A little apprehensive about his first plane flight in more than eight years, Ben tries to enjoy his Burger King meal while we wait to board our plane in Sacramento. Photo by Glenn.
Take a good look because you won't see this too often -- Glenn clean-shaven. Trust us, the picture looks better than it did in person. Photo by Roni.
That's our plane sitting at the end of the boarding walkway. Less than 10 minutes away from having to board. Photo by Glenn.
Ben will be fine on this trip as long as he has his Gameboy and a new game cartridge to keep him occupied. Photo by Glenn.
Do you think Roni's excited about our vacation? She's all smiles and we haven't even left the airport yet. Photo by Glenn.
Familiar landmarks look much different from the air. I believe this may be part of Canyonlands in southern Utah. Our flight also took us over the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley in Arizona. Photo by Glenn.
Ben's still working on that video game, and he has his animal pals keeping him company. Photo by Glenn.
We're heading for the land of cotton, so it seem only appropriate to be greeted by some cottony cumulus clouds as we prepare to land in Houston. Photo by Glenn.
Ben looks like he's aged about five years during the plane flight. Maybe it's just the camera angle. We're in the Houston terminal here, taking a break before going to find the baggage carousel. Photo by Glenn.
Here's our rental car, a 2004 Dodge Stratus. Roni tries to figure out if all our bags will snuggle into the trunk. Amazingly they did. Photo by Glenn.
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Leaving on a jet plane
Friday, September 17 (Day 1) — When traveling, it's the little things that make the big difference. Like forgetting to bring stuff, or amenities you thought you were going to receive and didn't -- or just the opposite. So much of a vacation's success hinges on these "little things" that you don't even think about it until one does or doesn't fall into place when it needs to. Let's start this trip with something that did go right: Hurricane Ivan.
Without dwelling on the details too long, suffice it to say that New Orleans is a very lucky city on the Creator's list. It dodged a 140 mph bullet when Hurricane Ivan veered slightly east Wednesday night just as it made landfall. Alabama and the Florida panhandle took the brunt of Ivan's fury. Pensacola, Fla., and Gulf Shores, Ala., are a tattered mess. Miles of once-beautiful beach are gone, or reduced to a scene resembling a war zone. Tornadoes touched down in a few places and cost more than a dozen people their lives. But in New Orleans, the worst appears to have been a few tenths of an inch of rain and some water that got kicked out of Lake Ponchartrain; not the catastrophic damage that some predicted.
So we were heartened as we spent Thursday completing our preparations for the start of our 15-day adventure. Day One began this morning, when we planned to leave home at 8:30 to catch our flight out of Sacramento. I say planned, because nothing ever goes according to schedule when we travel. It is sort of an unwritten rule that the Gehlkes MUST be late to any destination, or if not late then at least get turned around a couple of times en route.
Ben, his anticipation raised to fever pitch, got up bright ant early at 6:30, much to the chagrin of those of us who had hoped to sleep another hour and a half or so. By the time the alarm went off at 7:50, our eyes were open just wide enough to be considered a state of wakefulness. Perhaps that would explain what I did next. After several weeks of considerable thought, I decided that this vacation I would be daring. I would do something I hadn't done in 14 years -- shave off my beard and unmask the hidden me. I had thought this would be a relatively simple process, just make a few passes across my face with a razor blade and be done with it. What I had forgotten was the reason why I gave up shaving my beard in 1990, which was to save my sensitive skin from the ravages of the daily scrape. Thirty minutes and three razor blades later, I emerged from the sink with a more-or-less smooth and very razor-burned face. Man, was that not what I had in mind. Mikhail Gorbachev and his wine stain-sized birthmark on his forehead were no match for me. I looked like Dale Earnhardt Jr. after climbing out of his flaming touring car at Sonoma three months back. But what was done was done. The redness would subside in a few hours (I hoped), and now I had satisfied my curiosity as to what I might look like underneath the growth after all those years. When I heal a bit more I'll take a better photo that I can share with my boss at work, who had commented in passing at a recent staff meeting that something or other would be as strange as seeing me without a beard. I guess miracles do happen.
