Donnie is back home, safe and sound.  His thoughts.....
On Thursday I was cutting lawn weeds, and walked into a tree limb, putting a gash on my head, not a pretty thing to take on my trip to Ocean City. (There's nothing that says "old" quite as unpleasantly as a scab on a bald head.) But that pain was nothing compared to the misery of air travel.

I don't suppose it has changed much, physically, since I first took wing, but I have. While younger travelers seem to take it all in stride, and have their gadgets to keep them busy, I have lost almost all patience with the discomforts and the unattractive crowds. There's nothing like an airport and a plane trip to give one the feeling humanity has gone terribly awry. We should never have ventured into the skies: instead, we might have developed rail travel ever more, and had now high-speed, clean, comfortable, economical, scenic, and cheerful mass transport across America. But of course, I don't think we should even have gone to automobiles, the single most evident source of most of our social and economic woes.

Airline travel consist of...

Airport arrival--the barren sterility of vast, hot parking lots, man-made deserts, the oppressive monotony of countless vehicles that all look alike, and here and there dazed, exhausted travelers trying to remember where their own vehicles are waiting.

The check-in--a crowded, confusing, tiring juggle of stuff and people, luggage, papers, kids, in a human atmosphere of scowling impatience.

Security--welcome to a chamber of anxiety and paranoia.

The wait--among crowds of unkempt, unhealthy, self-absorbed, inconsiderate humanity in t-shirts and flip-flops, the offense compounded by the memory of a time when people put on their best clothes and best behavior to travel.

At last, the flight--a claustrophobic packaging and hermetic transport of fleshy stuff.

And finally (probably much delayed), the arrival--a Rorschach repeat of the black misery of departure.

But apparently a guardian angel took pity on me, and a no-show on the last Austin leg created the only empty seat on the plane--next to me.