every time i get on a plane, ever since i first traveled on my own and not under the watchful eye of the generic parental units, i walk down the gangway and as i step through the heavy door i extend the index- and middle-fingers of my right hand together, kiss them and press them against the fuselage as i pass through. every time i get off again i repeat the procedure with my left hand. the hand isn't important per se - it's just that this is the bit i can easily reach. the funny thing is that no flight attendant have ever commented to me about it, or even visibly noticed - not even on Virgin Blue flights where the hosties seem to get paid to have a little bit more personality.
beforehand i tend to wind up sitting in the departure lounge staring out the window, invariably eyeing off the plane that's about to take me wherever it is i'm going. once i get there i'm off without a backward glance, but before the flight? this is when i got time to kill. the problem is that i have a fairly good brain for mechanics, so i wind up appreciating the engineering that goes into these beasts of burden and invariably this means pondering what can go wrong. things like a hydraulic hose on the landing gear that was missed by maintenance which bursts when the gear retracts, preventing the gear from deploying for landing. or microfractures in the engine mounts that cause one of them to shear mid-flight "Donnie Darko"-style, causing the plane to spiral out of control. a calculation error in the GPS that makes the plane think it's higher than it should be and auto-correct into the wrong airspace. don't get me wrong - i've no fear of flying whatsoever, and the closest to fear i've ever come to when flying was the last time i flew into Melbourne: i was on the Red Eye Horror out of Perth and was so exhausted when i left that i passed out within a minute or two of the seatbelt light turning off, pillow between my skull and bulkhead, snoring away until i woke with a start to howling engines and a bump. i stared out the window in confusion thinking we were crashing and wondering why it was light outside, freaking out quietly until my brain engaged, i realised that i'd slept through the entire flight and we'd just fucking landed. we're not going to crash today either. i know this because of the pure and simple knowledge that this is not in fact a good day to die. that day will inevitably come, but my headbones tell me that it isn't today and i trust my headbones.
i remember when Going Somewhere was a major production - organise for this or that to be done, lock the bike up secure and out of sight, secure the car. organise with the housemates, emergency contact details, promises that i'll call mum (or the girlfriend when i have one - it's funny how often some of them wind up sounding like my mum...) AS SOON AS I LAND. have days planned out in advance, who i'll see, where i'll be, what i'm going to do. sometimes it's been a logistical nightmare, so complicated i've had to map it all out on a spreadsheet, printed calendars from Outlook complete with phone numbers in case i'm delayed and projected travel times so that i can be at each appointment on time and not miss anyone out.
i'm chockers for thursday, but i've got coffee at The Moon in Northbridge from 8:30 until 10:30 tonight with Potato Paul and if you can make it to that i'll have time for you... yeah... no, he's cool... no, i can't really push back any further, i'm meeting my brother for our annual drunken midnight stroll through Lathlain... wait... no, how about tomorrow night? we'll do a run to Alfred's Kitchen... i'll pick you up on the way through at 11, k? right. gotta go, i need to get to Spearwood now...
compared to usual, this trip to Perth has been almost lackadaisical in its planning... or lack thereof. i booked this flight yesterday at about midday. i still haven't got around to booking the flight home, in part by design but for the most part out of sheer laziness and apathy. i've got a few things on for the next couple of days i've not set too much in stone. i have my entire schedule in my head and it's not because i've got a better memory, it's just that i've kept it simple and open. my friends seem to be well trained - i advertised on my Facebook status
Peter Raven is preparing for another Tour of Duty in the battlefields of Perth...
and had a pile of people list out what times on what days they're free. it's no help for them to ask me when i want to do stuff - if they tell me when they're free i can make it all mesh... 90% of the time, anyway.
i'm not even sure why i'm going. the official reason is that i have a couple of weeks before i start work, so i might as well. Binky seems to think i'm coming over to be her savior or something. mum's convinced i'm coming to help keep her sane when my grandmother comes to visit. i'm not even really in the fucking mood. as Little Andrew was driving me to the airport (he picked me up from home and then ferried me to coffee so we could at least keep that appointment - part of the reason i booked QF719 (the 7:30PM direct flight over) was because i knew i'd be able to go to my weekly coffee at Essen beforehand) i could have sworn i told him screw it dude, i just ran out of "Give A Fuck". hang a right up Majura and make for Horse Park Drive, yeah? but either he missed it or i had a momentary disconnect between brain and mouth and it didn't make it out. i jumped out at the dropoff, thanked him and waited while he tore off in his beat up little Corolla and nothing more was said about the incident which obviously hadn't happened in the first place.
