Starts, four AM. Be there promptly at 4:15. Bus rolls by 4:25. You're not on it, you're gone.

No pulling a George.

Nancy is there in her platform sandals and fur coat as if she's going to board a fabulous ocean liner and not deal with the dirty, unpleasant realities of modern plane transportation.

She and her husband nest under it on the way to Sondrio. They make a cute couple sometimes.

Past Bormio there's not much worth watching. The tunnels are closed for inspection and its all through small towns for the next sixty miles. Sub-tunnels and the grinding grade of a river channeling for millions of years and the towns it supported.

4 am, they aren't happy to hear us go by.

Stop for coffee some place so far distant as to be the precise middle of nowhere. Big joint. Caffe for autobus. Get your grind on, get a shot of something lungo.

A week here and people are still asking for decaf and I can count in hours the amount of time I will finally be free of these accursed Angelinos and their subordinate ways. I am not with them, I want to mouth with every transaction.

I think perhaps thats evident.

At the airport Wayne turns to me and with a devilish grin asks "You sure you don't want to stay?"

He's going to Nice and a bunch of other places that I'm sure would be stirring for a man of any age. He has a painting of a woman with him now. I have no idea where he found her. She may be smuggled on-board -- I wouldn't put it past them.

Good to see adventure can still be found at that age.

It pains my young man's heart to decline. I still have bathrooms to repair and moreover, I am carrying sixty pounds of recreational ski equipment that I would be hard pressed to part with or face carry.

Malpensa makes you burn for real security in the US. Not this shoe taking, wand waving bullshit we have in the US but -real- security.

When we check in we go through security. Since we will all be standing around in long lines with a bunch of luggage we will be at the mercy of anyone who doesn't like us very much.

Certain nations get this treatment. The Britons, the Americans, the Israelis. Maybe more, I'm not certain.

Makes one question one's resolve toward one's nationality. Do I really want to be blown up for my country?

Not as it stands, no. I'd take one for Northern California in a heartbeat, but nobody would much want after us unless we shut the water off to the southland.

I don't want to die for the woman who has et herself into a wheelchair and into blindness and has a family the whole way and they somehow deserve special treatment here for having gotten into such a state.

Would I take one for that?

Hell no. In that case, sign me up for a court in the Hague because I am a nationless citizen at that moment. Me? I'd like to emigrate to Canada but the facist Americans won't let me go. Viva Canada! Basso US!

The ElUnreadable check-in is frisked heavily by a small fast-moving woman who is not averse to going through purses or looking under each and every desk and questioning anyone's sanity who might leave a bag there unattended.

This is security. When ElUnreadable takes off it will do so under armed guard. Another armed guard questions baggage handlers, inspects tags. Everything is done out in the open like a Las Vegas transaction.

This is security. What we have is a sham. Smoke and mirrors for an eagerly believing audience.

My passport will be checked two more times before I get on this plane.

7:45 is a reasonable flight, the downside is that it dumps you into JFK and the grinding nightmare that is customs and security with skis, boots, poles and where the hell are my skis this time and oh, nice contraband doggie. I have nothing tasty for you, little pot-bellied friend.

So hard to say "I don't have anything" to a kindly dog. "What," the customs agent will ask. "Are you lying to my dog? Are you saying that this dog is not doing his job properly?"

You will look down upon those jowls and fucking burst into tears sobbing, confess your worldly sins, anything that might have been in your backpack.

"Well, you see, there were these cute hippie girls one time and they had some questionable looking food in their backpacks" and

OhHolyChristHe'llSmellTheChocolate

One's consciousness is fragmented at such an hour.

When the hell is it, exactly? Middle of the day Sunday.

As vicious as losing time in the eastbound time warp, putting it back on again is twice as ugly.

You can go to sleep on the plane for three hours and wake up and its still only a little after nine and the chair hasn't grown an extra five inches in the last nine minutes and suddenly one realizes the true nature of economy ticketing in three abreast and good lord...

How much more humanity can I take?

Passport guy was funny. Clearly awake and geared up for his job when I went through. I toss the passport down with the requisite "give me a stamp, geek" that one needs to prod their west coast cousins into action.

"Whoa!" he'd said, quietly.

No mocking followed. Lets see, he thought.

Stamps, stamps, stamps. Inflow and outgo. Like this guy collected them in his head.

