How we went to California, Part 2

This is long, possibly boring, but has more catliness in it.


Flights

I remember being pleased at the conversation in the car on the
way to the airport, but I don't remember anything else about it.
We got there in very good time. I tried to give David a kiss
from the back seat and managed to land one on his temple. Eric
slung Toliman's carrier over his shoulder -- it was to be a
fairly permanent fixture of his until we got to the hotel -- and
went off to investigate the luggage carts while I got our
inanimate luggage out of the trunk.

Eric came back again, sans cart. Lydy yelled out the window to
ask if he needed quarters; he said he had some but he didn't
think a cart was worth three dollars. Indeed we managed fine
without one. I had a knapsack, a small suitcase belonging to
Raphael, and a camera bag -- David had lent me his old digital
camera and instructed me in its use, although his good plan for
me to take at least five pictures a day and go over them with him
to bring me really up to speed had not worked because I was in
too much of a frenzy to accomplish it. Eric had the cat -- a
fine fifteen-pound cat -- in the soft carrier, a medium-sized
dufflebag, and a medium-sized soft-sided suitcase. I felt a bit
bad that he was carrying my hiking boots and raincoat in addition
to the cat, especially since the cat was all my fault to begin
with.

Once inside the airport, I summoned up confused recollections of
having used e-tickets with Raphael and how one should only need
to put a credit card into a machine in order to get the boarding
pass printed. Eric, who has travelled considerably in the past
few years, said that my idea was how one proceeded if one were
not checking luggage, but we were. We got in line for the right
America West counter. Several people remarked on the cat, either
admiring him, admiring the fact that he was not yowling, or
asking if we had had to tranquilize him. We had not, Eric having
an unspecified preference not to, and I having had several
experiences that seemed to demonstrate that a common effect of
tranquilizers on cats is to make them hyper. Eric had sprayed
the carrier with Feliway earlier in the day, and that seemed to
work well enough, if Toliman's basic personality were not
sufficient to do the trick.

There was a brief confusion at the counter over whether or not
the cat's ticket had been paid for. Eric presented the cat's
health papers, and eventually it was sorted out that Toliman's
passage had not been paid for, and Eric paid for it. He told me
later that he would not have minded if the confusion meant that
Toliman got a free ride.

I was in complete sympathy with this attitude. It costs eighty
dollars to cram a cat under the seat in front of you for the
duration of a flight, even though this process strips you of your
main carry-on luggage and leaves you with only the secondary
personal item (purse, day pack, belt bag, or diaper bag). I
suppose they want to be able to pay for cleaning costs in the
event of a disaster, but on the whole I am not terribly impressed
with the airlines' notions of being pet-friendly. People with
animals are required to show up two hours early, even though it
would be much easier on the animals if we were allowed to show up
later than the usual required time instead. I do understand that
it is a considerable triumph to be allowed to carry animals in
the humans' part of the aircraft at all. Mostly, I just hate
airlines and flying. But it's a very long drive to California
from Minnesota.

Having got rid of the majority of our luggage, we decided to find
something to eat. Neither of us was sanguine about finding good
vegan food in an airport, but lo! in the food court of the main
terminal, there was a Chinese place that had what they were
pleased to call Szechuan tofu, also steamed vegetables, and a
choice of noodles or steamed rice or fried rice or a combination.
I was in an advanced state of sleep deprivation and general
stress and had a very difficult time understanding what the guy
behind the counter was saying to me; Eric ended up repeating what
he said so that I could respond, and said later that he was
surprised I had not gotten any noodles, since I am fond of them.

I did get a really beautifully generous portion of deep-fried
tofu triangles, completely innocent of any Szechuan flavor but
nice anyway; a huge helping of broccoli and carrot and cabbage
and so on; and a big scoop of steamed white rice. Eric said that
despite the beauty of the Chinese food, he was in more of a mood
for Burger King.

relieved him of the cat carrier and parked it on top of a table
while he was standing in line. Toliman had a few remarks to make
to me of a less than pleased nature. For the duration of the
trip, he was much calmer and happier when Eric was present,
though he did let me scritch him and talk to him, and preferred
me to no company at all.

