Subdued Chaos

Dearest Rachel –

Well, we’re on our way home after a week at sea. You might recall how departure day was always chaotic, with us having to get up at a ridiculous hour (for a vacation day, at any rate). Despite having been up late the night before (and as much having to do with taking one last swim before packing), you always made sure to wake up every bit as early as I did in order to ensure that we didn’t leave anything behind, and we’d gotten ourselves fed before catching a ride to the airport, and our flight back home.

So I hardly need to remind you what that was like; imagine an entire hotel essentially checking out en masse. It’s crazier even than closing day at the anime convention, since this particular process spans but four hours at most, from maybe 5:30 to 9:30, rather than being spread out throughout the entire day. It’s controlled chaos to the highest extent.

Today, that chaos felt surprisingly subdued, and I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps, thanks to our flight not taking off until late in the afternoon, combined with Lars’ owl-like tendencies, we don’t start in on our departure until the tail end of the overall process, so the early birds (like our family would have been, back in the day) have already made their way off the ship. Additionally, the fact that there are so many places throughout the ship to catch a quick bite before leaving, rather than a single central location where everybody congregates means that we’re not fighting enormous crowds at the place we decide to visit before disembarking.

It probably doesn’t hurt that we basically have only one suitcase each (which we set outside at nearly the very last minute last night – a feat you would have appreciated and admired), one carry-on (or would that be a carry-off in this case?) and an extra bag with stuff we need to use in the morning but have to pack in our checked bag once we get off the ship and make our way to the airport. We didn’t bother with stuff like garment bags for formal wear, like we used to do, or those binders full of optical discs for watching this or that on the computer. Now that I think about it, I didn’t even bother with the computer once we were on the ship, so I could have dispensed with that and traveled that much lighter this week. But that’s neither here nor there.

Outside the terminal, there’s a great flow of people being channeled off to the left. And while I show our transfer tickets to a staffer, who instructs us to cross the street to get to one or another bus shuttling guests to the airport, when I slip under a ribbon in order to use a marked crosswalk, I’m promptly ordered back into the flow. The buses are right there, but we have to track to the left before crossing over, and then make our way to the right in order to get to the buses; straight lines are not allowed. Then again, given the masses of people, maybe a serpentine path is necessary for crowd control purposes.

Besides, it’s not as if we have to hurry to the airport, either. There are delays along the way – the terminal for our flight is the last stop of several, and once we arrive, the driver doesn’t let us off at first, as he’s apparently waiting for assistance in hauling everyone’s bags out of the luggage compartment – but we’re there with hours to go before our flight. Even the extended screening line and a long walk to the gate (although, when I check my phone upon arriving, I’m dismayed to note that we’ve only logged some three thousand steps since waking up this morning; a fraction of the distance covered on a daily basis aboard the ship) don’t merit much in the way of time concerns; in fact, the plane docked at the gate when we get there is bound for the Turks and Caicos islands. We have to wait for it to board and head out before we need to even concern ourselves with our own flight.

And that’s where we are at this point, honey; just waiting for the next (and almost last, excluding the ride home from O’Hare) leg of our journey to start. It gives me time to fill you in, but not much in the way of lofty inspiration, I’m afraid.

So I’m going to let you go for now. Maybe I’ll have more chaos to tell about, but right now, things are more subdued than not. Still, it wouldn’t hurt if you could keep an eye on us, and wish us luck. We’re still going to need it.