Our Epic, Part Two

I must be learning to conquer my ADD, because we went out to the coast with our tent trailer on Monday of last week and came home Wednesday. Then the very next day Jenny and I left for Minnesota without any tears or bloodshed.

I call that an accomplishment.

First we flew to Oakland, where you drop down-down-down over the water, and right about when you're feeling under your seat for the life vest, the pilot says Land, Ho! and a runway appears and you gratefully thump down.

We spent six hours there, two more than scheduled. Jenny and I passed the time admiring the expensive food but not buying it. $4.99 for a scoop of ice cream! But then I remembered that in one pocket of my purse was some "fun money" Amy had given me. So I got a Frappucino and Jenny got a hot chocolate.

Everyone coming to our gate would anxiously look at the news on the TV screen, which I was vaguely aware of--a trial of some kind. And then they would look relieved or upset or amazed, and turn to someone else and say, "Involuntary manslaughter!"

Finally my curiosity got the best of me and I asked a woman near me what was going on. Oakland, she said, is very racially divided, and on New Years Eve of 2008 some young black men were booted off the tram, and a few policemen got involved, and one of the policemen thought he was grabbing and shooting his Taser but it was actually his gun, and he shot and killed one of them.

And now they were having a trial. I guess the options were second-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter, and he got the latter.

It was such a big deal in Oakland that many businesses were boarded up for fear of riots, and the highways were so clogged with people fleeing town to escape whatever might erupt, that the woman I was talking to took two hours to go 19 miles, and missed her flight.

A sad story all around, and interesting that even up in Ontario we knew about the Rodney King case 20 years ago, but right next door in Oregon we hadn't heard about this.

Then we flew to Chicago/Midway and got our stuff in baggage claim and then found out the ticket counters and security areas are closed until four in the morning. So we were stuck in baggage claim for the night with its loud announcements every 5 minutes about when the ticket counter opens. I found a few seats without armrests and tucked Jenny in for the night. I set my alarm for 5:15 and dozed off in one of a dozen back-breaking positions I would endure before a woman woke me in the morning and said my alarm is going off.

We pulled our haggard selves upstairs and checked in and were soon in a line at security that stretched on and on, it seemed, over rivers and mountains and into unseen lands far away, and we would never reach the end, and we were doomed to miss our flight, I just knew it, but I hoped and prayed I might be wrong. And when we finally reached the lady that shines the little flashlight on your drivers license, she told me coldly that no, there's no way to expedite us through security and I should have showed up two hours early. And then we rejoined the endless line.

But we were having an adventure, we told ourselves. Right? Right????

Quote of the Day:
"I practiced saying it to the fly right before I squished him."
--Jenny, when she quoted one of her "camp verses" to me--Ezekiel 33:11. "Say unto them, As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?"