Eric came back with his food and sat down next to me with his
good ear towards me. Behind us the sun was setting in a
completely clear sky, in a dim flood of red and orange. Eric
gave me some of his French fries, and I gave him a couple of
pieces of broccoli and the rice I didn't want. We offered
Toliman some water, but he was having none of it; he retreated
behind the bowl and glowered gloomily. He was very alert to all
the passing people and various noises of the airport, so
eventually I draped my sweater over three sides of the carrier,
so that he could see us but not much else. This relaxed him
considerably. Eric said, "He knows we've got his back."

We'd noticed that the Burger King had a veggieburger on its menu
-- I'd read that they had finally, after various different test
marketing attempts, actually added it to all their restaurants,
but I wasn't sure the limited kinds of choices one generally gets
in an airport would include it. Eric suggest that I get one to
eat later on and take my evening medication with, since we would
be getting into Las Vegas very late. He also reminded me that
Burger King puts a ridiculous amount of mayonnaise on its
sandwiches, and advised telling them to hold it. This resulted
in a brief gridlock with the person at the cash register. I
said, "Hold the mayo" and she said, "Meal?" which I belatedly
realized is fast-food jargon for a sandwich, fries, and drink. I
know this in an abstract sense from being subjected to ads, but I
had never really thought about it. I thought she had not heard
me say "Mayo" and so I repeated it, while she was still trying,
over the ambient airport noise and with a slight accent, to find
out if I wanted the whole combination or just a sandwich. She
finally said, "Meal, or just the sandwich?" and, considering the
way in which fries get soggy, I said "Just the sandwich."

Eric had suggested that I get one of the huge bottles of water
available, so I did that too. The guy who handed me my bag said,
"Water? Voila!" and swooped it out of the cooler with quite an
air.

I stuffed the bag with the sandwich and the bottle of water into
my borrowed knapsack, atop the cat supplies, and we got up to
find our gate. The sun was just above the horizon, a perfect
round red ball (naturally I thought of the Paul Simon song, I
always do). We watched it for a few moments, feeling the earth
turn away from it.

Getting through security was not a big deal. The austere-looking
woman who met us said sternly to Eric, "Boarding pass and ID,
please," and then cooingly, "And KITTY." I continued my
tradition of being unable to figure out what anybody was saying
or where they wanted me to put what, but I got through all right
without having to take off my shoes -- they told Eric to take his
off since they were hiking boots and had metal in them -- or
having a bag searched. Eric had to take Toliman out of the
carrier, but Toliman was perfectly good about it, and about going
back in. Several other people also cooed at him.

Toliman objected to motion, so we ended up using the moving
sidewalks and not walking forward on them; he seemed to find that
smoother and less onerous.

It was dark outside by the time we had found the gate. We found
seats, and Eric collected some scattered bits of newspaper to
read. I went and found a bathroom and came back again. Eric
went off to do the same, and a woman came over to me and admired
Toliman and asked me what the weight limits for pets in the cabin
were, and how much taking a pet along would cost. She had a
little terrier that she wished she had brought with her.

Eric came back and we waited some more. I suddenly remembered
that I needed to buy gum. I used to just take a decongestant
before flying, but I can't do that any more. I went off and
found a shop that had gum, and also snagged a little tube of hand
cream, since I had absently packed all mine inaccessibly, and my
hands were already dry from washing them in the restroom.

We had noticed that our boarding passes had "Group 5" printed on
them; this was how they called passengers to board, rather than
by seat number. At long last we were able to get onto the
airplane. Eric had the window and I the middle seat. We were
over the wing, which made seeing much of anything a bit of a
problem. Toliman's carrier did fit under the seat in front of
Eric, though it left Eric very short of foot room. Toliman was
quite good and reasonably quiet about the entire mysterious
proceeding.

I got grumpy when someone sat down next to me in the aisle seat,
having really hoped to avoid that. He turned out to be a
completely silent gentleman who slept the whole time except when
Eric asked for a pillow and the attendant told him the pillows
were all in use, whereupon the sleeping gentleman suddenly handed
Eric the airline pillow that he had been clutching to his
stomach. He had one of those little inflatable collar pillows,
and the thing about an aisle seat, of course, is that the other
kind of pillow is not much good since there is no window to lean
it against. Eric thanked him effusively, and the attendant
remarked, "Now, that was nice!"