i DID need to get out of Canberra for a while - that much is for sure. i very nearly wound up hopping a flight on Delta to San Francisco, then continuing on around the bay to Santa Cruz so i could spend a week cluttering up MCG's couch (i may get around to talking about my second meeting with MCG (see Paris: unexpected delays may occur in transit...) in Copenhagen someday, but for the time being it will have to remain shrouded in mystery) but she wound up being ridiculously busy and not really in the position to entertain so the plan got the coathanger-treatment and i moved on to reconceive a better one. i pondered fucking off to Cairns or something and going diving, but being between jobs i'm watching the cash a fair bit and trying to reserve as much as possible so i can rejoin the 2 Wheel brigade as soon as humanly possible. my Old Man's bike's been sitting idle, on the other hand, and my old kit is sitting in my luggage down in the hold. parenthetically, i should probably add that my old helmet, jacket and gloves take up something in the order of 50% of the volume of the contents in that bag. if not for the fucking lid i'd be backpacking it. i pulled it out of the cupboard today, pulling on my old cordura jacket (the leather one being WAY too heavy for air travel), summer gloves and helmet and suited up for the first time in nearly a year and a half, re-adjusting everything to accommodate my considerably less rotund frame and caught myself looking at my gloved hands as i flexed my fingers and gripped the imaginary handlebars in front of me, revelling in the feeling of... rightness... or was it righteousness? i need to get another bike, and soon.
Perth's about the same cost to get to (or cheaper) as Cairns from Canberra, but it's a fuckload cheaper proposition when most of the fun i have there is social and most of my expenditure consists of beer and petrol. that, and i might be able to get a dive off Rottnest if i play my cards right.
either way, i've been somewhat unenthused... no, that's a lie. i've been struggling to give a fuck, which is strange because a week ago i was ready and rearing to go. then the afternoon rolled around on Monday and i lost the will to do much more than stare listlessly at the clouds on the horizon while i sat on the back slab drinking coffee, remembering when i was out amongst it... just... as much as i was missing being out in the world the actual impetus to get out of my chair and out of that fucking town had left me, every idea i had screamed "EFFORT!" and the needle on my "Give A Fuck-o-meter" started straining against the peg marked "Sie keine haben".
i struggled through last week, battling falling energy levels and high blood sugar. a week of fasting, careful eating, a trip to the quack and large quantities of prescription pharmaceuticals later and my sugars were dropping again, i was sleeping properly and i was moving around again, but somehow i lost the drive and i lost the care. still, i managed to pull my credit card and book the flight, i even managed to get on the fucking plane, so i can't be doing too poorly, right?
i don't know... i've been running on autopilot a lot lately. i have a sudden flurry of activity where i analyse every nuance of a conversation, then switch into Spinal mode where i do and say whatever first comes to mind and that seems to work just as well. i just roll with the punches and let my subconscious be my guide, living life like the drunk guy in a movie who's staggering down the street and seems to miraculously miss every banana peel, broken paver and pile of dog shit along the way, notices a dollar coin on the ground and when he bends to pick it up ducks his head just in time to miss being hit by an errant beer bottle. it seems like i've dodged a few bullets in the last little while, not because i have particularly good reactions, but because i just happened to get distracted by something shiny and not be standing where the bullet wanted to go. how does this relate to fucking off to Perth? fuck knows. being a Man Without A Plan isn't too bad a thing when you get in the groove and Mass Effect 2 on my Alienware laptop distracts me nicely from the the complete lack of and idea what the fuck i'm doing, as well as my inability to reliably line up a date for saturday night. i'm onto my 4th cup of the gritty brown whore's afterbirth-in-a cup that Qantas insists on calling coffee and i'll be landing in an hour or so now and i'll sort it out when i get there. might as well make the most of it. i'm either going to Perth because i have to be there or i have to be away from Canberra - which it is i'm far from caring about right now...
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