Sacramento Airport

I type this missive from the Sacramento airport on a four-hour layover between Las Vegas, NV and Portland, OR. From Portland I will take a three-hour train (or, if necessary, bus) back to Tacoma in time to begin a shift behind the bar that will end at 1:00 a.m. (twenty-two hours from now). All sleep will be interrupted by the touchdown of landing gear and the grinding of wheels on rails.

This, of course, is how I designed this trip. Extended travel times, far from bothering me (as they do for many Americans and others), provide necessary downtime. One must account for changing scenery; traveling hundreds of miles takes time, and one ought to feel as such when embarking on a massive voyage.

Beyond that basic principle lies a yet-more-basic observation. What human, given wireless internet access and several interesting books, would truly regret having booked several hours completely alone (barring occasional vacuuming janitors) in an airline terminal? Sole possession of such a large piece of real estate, normally so possessed by other people, cannot help but soothe.

Perhaps the choice is personal. After all, the main pleasure in my day derives from spending hours in pensive solitude with little more to occupy me than a stolen internet connection. The free wireless available at most of America's airports is both more consistent and faster. Those who do not share my passion for hypertext will be excused for thinking my day-swallowing itinerary to be both insane and stupid. And they will excuse me for grimacing in annoyance when I hear gripes about being "stuck at the airport for hours." Do we really do anything so important or riveting with our time that some time spent in an airport terminal is automatically to be counted as a loss? At the very least, such periods should be regarded as the acceptable consequence of a transportation infrastructure that is the envy of much of the rest of the world.