When I was a kid I used to really like flying. One of my earliest memories was when I flew somewhere. I guess I was a lucky kid because some kids never go anywhere. I have alot of early memories but the one with flying is what is on my mind now becasuse I am heading to the airport. The funny thing is though that I do not remeber the flight much only the destination.
It was the summer before I started first grade and we went to Ireland for like a large chunk of the summer.We rented a house I remeber it was a small house just two floors near a large farm. There was a little dirt road leading up to the house from the main road that was paved. There was always some guy on that main road digging a ditch in a suit jacket with a vest.
We went to ireland that year with my grandmother.I remeber her driving my parents a little crazy about going to visit everyone under the sun. I also remeber there was a window in the kitchen that overlooked a long plain or some huge ass landscape like some shit out of Corbet or something. That was one of the first times I flew. Now i find flying mad annoying. Flying these days feels like a real long commute like being stuck on New Jersy Transit forever with only canned soda to drink.I say this becasue I am on my way to the airport.
I usually only fly home once a year but I got some extenuating circumastnces and I got to fly home to support my folks. When I think back to the second or third time I ever flew I cannot rememebr the circumstances. Diffrent segments of my life do stand out when I did take flights and most of the shit that stands out is when i enjoyed going to an airport.
Once when i was in high school and my brother lived in Buffalo New York I flew to Buffalo New York by myself. I thought i was hot shit for doing that. I think I was only a freshman in high school. I went to buffallo for the weeknd and we went to a hockey game. Typical shit huh seeing hockey near the canadian border.Even worse i think we had chicken wings some time after that.
The first time I ever flew First class was on a Pan Am flight from NY to Miami then from Miami to Caracas. The flight was mad cool because they spoiled the shit out of us but i remeber they were playing the movie cannonball run. When they turned on the movie it was playing from the middle of the movie. When we asked yo whats the deal? they said they couldnt rewind the movie only let it play from where it last left off. So we watched it one and a half times. I dint care becaseu I was on my way to South america I sw it a few days earlier . Afraid I would be doevoid of American entertainment for some time going to the land of the venezuelans. I do remeber when i got to Caracas I was mad pissed at my parentsfor moving me so far from home. So far from my huffy bike and it was mad hot. We went to some beach for lunch and they served me Fish with the head still attached and I cried. I thought they were savages what was even worse was that it was a black sand beach! Who the hell chills on a black sand beach. Beaches are spose to be white.!I got over it eventually and learned to like Venezuela.
For a couple of years I was like an airport pro. My pops was working in Thailand an under his contract I was able to visti him twice a year with the company paying for the ticket.well once a year they would come home to visti us and then in the summer I was able to use the ticket to vist them in Southeast Asia.Instead of booking a direct flight to Bangkok I booked RTW tickets . i was eligible for them because I was still a student and booked them through some student travel agency in the village. My travel agent was this tatted up chick from the east village who always hooked me up cause we lived a few blocks from one another. She is the one whom informed me about the RTW.
The first year I flew JFK- London-
Amsterdam- to rome via paris
Rome to bangkok Via Paris
Bangkok Tokyo
Tokyo-Los Angeles
then drove cross country with a friend from San Diego to NY via Arizona ,New Mexico, Texas, New Orleand and Up..
When we got to NJ they dropped me off at a dairy queen in the summer and I called my brother from a pay phone and he picked me up the next day I took the train from Newark NJ to NYC
Around the world and back via scenic Newark NJ!
I write this all in installments on my way back to Amerikka for a 6 day journey. Right now I just pushed a 3 seat unit over so that i can get power for my computer while typing. I only have one hour in Paris to transfer And I do not know how much of that time I may get to type. Or if I on the plane I will be busy with the in flight entertainment instead of writing.
the first year of the RTW i went to all the expensive places . Europe and okyo I do not know what I was thinking. Every time I had to go anywhere that year I had to go through Charles de Gaul airport. I grew to know taht airport like no other. Becasue I was young and on the road so Much sometimes I would get to the airport hours and hours early and just sit around and wait for my flight I almost had it down to a routine. Usually the hostels I was staying at would kick you out somewhat early and I would not have a whole lot to do becauseit was a travel day. That first backpacking trip in europe a high school friend of mine flew the night before to London and we were spose to meet the next day in heathrow. When I got to heathrow he was nowhere to be found.
