Can’t wait to look out a window at some international airlines. Soon. Don’t even know what Emirates looks like? Just that we don’t have seats up by the lounge and the beds and the shower

3AM Up. A little leftover coffee. Last minute packing. Little bottles of special face wash from Whole Foods; hotel shampoo from last time…just in case there is still one single hotel in the entire world without shampoo; the usual face cream, toothbrushes and tiny paste, couple extra combs, etc. I mention this only because there’s eventual drama involved. Took a shower just before bed, laid out airline clothes—stretchy warm attractively-ugly everything.

3:30AM Try to remember why I go deeply in debt and moderately in-stress and use up all my flex and comp time which could be expended on long weekends with Netflix, Nordic Noir and taking photos of the cherry tomatoes I’ve just baked—for this travel obsession I cannot quite shake. Maybe when I have to start taking the little cart thing from gate to gate or have an attendant wheel me around I’ll quit.

4:00AM My kind son takes me to the airport—where I forget my passport at Check In and then discover, as I pick up my bag of three ounce bottle and assorted stuff after security,  one or more have oozed their contents onto toothbrushes, combs and the apple I stuck in there to munch—while bad people were eating big greasy things for their airport breakfast I would feel superior—now I’m just throwing little bottles away, washing toothbrushes and the apple and feeling stupid.

5:35AM Boarding a plane that is so narrow I cannot wheel my little bag designed for under the seat down the aisle. Honestly soon we will be standing and clinging to straps just like the subway.

8:45AM (PST)  I feel myself getting HAPPY. At San Francisco airport, some time to kill. Don’t really want to eat but maybe I will since I have a couple more hours before LAX and meeting my travel buddies. Right now I’m having Fig Newtons. And that is just wrong because they are so clearly Road Trip Food. And whatever else this trip turns out to be it is definitely Not a Road Trip.

9:00AM Off to breakfast. Maybe I’ll have a Bloody Mary. Nah…I’ll look like a lush.

P.S. The tiny plane is a CRJ700 Canadian Regional Jet. And my very good (but fat and heavy) book is The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, the Playboy Prince. It’s a respected history from a reputable scholar and, at the same time, quite chatty and juicy. Love it. The best of all worlds.

And just to defend myself I have recently or in the not too distant past, read histories and novels and travel lit for all of the places we’re going. Not quite true, haven’t read a single thing about Kuwait but then we were all present as George the First marched us in there. I do have Lonely Planet for the Middle East with me so I can do that on my 16 hours flight to Dubai.

Cheerio.