Orlando Airport

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Travel is…. Too many possibilities for how to follow up those two words. …a shock to the system because , once I’ve made the choice to get on an airplane taking me all the way across the country, to Orlando this time, the airport my Alaska Air miles plan chose to route me through and deposit me in for ten hours before routing me on to London’s Gatwick Airport, I am forced to move through strange places that have a only few familiar anchoring points amid an ocean of unfamiliar waves. Waves may not be the right image, but it suggests the constant motion which is standard for airports, no two of which are the same. However, they are all alike in their struggle to outdo each other with complicated layouts and shuttles moving passengers from terminal to terminal. Other than that, all airports have walls lined with vendors, some of which help me feel less lost—Starbucks, McDonald’s, Chipotle, Hudson News, all with English menus assuring me I’m not really in a foreign place yet. Then there’re the stands with places to plug in all the techie stuff I’ve brought along to provide a life line to the known world left behind, this time, just my cell and computer. I guess my disorientation is lessened by seeing the same confused look on the faces around me that my face is probably showing. It’s at this stage in the trip I think, “What the @#!& am I doing here?”

Then, I step off one of the shuttles to find myself standing on a huge mosaic—the whole length of the landing for the two-car shuttle is mosaicked. “Ah, yes,” I say, “travel is a chance to see amazing, surprising, unimagined beautiful things.

Travel is…exhausting. Of course, if I paid full fare instead of traveling on miles, I might get a more reasonable schedule with less time between flights, meaning less time in the airports. But, this may be a good way to adjust to the time change. Who knows. And that is another thing about travel, it breaks me out of my mountain cocoon and feeds my need for newness, for whatever the universe wants to present to me.

So now, I only have eight more hours to explore the Orlando airport.

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Photos

SeaTac, C gate area
Zoom in on the menus to see Spam & Eggs for breakfast. Art's favorite.

Tower
Forgot to mention this as one of the common denominators at airports

Safety stopper for the shuttle
Shuttle stops way short of this