The airplane feels like a collective breath being held. With ears always muffled and feet nowhere to go. Sortie and exit next to each other on the sign, so I assume they both mean the same thing.
I wonder how athletes deal with plane rides so much. I am drained and achey. I guess it becomes a part of their routine. It’s the wonder of the human body I think, it can do anything if it’s in a routine. I’m just imagining Noah Syndergaard, even in first class, with his legs needing to stretch and his back a little stiff.
They probably get to walk around a lot more on their flights. This is purely me speculating this but I feel like they literally have a whole plane to themselves right? And there are only 25 players on a roster so does that mean there a lot of empty seats on the plane? I mean there’s the coaching staff and the training staff but that’s what, like another 8 guys? There’s probably a lot of empty seats. I would imagine that to be a little eerie. Weird vibe to feel right before playing a baseball game.
…
There is something about the process of traveling, with it’s repetition of tasks, that every travel experience seems to blend into a large blurry mush after one has finished travelling. We have just sprawled out in our Venice hotel room after an ungodly 14 hours (yes, typing that out makes me pause) of travel. Two planes, a boat, some speed-walking through a beautifully-lit Charles De Gaulle Airport at 7 in the morning (more on this later), more speed-walking through a Venice airport and finally some just plain standing around while our room was being finished, we have begun our honeymoon.
There is a rush of metal and plastic and advertisement posters that lay out one after another, and signs with letters and numbers in seemingly random colors, and handrails and charging stations, and clunking noises made by suitcase wheels, and clear glass walls and clear glass elevators, and silver metallic bathrooms that have just been sprayed with bleach. This is the rush of things moving by you when you are traveling, the blurry mush.
I said I’d talk about the light in the Charles De Gaulle airport, and this is what I mean:
That’s a poor example but you can see what I’m getting at, maybe? The whole thing is glass and spirals out in all directions, up and down and side to side. And there aren’t any buildings around the airport, obstructing light. So the 7am cloudless sunlight poured into this place, coming through the glass and getting more intense even, reflecting off walls, casting long intensely black shadows and creating an incredible atmosphere that I will forever remember as the “Charles De Gaulle Airport Light”. We ran through the place for our connecting flight so it wasn’t fully appreciated. Although I just wrote this about it so I guess it got it’s due.
Opening day is tomorrow.* Yay!
*Written March 28th
Evenings with the Unbored 