fragments at the mouse. �I don�t think you should be doing that.� It was a lady two seats in back of me with an anxious look on her face. I gave her �the eye,� a sort of sinister, arched eyebrow look that I reserve for stupid and/or annoying people. �Well, with all this food that I just threw down, I�ve pretty much assured that the mouse won�t be coming anywhere near you, so what�re you afraid of?� I pointed at my foot. �Look, there he is, right by my foot. And here he�ll stay. And you know what? That�s cool. I�m not afraid of a little mouse.� She didn�t answer, and I immediately went back to reading my book. I could only wonder if it�s a universally ingrained aspect of womanhood that dictates fear of tiny mammals? (By complete contrast, a man just ahead of me woke up from his doze, looked at the mouse with a sort of bored fascination and then went right back to his slumber without nothing more than a shrug.) In the end, the plane left Boston at 11:07 p.m., a full 5-� hours after my initial arrival at Logan Airport. And just think, my day (or night?) was only just getting started � oh, the joys of transatlantic travel. Goodbye for now, dear ol� Boston. See you again in December. � M.E.M.
Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
AMERICA FOR TRUE AMERICANS!
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