Anticipation: the trip before the trip

*Disclaimer: I am writing most of this in a notebook and then typing it later, so in the course of any given post, I may be writing about being in several different places. I also have to wait until I am in a wifi hotspot to upload it, so again, the timing may seem strange. I'll try to date them for clarity.*

This vacation is a series of firsts for Dane, starting with his first meal at Panera with my dad before he dropped us off at the airport. It's also the first time he's presented a passport with his ticket to fly internationally.

After we realized all the things we'd forgotten (nothing too critical, thankfully) and participated in a baggage drop parade led by an enthusiastic TSA employee to an alternate luggage screening area, we zipped through the easiest security line I've ever been in (shocking at LAX!). We made our way to gate 23 for our flight to London Heathrow, saw that there were absolutely no seats left in the waiting area, and decided to find another gate area with more room since there was still well over an hour before we were to begin boarding. We settled into our mindless activities on our phones, and my heart suddenly leapt into my throat when I heard, "this is the final boarding call for all passengers with service to London Heathrow at gate 23. All passengers should be on board and we are closing the gate." I tried to jump up, grab Dane, find our boarding passes that said we shouldn't be boarding for an hour, and explain my panic all at the same time (and gulp as much of my really hot coffee that I'd just gotten). We ran over to the gate just in time to realize that there were still plenty of people sitting around completely relaxed because it was a different airline with service to Heathrow boarding at gate 23a. It seems like these particular flights could have been stationed just a little farther away from each other. Oh well, at least there were seats at our gate, now. (the English teacher in me is cringing at my wavering use of present/past tense, but the part of me that hasn't slept in 24 hours doesn't care... Hope you're not too bothered by it).

When we finally boarded we found ourselves sitting across the aisle from a row of adolescent boys who were traveling with their water polo team. Before the flight left, they had dropped a backpack on someone's head, had a heated discussion about whether the little amenity pouch contained socks or "arm warmers", and summoned 3 flight attendants because "on accident" they all pressed the call button and couldn't figure out how to "unpressed it". The looks on the attendants' faces reminded me of how happy I am that it is summer. :). After a few more hours of observation, I was quite grateful I was not sitting in front of them.

As mentioned, this was Dane's first international flight, so it held a number of firsts. He's never had meal service before, and though he smirked because he thought the meal was sad and pathetic, I had to assure him that it was quite above average (the salad was green and crisp!). To be fair, my chicken korma was far better than his braised beef. Here's my short commercial for Virgin Atlantic if you ever need to fly to Europe: it's pretty awesome, particularly if, like my husband, you just don't sleep on planes and need entertainment for the whole flight. I didn't have time to watch all the movies I wanted to see. I did finally watch The Artist- so fun! The food was good for airplane food, and the attention from the attendants was great! Ok, commercial over. Some other firsts for Dane included using an airplane restroom (he found it unremarkable) and the delicate art of using the seat back tray. After getting no sleep, during breakfast he dumped half a cup of orange juice into his lap. This was not his favorite part of the flight. My post-breakfast movie choice was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I realized the silliness of this choice when my eyes started watering during an early scene, but I thought I could hold it together well enough to not make a spectacle of myself. I did, until the letter scene at the end. Then I looked like a crazy lady who hates flying.

My two favorite things about the end of the flight were that 1) the water polo boys had all turned their air sickness bags into puppets and were putting on a little show. And 2, when we got low enough to see buildings and cars on the ground, and we were circling a bit so the airplane was swoopy, Dane grabbed my hand and exclaimed, "I feel like we're on the Peter Pan ride!"