FRACTURED VACATION FRAGMENTS

Louisville International Airport - Standiford Field

I love airports.

I love the anticipation, the urgency, the packing, the hint of panic. The wonder and awe of flying. I love checking in. I love holding the boarding pass in my hands. The ticket to adventure, freedom, the unknown, happiness, new experiences, the beginning of memories.

I love arriving with time to wander around the terminal and absorb the air surrounding me. The air filled with others traveling...Their anticipation, their trepidation, their joy, their sadness, their dreams. The climate is heavy with every type of emotion and feeling.....hanging. So real you can almost reach out and touch it.

Bridget and I found our gate and within moments she went to find the smoking room. She dragged me along with her so she would not be alone. We spent five minutes with her burning one and me talking about a book I had recently read about a women who rode the rails in the smoking room because that is where the most interesting people collected and bonded.

She slightly moved her head to direct my attention to a young man fervently talking to a couple...heading to Texas (there is nothing you can't overhear if you listen) ...Her facial expression read, "He is annoying and drunk. And he does not quite fit your description of your typical interesting smoker riding the rail."

Needless to say, I was very excited to visit Florida, and just as needless, Bridget needed to smoke.

She made the trip alone to the smoking room several times. The last time we were preparing to board the plane and she rushed up, all animated that she had seen a ticket someone had dropped on the stairs leading up to the smoking area.

"Did you pick it up and turn it in?"

She looked at me like I was talking Greek. "No...someone behind me saw it too."

Just at that moment we were distracted by a loud clamor to our right. The guy from smoking room upstairs was raising his voice to the clerks manning the Airline desk. We watched in that typical "tisk tisk" way that women have when they are proven right about his liquor intake...when I suddenly realized he was taking about his ticket.

"Bridget...Do you think he LOST HIS TICKET??"

She looked sideways at me. "It's possible...."

She walked over to him and informed him of the stray ticket on the stairs.

He took off running.

"It will be my luck he'll sit next to me." She muttered.

He didn't.

He should of.

He could have bought me a drink.