troisième année

It’s season number three and I think I may have gotten a little to cavalier for this deployment business. My confidence in my knowledge of “the ropes” as it were, may have been a little misguided, or at least a little lazy if nothing else. “Why?” might you ask, well I will get to that part but I suppose I will start from the beginning.

This year has been a bit different, being in the states til October has given me the unusual feeling of getting used to the real world before I have to leave it. It tends to take a full six months to get back in the swing of life outside the snowglobe, so usually by winfly (August) I am just about normal again before it’s time to head back. But this time, leaving in October, I had a little more time for the memories to fade and see fall and get used to life outside of Raytheon’s jurisdiction for a good while. Seeing as how I knew what was coming, knew what to pack, knew what to expect (plus most of my life had been packed up before my trip to Oregon) I kind of left the real packing until a day or so before and spent most of my final week seeing friends and fielding questions from Chelsea about what was coming, what to pack, what to expect. The packing went alright and there was hardly any of the usual build-up I feel leading to the long trip out of the US, I even got to sleep early the night before. But the morning of, at 5am I woke up with a bad feeling, I just kind of doubted the whole idea of going all the sudden, which was silly and probably just a sudden compilation of tiny doubts I usually have in amore spread out fashion, but not a good start to the day regardless.

Me and my dad caught the 7:55 ferry so we would have plenty of time (or so we thought) and met Ben under the viaduct for a quick goodbye. Then had a fairly leisurely breakfast near the airport, at which time I should have known I was cursed since we kept talking about how much time I had before my flight. Uhg, I was so young, so misguided, so foolhardy back then…If only I knew then what I know now, now that I am hours upon hours older and wiser.

So I get to the airport and I hadn’t really bothered to weigh my bag at home because my luggage has never been overweight. I guess at this point I had just grown accustomed to being able to judge 45lbs of stuff so it hadn’t really occurred to me to double check before I left the house. Of course this occurs to me once I got to the airport so after throwing it on the scale I discover that it weighs 60lbs…10lbs over the allowed weight by the airline and more weight then I wanted to start out with considering I still have some gear to pick up in Chch and the Raytheon limit is 75lbs. So instead of paying the 75 bucks for the extra weight I proceed to get rid of things, a towel, my extra pair of slipper, and so on…if only I had known that extra 10 or 15 minutes was going to cost me a hell of a lot more then 75 bucks I would have gone ahead and checked my overweight bag. I get my bag in at 50lbs only to be told I was about 5 minutes too late, not only to check my bags but basically to check in for the flight…yes, I had gotten my flight time wrong…oh the irony. I am usually one of those people who shows up super early to the airport, one of those people who checks with an annoying amount of extra time to spare, one of those people who always has time to get a cup of tea and read all of their magazines while waiting at the gate, but this time I hadn’t bothered to double check my flight time. Why? Who the fuck knows, I can’t believe I did it myself. I seriously can’t believe it. Seriously.

The question was, what to do from there. I could get on a flight to Denver 4 or 5 hours later OR I could find another airline. Knowing that 4 or 5 more hours in the airport pondering my own incompetence and how it may impact my job, getting on a flight through a different airline (only an hour after my originally scheduled one) seemed like the most sanity-saving option. Probably one of the more expensive mistakes I’ve ever made but I try not to dwell on these things…though I know I will. Cause that’s what I do, I am a dweller of things.

I get a ticket on the hour later flight, but you know what buying a ticket last minute means…more airport security. &^%$#&())%$#@&)$@!!#!!! I had to be flagged for extra security crap my first year when I was headed to Denver and there had been a mix up with my plane tickets (that time it was Raytheon’s fault not mine) or perhaps I just look menacing but I didn’t remember it being all that big of a deal, a peak in my carry on and a brief pat down. This time around was a little more extensive, thank god the pat down was still brief, but everything else was not. They had to do the whole, take-every-single-item-out-of-my-bag-and-inspect-it routine, including my extra pair of underwear that I always pack in case of checked bag lossage (one of the many things I have learned from Katie Leum). Then they sent my bag through the x-ray dealy a few times just for good measure. All the while the minutes to my freshly purchased flight ticking away. I didn’t help things move along when my brain once again went on vacation and I forgot to take off my silver bracelet, prompting 2 or 3 trips through the metal detector. Seriously, where was my brain when I needed it? So I managed to stuff everything back into my bag (gotta love how they shove it back to you in a big messy pile) just in time to make boarding call at my gate.

By the time I got on the plane and squished in next to two fairly sizable co-passengers I was in a really shitty place, it had not been a good morning. I was seriously thinking that perhaps all of this had been a sign, perhaps I was meant to ditch the Antarctic thing altogether, or perhaps my brain going on the fritz was some sort of unconscious desire to not go…a tiny part of me was sad when they closed the cabin door.

Luckily, at that moment, the guy across the aisle from me, sitting there with two extra seats next to him said “would you like some extra room?” and scooted over to the window seat so that I could have a seat and half to wallow in my crap-tacular morning. I would have hugged him…if I did that sort of thing, which I don’t…plus it probably totally would have weirded him out and made him regret putting less than an aisle between us. But wherever you are man-with-glasses-and-bose-headset, your kindness could not have come at a better time. Still far from laughing about the morning’s debacle but at least a hating on the world just a little less.

And all this time poor Chelsea who was supposed to be assured by the fact that we would be on the same flight, that I (the knowing veteran) would school her through the ways of RPSC Antarctic deployment made her flight and had to start out in Denver all by her lonesome…if I were her and the person who had gotten me into this whole mess had gone temporarily brainless and missed their flight I would be second guessing the whole venture. Luckily that was not the case.

Waiting for me in Denver were none other then Molly Kissner and Emily Keifer, former roommates extraordinaire. They were just as awesome as ever. We had a slumber party in my hotel room just to relive old times, and it was so much fun! I was tempted to kidnap them and smuggle them to the ice with me…they will be missed this season. Unfortunately I had so much fun I only slept like 3 hours which did not fair well at orientation…but oh well, I never sleep well the first night in Denver because of the altitude anyway. And it’s not as if there is anything at orientation worth staying awake for…there were a few changes this year but for the most part it was same old same old.and amounted to a big waste of time. Top it off with a flu shot and a Hello Kitty band-aid and that’s most of my lovely time in Denver….god I hate Denver.