Flying in America

Been on the road a couple of weeks.

Left ORD for SFO.

Flying into the Bay Area I look down at beautiful California. I don’t know what heaven looks like but if I was to guess it’s like these beautiful rolling green hills. Down and around the lower bay. Slow descent north.

I love this city. I love all American cities. I love the urban cloth. I love the rough streets.

You get harassed. Yeah. But I’m a New Yorker. I was raised in Central London. I currently live in Chicago.

I love graffiti and alleys and subways.

I walk through Chinatown past trucks of dead pigs. Someone tries to hustle me for change and I tell them to back off. That’s all it takes.

Keep your Olive Garden walls and mall cops.

Someone tells me they hate San Francisco. Thanks for the warning. You hate these hills we ain’t never going to be deep soul friends.

I walk around North Beach.

I have morning coffee at Trieste.

I catch the red eye out. A beautiful 787. A Dreamliner. When this jet first went airborne I had to go to Asia to catch a ride on one. That’s how weird I am.

Now it’s on the red eye route SFO to EWR. Newark.

The plane air is fresh. The cabin quiet. I sit next to baby, but the baby crashes out and so do I.

We land in Newark and I need to catch another jet to Albany.

My trip has morphed from a video game conference to my son, who had an accident. I fly to Albany and rent a car, head into the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts.

The world transforms again to the small villages and winding roads of Berkshire County.

My son is in a provincial hospital. I visit him a couple of times but he’s pretty out of it.

I wake up the next morning not feeling so great. He’s heading home so I transfer to a motel closer to his home. On the way over I sideswipe a mailbox on a county road. Something is not right with me. The woman comes out of her house and tells me not to worry about it.

I get to motel and test for COVID.  Positive.

36 hours straight of sleeping. I’m wasted.

My doctor calls me and says new guidelines are if after 5 days you feel okay start to travel again. Wear a mask.

Three days in this dingy motel and I flee to Stockbridge. I get a room and trek up the hill the Shrine of Divine Mercy.

I’ve been here before. I’m calling in the angels and saints. I kiss the relic of Saint Faustina and ask for her miraculous intervention for my son.

I ask the priest to bless a rosary I purchase. I have some praying to do. He obliges and drenches me in holy water.

The next morning I get to Albany and I’m stuck. By now I’m making things up as I go. There’s no seats on airplanes for me. I overnight in downtown Albany.

The next day weather delays the flight again. I sit in the airport and wait. One hour. Two. Six. They’re tornadoes in the Midwest. You need to be careful. You don’t want to accidentally land in Oz.