Dec. 14, 1998 by Joan
It was weird being home and it was weird getting home. Weirdest of all was the first half hour on the ground. After our Air France flight touched down at JFK in New York, we rushed over to a tiny terminal to catch a puddle-jumper to Pittsburgh, where Eric's family was waiting for us. So that's why our flight home was so cheap--the last part was on a tiny little plane, instead of a 737.

"Hey baby, how ya doin'?!!" he yelled. And then, conspiratorially: "There was a big fight at the settlement. Stephen got a little tough ... Don't make me angry. Only one person can make me angry ..."

He was the kind of guy you just hate right off. But that wasn't good enough for him. He had to continue. It turns out he was looking for an old "friend" who had worked at Sands Casino in Atlantic City, N.J. A hundred of us fellow passengers cringed as we listened to him try to push his way into various casino offices, over the phone.

"Can you transfer me to the hosts? Because I'm a high roller... I'm calling from Israel..." He showed no embarrassment to any of us at this blatant lie. "Oh, I've been friends with him for gosh, 20 years. .. Are you serious? That's where he started ... Tell me, when he left, how high was he? He was still JUST A HOST? I thought he would be higher... I can't believe he left without telling me." And so on.

I wrote down his whole end of the conversation in my ticket holder. In a way, it was nice to hear an American accent again. But this guy's crassness made both of us cringe.

Finally, our puddle-jumper came. Again, everything that happened came across to us as a symbol of the U.S. Our hostess, with long bangs that fell in her eyes, had a thick Bronx accent. She herded us into a 12-seater? and then proceeded to badger us into following all the rules everyone usually breaks on bigger planes. I mean, she walked up to the guy sitting next to the emergency door, looked him in the eye, and said, "This door weighs (I forget). Can you lift that?" "We're going to throw the door this way, OK?" she said, indicating those of us at the back of the plane. All I could think was, Hey, how are we gonna get out?

Then came my first brush with American authorities. I had bucked the system by choosing to sit next to Eric in the back right of the plane, instead of my assigned seat, up in the front left. I told the stewardess just so she wasn't confused. She rolled her eyes and then told me how if someone else was assigned to my seat, she would try to convince them to switch, but would I please not try that again because some people just don't switch. Luckily for me, she then turned her attentions across the aisle and practically beat up the guy next to me in an attempt to get him to stuff his luggage entirely under the seat.

When we finally took off, our Bronx stewardess spent the whole flight on the phone, presumably with the pilot.

On the way over, Eric and I took bets. Would Eric's parents make it to the airport? We had told them our flight carrier, number and arrival time, but it turned out all that information had changed by the time we got on the flight. I forget the details, but instead of arriving on Delta 505 at 6:30, we arrived on Trans-States? 1305 at 6:10, or something like that. And who knows how many times they changed the Gate number. I figured there was no way Eric's parents would find us.

But they did. They were standing right at the gate, looking of course, a little different than they had the last time we saw them, a year-and-a-half earlier. Eric's dad seemed a little stout, and they both looked a little tired. But they looked good anyway, and it was great to see them. Within 24 hours they just looked like themselves again.

It was so good to be back home that we weren't even too pissed when we discovered that our puddle-jumper airline, Trans-States or whoever they were, had lost one of our two bags (we were travelling light since we had left our bikes back in Paris, where we picked them up when we flew back to Europe). They ended up delivering it to the house a day later.

When we got to the car, a big sign was plastered all over the back window: Welcome Home Joan and Eric. Eric's dad had designed it himself on his computer. When we got home, there was another one across the door. We felt like stars.

Next: Pittsburgh

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