August 1, 2008

I woke up 30 years old at 7am and hurriedly jumped into the shower. Our flight was leaving the airport at 12:40, and we’d been told to be there at least two hours early to account for the all the security and lines. We only live about ten minutes away from Pittsburgh International Airport. However, my wife requires no less than two hours to go from ‘fresh out of bed’ to ‘ready-to-go.’ There’s lots of personal maintenance involved, and though I ridicule her for it relentlessly, it never seems to make a sufficient impression upon her to cause her to reduce the duration of her morning ritual. So we just plan for it in our timing. At about 9:40, my mom arrived at our house to drive us to the airport. She dropped us off. We checked our bags and got our boarding passes and got through security, all in less than half an hour. We had time to kill. We walked around a bunch, and ended up at the bar at TGI Fridays at around 11am. We had beers, toasted my birthday, and talked about all the awesome shit we were about to do to Europe. We boarded the plane and flew to Atlanta without incident, at which point we boarded our connecting flight to Düsseldorf.

The flight from Atalanta to Düsseldorf was long and cramped. In front of me sat the only motherfucker on the whole plane who felt like he needed to recline back as far as his seat would allow. He was German. I was already pissed off with the locals and I wasn’t even there yet. I’m 6’ 2” and thus I scarcely fit in most plane seats anyway. My knees were thoroughly crushed when this inconsiderate jackass reclined completely. My wife had secured a prescription from her doctor for some sort of sedative to knock her out for the flight. She took one, and it worked. She clocked out almost immediately. I got out Crime and Punishment, put on my headphones, and started reading. The flight went without any real incident, and we arrived in Düsseldorf at 7:20am local time. The total time spent from our departure in Pittsburgh to our arrival in Düsseldorf was about 12 hours, and we lost 6 hours to time zones. 18 hours total.