Champaign-Urbana I: Friday
Oct. 1st, 2003 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slipjig3So anyway, Kristi kicked in the door at 8:30 a.m. on Friday and bellowed, "Move it!
Well, all right, that's a slight exaggeration. But the urgency was there: she was dropping me at the airport on her way to class in Albany, and class wasn't bloody well going to wait. So: Overloaded suitcase? Check. Equally-overloaded boredom-alleviation carry-on, with CDs, books, crosswords, and what-have-you? Check. Pepsi for the road? That's a 10-4. Grab the shotgun and the Slim Jims and let's roll, Thelma!
I am deeply grateful for Kristi driving me down for Albany, which was well above and beyond the call of duty. The one problem, though, is that her schedule necessitated my arrival at 9:30 a.m., a good three hours before my scheduled take-off, which was a half-hour more than the layover I was about to face in Detroit. (Hence the overstuffed boredom-alleviation carry-on.) After getting stopped by security because of my belt buckle and shoe brackets, and disrobing further than any stranger had ever requested of me in public before (unfortunately), I communed with CNN and Kristi's Walkman, and tried to wrap my brain around what was happening. And found I couldn't, really.
See, I left Champaign-Urbana for good over a decade ago; my last visit was in the fall of 1996, even before Abbey was born. Whole swaths of my life had passed since I'd last stood on the Quad, eaten at the Courier, flopped into a cuddle puddle with these friends who helped define what little I know about myself. And meanwhile, these people and places had been changing right along with me without my knowledge. I knew I was excited, anxious to get back, almost to the point of neediness, but it was...well, something I couldn't quite comprehend just yet. So I didn't think about it too much. Now, a crossword puzzle. Now, a Richard Thompson CD. Soon, a flight, and a reunion. Soon.
The flight from Albany was largely an exercise in keeping my knees pressed to my chin for an hour and a half. This was the one flight that Jodi had difficulty finding a good seat for, and it showed; my overstuffed boredom-alleviation bag was inches away, and all I could do was wave at it, mournfully. (At least I could look out the window, sort of.) To my surprise, the Detroit airport turned out to be quite the nifty. I'd never been there before, and I was quite impressed at the tasteful, modern design, which I got to see in its entirety because the incoming gate and the outgoing gate stood roughly 47.2 miles apart. I almost didn't find the outgoing gate: they hid C1 behind a glass wall, behind two customer service desks. But the people-watching was above par, so I kept my grousing to a minimum.
Last leg was my first-ever trip in a prop plane. There is something about a propeller that makes flying seem more...immediate, more real. The trip was smooth, lovely, almost bucolic, until the damned Midwestern sky decided to provide me with a thundering hellstorm, as if to say, "Welcome home, Adam! Here's a plague of Egypt! Enjoy!" Amazingly, we arrived on time after being tossed around like Mardi Gras beads for 20 minutes or so. As I'd later tell friends, the pilots managed a perfect 3-point landing; unfortunately, one of those points happened to be the wing.
Jodi, my dear, dear friend, my saint and savior, the one who had made this happen, had joked earlier that I'd be bouncing like Tigger when she first saw me off the plane. Friends, when I saw her, I most certainly did. With a hug like a heartache melting away, I was home.
We wasted no time. After a quick leg-stretch and a tour of Jodi's spacious home [STATEMENT OF INTENT: I want that house], we dashed off to the Courier for dinner. The Courier is...well, let me put it this way: if Champaign-Urbana is Home, then the Courier is Home-within-Home. It's a restaurant-shaped hug, really. And bless their hearts, they didn't change a thing: the cash register, the punched-tin ceilings, even the menus. Even the prices on the menus. We met Jodi's delightful friends Michael and Beth (whom I'm now proud to call my friends as well; hi, you two, if you read this!) right away. A few minutes later, in walks![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ianphanes, looking becloaked, content and healthy, and I quickly collected more hugs. Ate, talked, ate more, talked more; got reminded of stories that I didn't even remember, and still don't.
(As I write this, I find myself craving a Banker's Burger with sweet potato fries and a blueberry shake, and sighing out loud. I'd forgotten. I'd so, so forgotten...)
The original plan of going to the Etc. (my other home-within-home) collapsed when it was found to be closed until next weekend. Well, booger. (Just as well:daev later told me that it had been taken over by a service fraternity who had no clue what the Etc. was about, and who'd painted the walls white and flooded the place with fluorescent lighting, the heathens). But we did walk the Quad, where I reminisced about shooting racquetballs with a giant slingshot over Foellinger Auditorium with Dwight and Jen, and scurried over to see in the Three Magnolias still stood, and thought of all that happened there.
And at one point during the Quad stroll I found myself flooded, overrun with memory and loss, and I couldn't move from where I stood on the sidewalk, not one step. I pulled at my hair and buried my face in my hands, as if I were ready to scream into my palms. But I didn't scream; I spoke, just barely above a whisper: "I want to come home. I want to come home."
We drank at the Espresso Royale, and then I stayed up until some obscene hour of the morning talking with Jodi, getting even more hugs, jet lag shifting my vision in and out of focus. But I wasn't about to sleep. Why would I miss this? I was home. I was home.