Ah, Livigno. Tax free haven in Winterland. Wonder what sort of undeclared liquor he's carrying.

Everything but the goddamned chocolate and please little dog I am just waiting for my skis to appear for the fifteenth time.

They appear in some freight elevator that looks like at one time it had perhaps lifted a used Chevy block up an down a few times just to work out.

I'm sure alarms are sounding and guys with guns are coming to check our papers even at this moment.

Our bags go into a large triage pile and its only that we're assumed marginally screened that nobody freaks the fuck out.

Lady at Malpensa. She looks like an over-sized Wanda Sykes. Her boy looks like some kind of caricature of the All-American Black Athlete. Big. Unless you had heard her introduce him proudly as her son you wouldn't have noticed an age difference.

"SECURITY! SECURITY! How come nobody is coming? SECURITY"

The words aren't right but the commotion.

"There's a BAG HERE."

The guard is like "huh..."

Suddenly, crowing from a group at least three times passed the bag in question. They are between it and him and gesticulate wildly like perhaps it will sense the guard's coming and take everyone between it and him out and GOOD CHRIST WE ARE RIGHT IN THE LINE OF THAT UGLY SWEATER AND IF IT EXPLODES WE ARE ALL SCREWED."

The bag gets dealt with properly. Italians are very low key until something needs doing, then they leap into action.

Drama. Second installment. Kid and his dumpy American girlfriend have got-to-get-to-the-front-of-the-line, plane leaves, plane leaving.

Jesus, why don't I speak Italian?

My plane-o, leaves-o, five-minutes-o ago-o?

So screwed. For fierce line warriors the Italians are generous and let them go. In the US they would have been flayed.

Act three: "For the love of God, what does it cost (colloq?) for us to get on the plane?"

A play for four actors.

Daughter: Oh god, oh god, the plane!

Security Screener: What, am I to wipe my ass with it?

Father: For the love of all that is holy! Why cannot you let her on the plane? What does it cost to get on the plane? She has a bag, and this bag and she must get on the plane or (some sort of world-ending calamity will ensue, perhaps involving a dead relative)"

Daughter: Jesus, dad! Leave it be!

Father: No! I demand justice! This girl must get aboard this plane? Why do you not love a man so? Why must you be tortuous, your heart dead and alone?

Security Guard Two: What is this then?

Father, Daughter: The plane the plane! We must get (her,me) on the plane! The Death of Relatives! The end of the world draws neigh!

Security Two: We must go this way.

Father, Daughter, Security Two exeunt.

Author, Security Guard One shrug, exchange eye contact that says "well, what can you do?"

That was forty miles ago and lord God would I kill for some McDonalds right now. Welcome back to America, colon. Here's a couple of cheeseburgers to keep you happy.

No, but Sbarros will do.

Indiana Jones has not had such an exodus. Sbarros is fifteen miles away, so far one contemplates an extra slice.

In the line straight NYC -- yo! yo! Guy swings like a chimpanzee, rolls five minutes of near song and dance and its a patois I didn't think actually existed.

You go, white kid.

All the girls in the departure terminal look the same to me. Perhaps its only the depressed girls who go to SFO or something. Try to find meaning in the hippy villes and cold aire.

Whatever, they all seem to do their thing the same here, a fine line between warm and butch. Ski hats, heavy clunker boots. An Italian woman walks by guiding her family and she's splendid like a peacock.

Fifteen sets of eyes behind fifteen sets of cats eyes watch those thighs roll by and all the girls mouth "bitch" silently.

Some may have mouthed "whore". I am not certain.

I am seated to a nice brown man who makes me think of Raj and he makes some good humanizing joke early on and it is great to be in America where the best thing you can do is make a funny joke to say that you too think this whole thing is kind of nonsense.

Are you willing to lift seventy-five pounds, open the door, show others the way?

Certainly, I'm an Eagle Scout too. Does this mean we'll not be able to find someplace private on the way back? Surely I can brief a replacement for those few short hours?

That is all ahead of me, or behind me when that passport hits that desk and we see Livigno and the dueling Pisa exit stamps and a short story of airports and destinations and who I think I am by way of my world travel.

Stamp.

"Welcome home," he says.

Despite it all, I am home. And it was all kind of worth it.

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