My shaving odyssey delayed our departure by about 20 minutes. Roni and Ben meanwhile had checked off the last items of our to-do list, we said goodbye to the cats, and we piled into my car for the drive to the airport. After dropping off the house key with our friend Carolyn, we were officially on the road and out of town by 9 a.m.
We took Highway 160 north along the Sacramento River, talking about things totally unrelated to our work or school. It was nice. And we made good time, having beaten all the Friday commute traffic that by now was long gone. I couldn't help but look out on the water at the boaters and fishermen as we passed through familiar small Delta towns and think that this might be exactly what we see once we get to Louisiana. With a little imagination, we might not have even had to make this trip. We made an easy jog onto Interstate 5 and eventually reached Sacramento International Airport around 10:30, where we crawled through the economy parking lot until we found a space. We could have flown out of Oakland, but being the tightwad I am when it comes to money, I liked the fact that Sacto charges just $7 a day for longterm econo parking. That will add up quickly over two weeks.
We caught the airport shuttle to the terminal, checked our bags at the curb, then made our way through the security screening area on the second floor. This is the first time we have traveled by jet post-9/11, so we weren't quite sure what to expect, but the delay was blessedly brief. It was while we were standing there that Ben finally noticed I had shaved. "Dad, what's that on your face? What's that red thing on Dad's face?" Could we be any louder for the rest of the airport? "It's just a rash," I quickly tried to explain away. He recoiled in horror. "Can I catch it?" he asked. "No, it's not that kind of a rash," I tried reassuring him, but I don't think he understood and I wasn't prepared to discuss the finer points of the joy of shaving at that moment. I had purposely not said a word to him about shaving my beard because I wanted to see how long it would take for him to notice. His reaction was not the one I had expected. I guess that will teach me.
Our flight, Continental 231 for Houston, was not scheduled to depart until 12:20 and it was just 11:30. We killed the extra time by grabbing lunch at Burger King -- yes, they actually have a mall with fast food concessions at Sacto, just like going to the real mall. I had forgotten to bring the breakfast pastries Roni had bought for us to eat on the road, so I should have been starved. I guess I was, but I was too jittery to eat much. I ordered a Whopper Jr. and shared Ben's fries and Roni's drink. When we finished, we made our way to Gate 5A to wait for boarding instructions. The plane, a Boeing 737-800, was being readied on the tarmac. We tried to interest Ben in watching the other planes arriving, but he had just received a new magazine from Roni's goody bag and had distracted himself. We didn't have long to wait, because boarding began within five minutes of our sitting down.
They seat passengers in first class first, then start with the tail of the plane and move forward. I guess this is so they can fill the rear sections first and not have to worry about people tripping over each other to find their seats. The aisles are about wide enough for one average-sized person and a small bag. Nobody, of course, carries one small bag. We were in row 24, seats D, E and F. Ben grabbed the window seat and Roni took the aisle while I was like the meat in the sandwich in the middle. This being the first time we had flown since February 1996, it was all fairly new to us. We quickly learned why there is a difference between traveling coach versus first class. Yes, those coach seats are close together. If the airlines could pack people in standing straight up to save room they would. We pulled away from the terminal close to on time and within minutes were pressed against our seats as the jet roared down the runway and blasted into the sky. Ben was panicked at first, and he cried about the sensation of the roller coaster-like ascent when his ears began to feel pressure. I reassured him and tried to point out the "cool" sights as the houses and freeways and fields grew smaller beneath us. Then once we had reached cruising altitude and everyone was allowed to pull out their electronic gadgets, he got a new cartridge for his Gameboy Advance and everything was fine for a while.
