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Lounging Around

I should be done writing about airports, but indulge me once more. This is a story about greed, endurance, and an airport lounge. The greed, well, let’s just call it penny-pinching, was my own. The endurance and the airport lounge were the result.

Of course, I am not against economizing, though I practice it perhaps less than I should. But looking at the cost of a trans-oceanic round-trip flight, I decided using airline miles was the solution. I get miles on my credit card, and thus, there is no bill too small to press the plastic to the payment terminal.

I had enough miles to get me where I needed to go, but no direct flight was available. My destination required either a five-hour stopover in Madrid or an 11-hour gap in London.

The logical thing to do would have been to opt for Madrid, but I don’t speak Spanish; I was traveling alone and thought if anything went wrong (and things have regularly been going wrong on my flights), I would be just one more lost beyond-middle-age traveler (oh, it pains me to write that) in a confusing world.

Instead, I chose the 11-hour stopover in London. At least they spoke a version of my language. And what, I asked myself, could be the total impact of 11 hours when weighed against a lifetime? Don’t ask. Eleven hours can, indeed, seem like a lifetime, even in the business class lounge.

People came, people went. I stayed…and stayed…and stayed. The attendant vacuuming the floor worked around me as though I was a potted plant.

No one seemed to notice but Anthony, one of the waiters in the lounge. He served me at the coffee bar. When he saw me in the same seat three hours later, he came over to ask if I wanted something else and came back to check twice more. He might have been checking to see if I had frozen in my seat. When he told me his shift was over and he was leaving, I thanked him for his concern and allowed as how with any luck, I would be gone by the time he returned the next day.

I tried to pass the time reading. I had two books downloaded on my cell phone; what worried me was not my choice of literature but whether the phone had enough battery power.

There is a crazy chauvinism about charging batteries: countries make their sockets so they will not connect to other nations’ plugs. I had to forage through my backpack for the converter, which, when found, had a problem. It was stuck, so I couldn’t push out the plug for the United Kingdom. I was afraid if I tried too hard, I might damage the converter I needed for the different outlets in continental Europe. I did the only thing possible: nothing and hoped for the best.

I had two very different books: American Prometheus, the biography of atomic scientist Robert Oppenheimer and Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, a book about the making of The Godfather, the title coming from a now-classic line ad-libbed in the movie. Oddly, skipping from one to the other worked out better than quantum physics and Italian pastry would suggest.

The literature created a cannoli craving. There were none at the copious buffet table, where the food, like British English, was recognizable but not quite the same. Remember the famous quote attributed to Marie Antoinette, when told there was no bread for hungry Parisians: Let Them Eat Cake. I chose, over the afternoon, four flaky rolls. I could just hear the French queen, who came to such an unfortunate end, saying, “Let Them Eat Croissants.”

As my tenth hour in the lounge approached, I started looking at the departure board. That meant dealing with the 24-hour clock and remembering to subtract 12 from the hours after noon. My flight was leaving at 19:00 hours, seven pm in my world.

Thank goodness it was not delayed. My staying power was exhausted. I don’t really exhale until a plane takes off, but as we left the ground, I gave myself a silent cheer. Eleven hours is not a time any marathon runner would mention with pride, but for a marathon sitter, it was a notable personal record and a record I hope never to break.