Eric dozed and read; I read the second of L.M. Montgomery's Emily
books, having rediscovered when I put the Anne books away after a
reread that I did in fact own all three Emily books after all.
They were a very good choice for the journey, being absorbing
without imposing excessive intellectual demands. Toliman got
very frenzied at one point during the flight, clawing and
scrabbling and fussing. My recollection of the only other time I
took a cat on an airplane led me to believe that he had
discovered an urgent need for a litterbox and had to make do with
the carrier.

This theory was verified when we finally got to our hotel much
later. I had read some websites on travelling with pets and on
their recommendation bought some absorbent pads intended to be
put under bedridden people who are not continent, so there was
one of those pads in the carrier, and it seemed to have done its
job well. At the time, I felt very sorry for the cat, however,
and disgruntled again that we'd had that two-hour wait at the
airport. If not for that, he could have had a try at peeing
outside the carrier on another absorbent pad when we had our
layover in Las Vegas. It was not, of course, the best idea to
take an animal on a flight with a layover in the first place, but
the tickets were incredibly cheap. He doesn't seem to have
suffered any permanent damage.

Eric and I both had orange juice to drink. America West gives
you a whole can of it to yourself, even if the flight is full,
which this one certainly was. (Sun Country, an airline that on
the whole I like about as well as it is possible for me to like
an airline, provided very mingy little glasses packed with ice on
my return trip, even though the flight was not full.)

Neither Toliman nor I much cared for the somewhat bumpy landing
in Las Vegas. We didn't care for Vegas at all, really. It was
95 degrees at eleven p.m., and the air conditioning was laboring
with it. The place was streaming with people and bonging and
beeping and pinging and shouting with those goddamned slot
machines. I'd like to personally take a wrench to every single
one of the bloody things. Eric and I had hoped that the airport
would be mostly deserted at that time of night, but it looked
like rush hour to me. We did find a spot behind a bank of
vending machines, near a bank of storage lockers, that had
seating and no people. We put Toliman's leash on him and let him
come out. He immediately tried to go behind the bank of lockers,
and then under it. This was the first we had seen of his
burrowing instinct. He would not eat or drink anything.

We found seats as near to our gate as we could endure to be --
there were banks of slot machines rampaging away in the central
area that the gate seating was arranged around. Eric had to make
a telephone call to the people in Berkeley that he was subletting
a room from, while standing right between those infernal machines
and a Taco Bell full of noisy people. He did manage to get the
information he needed -- the names of the people who would be
home to give him the key, and a time for the rendezvous. Then he
went to stand in line at the Taco Bell, since we had shared the
veggieburger on the plane and were still hungry. Toliman was
trying to keep an eye on every passing person and jump at every
slot-machine sound all at once. I tried putting my sweater over
the carrier again, but it was just too damn hot, and he developed
a disturbing tendency to pant. This is a bad sign in cats. I
tried wiping water into the corners of his mouth, and he absently
licked it, but he certainly didn't get much that way.

Eric brought me a bean burrito without cheese and with extra
lettuce, and we crammed our food down. Then I went to find the
bathroom. I came back with the news on the tip of my tongue that
the bathrooms were freezing cold and maybe we'd like to take
Toliman into one, but it was time to board. It was a mercy Eric
was keeping track of that, because I was past doing anything so
useful.

This flight was much less crowded, so I suggested that Eric might
want to put the cat carrier under the middle seat, which would
provide more leg room for Eric and more ventilation for the cat.
We were very worried about the ventilation; he was panting from
time to time still, and those little nozzles are not meant to get
air under the seats. Toliman made a lot of fuss during takeoff.
Once we had levelled out, Eric just put the carrier on the seat
between us and opened the top of it. When airline personnel came
by, he shut it again, but Toliman got a reasonable ration of
cooler air and stopped panting so much. I put some water on his
fur, but Eric scolded me for blocking the airflow. I didn't
blame him a bit.

This flight was mercifully short and also about ten minutes
early. Eric told me we would be coming in over water, and
pointed it out later, a dark faintly glimmering space lined in
one far spot with lights that it reflected.

We trudged along to the baggage carousel. Eric went outside to
have a cigarette while we waited, and after a moment I trailed
after him and discovered that it was beautifully cool, almost
cold, outside, a temperature for which I would ordinarily put on
a sweater. I just revelled in it. After we got our luggage, we
attempted to follow the signs for the Blue Air Train, which we
needed to take to get to the Rental Car Center. We got there,
although we had to go down and over and up again until we came to
a high open platform with train rails on either side. It was
very clean and new and science-fictional, oddly lit, hanging in
the middle of nowhere and surrounded by unrecognizable lights.