We passed on the in-flight movie, "The Stepford Wives," and most of the musical entertainment as well. We had coupons for free headphones, but only Roni used hers. I had purchased airline adapters for Ben's and my headphones, but neither of us wound up using them. Ben was content to play his game, and I only briefly listened to my MP3 player. Three hours eight minutes -- the duration of our flight -- is just long enough to get antsy and not so long that you need a whole lot of things to do. They served us "snacks" of hot teriyaki chicken sandwiches wrapped in plastic bags and microwaved, along with red-delicious apples so tiny that if they had been fish they would have been well under the legal limit. They brought us drinks, too. All complimentary, which was nice for the price of admission. I peered over Ben often to see out his right-side window as we soared over the Grand Canyon and Canyonlands, two places I now swear we will visit someday soon. They are absolutely stunning from the air, but alas my pictures will never do them justice.
We had a pretty decent flight up until the time the movie ended, which left us about an hour fifteen minutes outside of Houston. That was when I changed seats with Ben, who was starting to show the effects of the long flight. He became more mischievous, touching the air phone device repeatedly and hitting the back of his seat every time something exciting happened in his game. We knew the fatigue from his early wake-up time was probably bringing us close to meltdown. After he spilled a soda in Roni's lap while he and I changed seats, that was when it started to go down hill quickly. His attitude began to descend faster than our flight coming into the George H.W. Bush Intercontinental Airport in Humble, Texas. It was all we could do to keep him from getting totally out of control before the flight ended. He can be trying when he gets in his moods, but I think we had received pretty decent behavior most of the flight, and gotten just about all we could have expected from a boy his age.
Meanwhile, the landing at Humble took us over some very green countryside, with acres of forest and posh suburbs with swimming pools in every back yard. I thought to myself, "So this is Texas?" Not at all what I was expecting for Houston, which I'd always pictured as little more than a cowtown on steroids. From the airport I could just barely make out one of the city's high-rises. We reached the gate a few minutes before our scheduled 5:50 arrival. It took more time just getting folks off the plane in the seats ahead of ours. We retrieved our luggage from the carousel, then grabbed a shuttle to the car rental area. Our reservation with Thrifty went fairly smoothly, except that the car we got -- a cherry red, 2-door Dodge Stratus -- wasn't what I had hoped for. The thing looks like a ticket magnet. I'll be sure to obey the speed limits out here. Ben isn't happy that it doesn't have windows in the back seat that he can roll down, but with humidity like they've got here tonight you wouldn't have wanted to roll the windows anyhow. The flight attendant told us it was 95 degrees, and I can believe it. It is hot and muggy. Sultry is perhaps the better word. Feels tropical, but not too oppressive the way it gets in New Jersey sometimes.
We went to find our hotel, an Econo Lodge we had booked for its price and convenience, just a mile or two from the airport. Of course we went the wrong way on Highway 59 and wound up pointed toward Houston instead of back to Humble where we needed to be. Ben had completely lost it by now and we were all ready to crash. Figuratively, I hoped! Learning to drive this unfamiliar car on unfamiliar roads had me on edge. We reached the hotel without incident. They gave us room 116. It's a room. That's about the best I can say; few amenities, although it does have a fridge and a microwave we won't use. We ordered dinner from Pizza Hut and let Ben wind down by watching the Cartoon Network.
When the pizza guy came to our door, I got my first taste of Texas hospitality. He was a young fellow in his early 20s, with a goatee-style beard and a much better shave than mine. I paid him for the pizza and he asked me, "Where y'all going on your vacation?" I proceeded to tell him we were headed toward New Orleans, and unsolicited he offered me advice on the fastest way to get there: Take 1960 to Highway 90 to I-10. "You'll save yourself about an hour and a half," he said. I asked him if there was much fallout from Hurricane Ivan evacuations and he said not much here because the storm had hit Alabama. Then he mentioned the two other storms moving up the East Coast. I felt like I was listening to The Weather Channel. I thanked him for the advice and had to laugh. Yep, there is a certain friendliness to these parts.
It is 1:36 now, which should feel like 11:36 if we were still at home. But the flight took a lot out of me. Out of all of us. Roni's just gone off to bed and Ben's been asleep a few hours. We want to hit the road for Baton Rouge early tomorrow (today), so I'd better wrap this up and get off to bed too.
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