Amusing myself in 16B to Detroit

5am start to my summer vacation adventure. Actually, 4:30 as I woke before the alarm from disturbed dreams of stuff I've forgotten to do. It's a heady mix of excitement and anxiety this solo traveling, heading out for another big dive into the unknown. In March it was Senegal, now following up with Istanbul. Non Rev flying is definitely not for the faint hearted: changing listings on the fly, on the tiny screen of my cellphone, while slogging through TSA, surrounded by disheveled passengers who must shop the sale bins at Goodwill for their travel attire. I knew it'd be rough, with the 5:19 #45 bus to UW light rail populated only with homeless street people trying to grab some comfort in the predawn. Then the major hurdle, the roulette game of getting a seat. Despite my best efforts, I missed by one (!) on the 9:42a to DTW, which means a major reshuffling of onward flights, and doing cost/benefit analysis of sleeping over at some midwestern airport hotel and trying again in 24 hours. I never was skilled at mental math gymnastics, but I do OK. I remind myself that I signed up for this, and it's a good contrast to the safe and boring life I get to lead for large parts of a year. So, after closing out a challenging 8 week stint of teaching ESL to a group of students who don't accept that attendance is vital to success, I'm off for a possible 4-week trip trying to keep to a budget of $200/day, or $5,600, (!) when you do the math. The travel incidentals add up, so I brought along some snacks in the shapes of roos and bears, plus the last handful of cherries of the summer from my emptied out fridge at home. Trying to avoid coming home to an applicance that filled with science projects. I treated myself to crazy expensive coffee and croissant at Floret, near Gate A3, where I eventually had to quit the standby list for MSP at 0 unassigned seats, with 6 more senior priority people ahead of me. You sneak peeks at each other, playing the game, trying to figure out who's gonna miss the flight. Today it was one guy who misread the departure time, and someone else, plastic cup of beer in hand at 10am. "Beer thirty" can sometimes work to your advantage, but not always. Case in point: Air France from Dakar last March, where I lost my seat opportunity to an insociant French slosh who held up the departure by being fetched by the gate staff from the airport bar. What I said to myself was far from polite, as he staggered to the gate thinking he had all the time in the world.