Monday, February 6.: Flight
J drove me to the airport in the morning, and I wound up having plenty of time there after checking in and smoothly passing through security. Again TSA agents were like THE most nice people ever, strange stuff - I have heard so many horror stories from friends. First time in one of the scanners, not traumatised. With plenty of time to kill I bought coffee, and then figured out the airport had free wifi, so I was online using the mobile phone. A bit nervous since it would be bad to run out of battery during the day, but unable to resist, not sure when I would have that many hours online the next time.
Finally time to board. The flight to Dallas was mostly spent taking pictures of the scenery, and trying to figure out where I was. And, of course, being delighted at seeing rivers that are bigger than any river I had ever seen before, and then being amused by roads looking like celtic knot patterns.
Changing terminals at Dallas went smoothly and again I had plenty of time, no stress, no panic and no chance of getting lost. However, after waiting for a long and rather boring wait without any internet (during which I got myself a sandwich and pepsi), it turned out the plane we were supposed to board heading to Midland/Odessa was malfunctioning. Start the delays. After another wait another plane was found, most of the passengers had to be rechecked, and then they sent us off to the other end of the terminal, which seemed an unnecessary long walk at that point.
This plane was tiny tiny, just 30 seats or so, and I of course loved it. Again I spent most of the flight looking out the window, but there was a rather opaque cloud cover most of the way. Landing in Odessa, we were late by almost an hour and I had been unable to inform Erik, seeing as his phone wasn't receiving the text messages I had sent him (I didn't know for sure at the time but I suspected it). However, to my great relief, when I checked my e-mail upon landing it turned out he was late too. Basically we arrived simultaneously.
Meeting Erik was nervous - basically a stranger, although we had had some online communication for the past nine months. This distant relative, which I had a hunch was nice, knew what looked like, but who knows, you know, one could still truly dislike eachother from the moment one meet irl. And we were going to spend a week sharing a small trailer. Me sharing that small a space with anyone is going to be a challenge of mutual patience. So what could this be, except potentially a disaster waiting to happen?
To be continued...