I searched heathrow up and down and all over and somehow on a pay phone I got a hold of his parents after about a three hour search. This is was the days before email and internet and cell phones. I do not really know how the hell We found each other but we did. I was just about to give up and do the whole european vacation thing on my own for three weeks but I think we might have found each other on an escalator going in opposite directions. When i finally did meet him he was mad pissed. I do not remeber about wht but i have a suspision it was some european charm that he got from someone somewhere giving him directions. He was traveling with like 3 or 4 other dudes some of whom I knew a few whom I had no idea who they were.
They all had eurail tickets and i didnt. As soon as i met him he said ' We decided to go to Brussels we got to meet the other guys" I had heard about how in euorpe that you do not always have to pay for the trains because alot of it is based on the trust system. My thought on this now that i am older and can afford the tickets is the same as when i was like 20. If they are stupid enough to trust me then i do not have to pay after all isnt it alan ginsburg who said why cant i just get by on my good looks.?
This flight to paris should be boarding soon there is some bald dude fucking with a machine and some american guy behind me on a cell phone calling " ron " talking about the weather and tax structures..I only had to pay for a few trains that year with those guys and at one point we were all on a bullet train from france to spain and I didnt have a ticket. I was going tp hide under a seat or in a bathroom. Amazingly i got away with it. there was like 6 or 7 of us in a train and the conductor went around in a circle checking tickets by the time he checked the first guy he had slipped me his ticket under his leg and I just reshowed the conductor a ticket he already saw got confused said wala in that french way and boom I was scott free.
It was in spain that those guys were getting on another train and heading to like switzerland and prague and I guess Germany and I caught a train back to PAris and we made a deal to meet in a week at BOBs youth hostel in Amsterdam.I went all the way to cherbourg or le harve to catch a ferry to ireland fell asleep on the train and got off the wrong station . I made it to ireland and saw this old relative of mines named MICK he was a grumpy old dude but was real kind and expected me to stay the night. he lived in some little cottage in the middle of nowhere.
I met some italian kid on the ferry we hitchhiked or tried to near some side of the road potato vendors to some town with a hostel and stayed there the night. The old dude who ran the hostel kept calling me yank and I do not think it was becasue I was wearing a yankee hat. I stayed with some family for like 3 or 4 days and then split to dublin. Where I chilled for like 1 or two nights beofre i crossed took a ferry to a train to a ferry to Amsterdam. I remeber it being mad cold the morning I got to the port town and being real cold on some shitty commuter rail that i didnt pay for.I was kinda freaked because it was summer and it was mad cold and overcast. it was my first time in the Netherlands. I went to Bobs hostel and no one was there. It was breakfast time and they had a lock out so I should have been able to meet the guys.There was a message board full of post it notes people would leave one another and I scoured it looking for the note from my peoples. Of course they were to lazy or stoned to leave a note and I was just about to go it alone in Am,sterdam when from around a corner they all appeared
For some reason we went to Central station to get something. maybe money maybe accomadation and we meet some hippie drifter. He was house sitting some apartment just a few blocks from central station and we were allowed to stay there with a kitchen shower fooseball table At first the whole thing seemed mad dodgy cause he was this kinda chubby american hippie guy not a kid who played guitar and hustled for a living. He wasnt that good of a hustler though..shit my plane is being called.
Carlos was 40 minutes late . I put a quarter in a pay phone. But before I did it i did the penny trick. You know the trick so you know you aint gonna get ripped off.Put a penny in a pay phone then presh the phone down to make sure you get the penny back so you know if the phone works for refunds. It worked I put in my quarter then noticed that the phone was 50 cents for a call. then Mook hit my rapid wien hat off my head. He is from Murtling right outside of Wien . The phone refunded me my quarter and like another 4 or 5 quarters. I made money on the phone call. What a country. The country of my birth that every day I feel more and more alienated from. I do love NYC and my country it is a flashy high paced place. Some dude on the subway asked me about my hat and I spoke to him in German. It took him a minute to catch up I told him I bought it in Naschmarkt for 5 euro from some turkish greasy dude. He told me he had not been home in 5 years. If I could have been looking at a mirror in the subway I would have . He excused himself like a good european and disapeared in to the platform.
I getting real tired . That hippie cat in amsterdam would always play that song. " If I had a million dollars" we made fun of him for singing it on his accoustic guitar then like 8 years later the Ny lotto used that song for a promo and its poularity peeked. I dint like the song then I stilll dont like it.