Décollage

(10/26/22) Sometimes boring can be a good thing. Say, for example, a trans-Atlantic flight from the U.S. to Paris. In that case, I love boring. Bob and I arrive at Newark International Airport Wednesday with time to spare, thanks to my favorite app, Google Maps. Whenever Google’s friendly guide delivers us successfully to our destination, I like to give her five stars for a job well done. I have my printed parking receipt with QR code handy as we pull into P6, the Long-Term Economy Parking Lot. A quick swipe of the code and we are in. Plenty of parking available. Rather than handwriting our location on our ticket as a reminder, Bob cleverly takes a picture of the locator sign closest to our car so that we can easily spot it when we return in two weeks’ time.

The shuttle bus glides up and we board. There are tons of empty seats. Midday on a Wednesday appears to be a great time to arrive at one of the busiest airports in the country.

Our United flight UA 57, is on time with departure scheduled for 6:30 p.m., due to arrive tomorrow morning at 7:45 a.m. Thankfully, our flight is not completely full; we have an extra seat between us. I’m actually pretty comfortable! I love hearing the announcements made in both English and French and some passengers who are chatting with each in French. It won’t be long now!

We actually arrive 10 minutes early Thursday morning, at what for us is only 1:35 a.m. It’s no wonder I haven’t slept for more than 45 minutes, with plenty of movies and TV to keep me occupied, my reading material all but forgotten. Not to worry, though. Adrenaline will get me through until we can take a late morning nap in our comfy bed at the apartment. A thoroughly uneventful, boring flight, and in this case, boring is not bad at all.