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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.

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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.

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