There’s No Place Like Home, unless home is Newark, in which case you live in a place identical to Hell.

I’m charged with the task of catching up on two weeks of travel, compelled by my commitment to the two people who read my blog, and aware that, soon, I will have very little to share of consequence to them. I’m actually very pleased about that.

Let’s start at the end (that’s what she said) and I’ll tell you about our last 40-odd hours or so. It really doesn’t even count as a horror story, just a story of inconvenience, and the stumbling block to getting HOME.

I was not ready to say goodbye to Kate, John, Nico and Paul (I never will be, methinks.) We left on Tuesday afternoon and I cried. Me crying at goodbye can be counted on like GMT; it’s a trait I’ve carried over since I was a kiddo, leaving my Georgia family each summer. My family and Ben tolerate it well now, and, on good days, think it is sweet, but, like all my emotions, it feels a little too public for me sometimes. More on that later.

After a short dinner and another sad goodbye to the Tallahassee ladies, we slept hard, and all went to plan on the flight home. Compared to the fourteen-hour trek from Australia in early June, the nine hours from Milan is a cakewalk.

I felt that familiar rush of patriotism coming into the U.S., then the cringing-fear when I watched the customs officers interact with visitors to this country. I was glad to see that they seemed to be, if not warm, decent and reasonable. In hindsight, I think they were just grateful to see people coming to Newark.

Newark airport is disgusting. I thought so on the way out, and it was reinforced for me over the fifteen-hours I’ve spent there since. I tried to take a more conciliatory view about two hours into our layover yesterday, and then the kid across from me projectile vomited. I get it, kid, I get it. He had Newark poisoning. Why juxtapose a city so close to NYC, where beauty can be found quite easily, and then build such a crap town? Then, terminal B at Newark faces directly to the city to remind you that you are ALMOST in a redeemable place but not quite, probably because you did something bad.

As I write this I wonder if I’ll feel more generous about Newark in a few months. Probably not.
As a RPV (random projectile-vomiter) I felt empathy for the kid, but did feel compelled to move. Once we figured out that our flight was going to be delayed for several hours, we looked for a place to sit down and have a meal. We decided on TGI Friday’s (BAD CHOICE) and I psyched myself up for free refills and good customer service.

Then it went like this:

To myself: I just want a salad. Maybe just a grilled chicken salad. That will make up for the fourteen free refills I’m about to drink. Hmmm…here’s a salad with barbecue sauce for dressing…how American…how disgusting…why do I want it? Oh yes. It has onion rings on top. GOOD IDEA AMERICA. Here’s our waitress…she seems mean. Is she talking to us? I can’t tell because she is looking away. Check out that tat it’s huge…and it says JIHAD. Hmmm. Oh God what did she just say? I was distracted by the tattoo. Is she talking about a personal Jihad? I mean, am I prejudiced to assume Jihad is always a negative thing? Seriously, who in Newark thinks it is a good idea to get a Jihad tattoo after 9/11? She’s mumbling. Maybe I should order? “I’ll have the BBQ chicken salad, please.” Oh, God, Why did I order that? Don’t change it now. She just asked if we want to order Tuscan spinach dip. Hell no I don’t want any crap Tuscan spinach dip. Oh God she looks angry. I would be too if I was called to Jihad and ended up working at TGI Friday’s. Maybe she needs some Jihad flair, like, “I’ll put a Fatwah on Mondays.” NOT APPROPRIAT E ROBYN. Did I just say yes to the dip? Probably best. Otherwise she might kill me.

The portions were ginormous. The salad was gross. The Tuscan spinach dip was okay, but definitely not Tuscan. We made it out alive. Back in the U.S.A.; giant portions of nasty food at chain restaurants. The cynicism sets in on day one.

Eventually our flight got delayed twice more, then cancelled, and we witnessed the meltdowns of hundreds of travelers, and stood in lines for hours, eventually desperately racing to the hotels to get a place to stay for the night. I was grateful for the room. Ben is a good traveling companion because he shared his I-Pod with me while we stood in line, and that kept us smiling and mellow, probably to the annoyance of the other customers. At one point in the evening, I found a quiz on Facebook that I’d seen a few months ago, and laughed so hard I could hardly breathe. It was classic Robyn: glasses fogging over, inhaler-using, tearful laughter, that spread to the waiting area where we were all waiting for some new information. In the end the whole row across from us was laughing, they didn’t know why, laughter just does that somehow.

I’m on my plane home now, about twenty-four hours after our scheduled flight. Ben had an earlier flight, they split us up, and should be arriving as we speak. Tonight we see family and friends and start to move to our new place. No rest for the travel weary. We have a whirlwind five days at home, and then head to APA in Toronto for a week. Then I’m coming home to sleep for a week.

Love,
Robyn and Ben

Asked and Answered: How Much Salami is too Much Salami?

I’m reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” this month but had to take a break once our friends arrived from Florida because it was making me too angry. Basically it turns out that, since corn is the king crop, we are all made up of corn. Think you’re having a steak? That’s corn steak. Having some fruit? There’s corn in that. I was feeling overwhelmed by the fact that I was basically made of corn so I used Italy as a means to combat that, and tried to check my physical makeup to reflect a more balanced diet of gelato, salami, seafood, pesto, wine and cheese. They are probably all made of corn, but at least it is Italian corn. I am proud to say that I am at least 1% not corn now. My big toe is made entirely of salami.

The end of Edinburgh and the week in Italy were lovely and amazing, just as we’d hoped it would be. Of course, having several of your closest friends in a paradise should be a recipe for success. We had a lovely last few days in the U.K. showing our friends our favorite bits of Edinburgh, and taking the train down to York, one of my favorite cities, laden with good memories. We stood in the pouring rain for my THIRD literary pub tour and I still loved it, and said goodbye to Shan on Monday night. We toured Vicenza and got our fill of Palladian architecture, and I cuddled Paul and laughed at Nico, and we sunned at the Cinque Terre, and laid out at the porch of our agriturismo every night under the stars, and toured walled cities and bakeries and wineries, and ate gooey-cheesy pizza, and came up with ridiculous jokes and one very viable business scheme. We got too hot and too tired and a little coldy. We sang the Cornetto song way too much. We adopted the speech patterns of a two-year old (NO! JUICEY! MINE!) and fixed a flat tire at midnight. Katy and I regressed to our eighteen-year-old selves. There was a lot of grabass. Her baby fell asleep in my arms one night which may have been the best moment of the trip for me.

To quote Little Rick, it was “too much special.” To quote Little Rick again, “too much is never enough.”