I was completely mentally useless by this time, and objected to
almost everything, but did eventually consent to believe that
after hours, which this certainly was, we had to take the Red Air
Train instead. I think it was as we rattled along with our
luggage in the fine new mostly glassed-in little train, with its
red LED announcements and its automated voice ("Please hold on.
Please set luggage cart brake to ON. We are approaching
Westfield Road. Please keep clear of the doors" etc.), that Eric
first said to me, "There are the hills!" There they were too,
lights climbing a darkness that was darker than the sky. We also
saw Mars, which cheered us. And we admired the great height of
the tracks the train ran on, and I at least admired the very
graceful lines of the freeways I could see, so different from the
Twin Cities' cramped ugly dangerous mess.

After we had left the train and performed some more up and down
and sideways stuff, we found the Thrifty booth in the echoing
garage. I stayed with the bags and talked to Toliman, who had
developed a habit of answering rather sharply by now. After a
series of protracted steps and much waving of paperwork, which I
remember was also the case the times that Raphael and I rented
cars in Arizona, we were handed over to the tender mercies of a
gray Dodge Stratus. We had signed up for an economy car, but
they were out, so we got this capacious four-door object instead.
We were to be very glad of this later. In the meantime our
luggage pretty much disappeared into the trunk and left space for
a small elephant or a couple of gazelles.

I had put Toliman into the back seat, and Eric opined that
Toliman might like to sit in the front. I said he might in fact,
but the air bag made that the wrong choice. I said I'd sit in
the back with Toliman if that would help, but Eric said that
wasn't necessary. We were both completely exhausted by then, but
really we might have had a very similar conversation in more
normal states, except that Eric would have been more likely to
remember about the air bag.

We drove off to Belmont, where I had found a very nice deal on a
minisuite with kitchen in a Motel 6. I had reserved it when we
thought we would be staying there for a week; now we had the
sublet, starting Saturday, but for the nonce it was, as we had
decided, very useful to be a mere nine-minute drive from the
airport. Eric had slightly mislaid his memory of the Yahoo Maps
directions, and we had never gotten around to printing them --
the upstairs wiring of the network is in disarray at the moment,
at my house -- so we had a brief time of bleary frustration when
we could see the hotel from the highway but we couldn't figure
out how to get there. Eric, who was exhibiting a remarkably good
sense of direction for the hour, finally decided that a turn he
had felt "looked weird," which it did, seeming to narrow and be
weed-grown and to peter out in a parking lot, was the right way,
and after going around a sharp turn the weird road turned out to
be reasonable after all.

Then we had to find the "night window." It turned out to be just
to the right of the lobby doors where the sign was located that
said we should use it, but we originally drove right past it and
then were too tired to see it, and drove round and round the big
complex of buildings, complaining justifiably about the lack of
useful signage.

It was about five a.m. Minneapolis time by now. Toliman had been
in the carrier for eleven hours, and while we two humans had had
more freedom of motion and moreover knew why this entire
ridiculous enterprise was being undertaken, perhaps we did not
feel much better. In any case, when we came back around to the
lobby entrance in hope of finding more information, and thus came
unexpectedly upon the night window, the woman working behind it
was charming and wide-awake and obligingly changed the room from
Smoking to Non-Smoking for me, and moved it to the second floor
from the third. I unfortunately elected to be honest and said we
were only staying two days, so she had to raise the price, but we
had already decided to stick with the kitchen, and we were to be
glad of that decision also.

Around buildings to park the car; a bit of wandering to find the
entrance, during which Eric was curious enough to stop and
examine a couple of young trees, well spotlit even at so late an
hour, and to say that he thought they must be redwoods; a ride in
the elevator; and, at last, the room. The first thing we did was
to let Toliman out. While Eric set up the portable litterbox in
the bathroom, Toliman ran about trying to climb the walls and
alternately panting and yelling. I didn't blame him in the
least. I set out food and water for him. He walked up to them
and stuck his nose near them, but he was too agitated to actually
eat or drink. He did use the litterbox as soon as Eric was done
arranging it.

We opened the window, letting in a splendid cool breeze and the
sound of the nearby freeway, and went to bed.

Pamela