Well, all right, that's a slight exaggeration. But the urgency was there: she was dropping me at the airport on her way to class in Albany, and class wasn't bloody well going to wait. So: Overloaded suitcase? Check. Equally-overloaded boredom-alleviation carry-on, with CDs, books, crosswords, and what-have-you? Check. Pepsi for the road? That's a 10-4. Grab the shotgun and the Slim Jims and let's roll, Thelma!
I am deeply grateful for Kristi driving me down for Albany, which was well above and beyond the call of duty. The one problem, though, is that her schedule necessitated my arrival at 9:30 a.m., a good three hours before my scheduled take-off, which was a half-hour more than the layover I was about to face in Detroit. (Hence the overstuffed boredom-alleviation carry-on.) After getting stopped by security because of my belt buckle and shoe brackets, and disrobing further than any stranger had ever requested of me in public before (unfortunately), I communed with CNN and Kristi's Walkman, and tried to wrap my brain around what was happening. And found I couldn't, really.
See, I left Champaign-Urbana for good over a decade ago; my last visit was in the fall of 1996, even before Abbey was born. Whole swaths of my life had passed since I'd last stood on the Quad, eaten at the Courier, flopped into a cuddle puddle with these friends who helped define what little I know about myself. And meanwhile, these people and places had been changing right along with me without my knowledge. I knew I was excited, anxious to get back, almost to the point of neediness, but it was...well, something I couldn't quite comprehend just yet. So I didn't think about it too much. Now, a crossword puzzle. Now, a Richard Thompson CD. Soon, a flight, and a reunion. Soon.
The flight from Albany was largely an exercise in keeping my knees pressed to my chin for an hour and a half. This was the one flight that Jodi had difficulty finding a good seat for, and it showed; my overstuffed boredom-alleviation bag was inches away, and all I could do was wave at it, mournfully. (At least I could look out the window, sort of.) To my surprise, the Detroit airport turned out to be quite the nifty. I'd never been there before, and I was quite impressed at the tasteful, modern design, which I got to see in its entirety because the incoming gate and the outgoing gate stood roughly 47.2 miles apart. I almost didn't find the outgoing gate: they hid C1 behind a glass wall, behind two customer service desks. But the people-watching was above par, so I kept my grousing to a minimum.
Last leg was my first-ever trip in a prop plane. There is something about a propeller that makes flying seem more...immediate, more real. The trip was smooth, lovely, almost bucolic, until the damned Midwestern sky decided to provide me with a thundering hellstorm, as if to say, "Welcome home, Adam! Here's a plague of Egypt! Enjoy!" Amazingly, we arrived on time after being tossed around like Mardi Gras beads for 20 minutes or so. As I'd later tell friends, the pilots managed a perfect 3-point landing; unfortunately, one of those points happened to be the wing.
Jodi, my dear, dear friend, my saint and savior, the one who had made this happen, had joked earlier that I'd be bouncing like Tigger when she first saw me off the plane. Friends, when I saw her, I most certainly did. With a hug like a heartache melting away, I was home.
We wasted no time. After a quick leg-stretch and a tour of Jodi's spacious home [STATEMENT OF INTENT: I want that house], we dashed off to the Courier for dinner. The Courier is...well, let me put it this way: if Champaign-Urbana is Home, then the Courier is Home-within-Home. It's a restaurant-shaped hug, really. And bless their hearts, they didn't change a thing: the cash register, the punched-tin ceilings, even the menus. Even the prices on the menus. We met Jodi's delightful friends Michael and Beth (whom I'm now proud to call my friends as well; hi, you two, if you read this!) right away. A few minutes later, in walks
ianphanes, looking becloaked, content and healthy, and I quickly collected more hugs. Ate, talked, ate more, talked more; got reminded of stories that I didn't even remember, and still don't.(As I write this, I find myself craving a Banker's Burger with sweet potato fries and a blueberry shake, and sighing out loud. I'd forgotten. I'd so, so forgotten...)
The original plan of going to the Etc. (my other home-within-home) collapsed when it was found to be closed until next weekend. Well, booger. (Just as well:
daev later told me that it had been taken over by a service fraternity who had no clue what the Etc. was about, and who'd painted the walls white and flooded the place with fluorescent lighting, the heathens). But we did walk the Quad, where I reminisced about shooting racquetballs with a giant slingshot over Foellinger Auditorium with Dwight and Jen, and scurried over to see in the Three Magnolias still stood, and thought of all that happened there.And at one point during the Quad stroll I found myself flooded, overrun with memory and loss, and I couldn't move from where I stood on the sidewalk, not one step. I pulled at my hair and buried my face in my hands, as if I were ready to scream into my palms. But I didn't scream; I spoke, just barely above a whisper: "I want to come home. I want to come home."
We drank at the Espresso Royale, and then I stayed up until some obscene hour of the morning talking with Jodi, getting even more hugs, jet lag shifting my vision in and out of focus. But I wasn't about to sleep. Why would I miss this? I was home. I was home.
