An orange sun tinted with a little grenadine was sinking low over the Olympic Peninsula, turning Pugent Sound shimmery and quicksilver below the grassy bluff where we were sitting. I turned off my phone and dropped it on the blanket next to Amy.

We would not be hurriedly decamping from our borrowed Camano Island cottage and rushing the 55-mile drive to Seattle a day early after all, as good an idea as it had seemed for the first few minutes after Amy suggested it.

I hadn’t known the others would all be in Seattle already; I was expecting to meet up with them the next day, the day of Bruce’s wedding, and had only called James to find out where we would be having lunch. After the first call, Amy could sense my disappointment at missing out on the reunion already in progress at the Owl and Thistle, the gang’s old Post Avenue watering hole, the gravitational center of my memories of Seattle and the time, 12 years ago, when I wore Coast Guard blue and worked on a ship that still ties up just down the street.

“If you want to go right now, I’m game,” she said, closing her book on her finger. “We could be packed and down there in two hours.”

The old fire briefly came over me at this, and I pictured myself banging through the door of the bar and ordering up a tray of shots before even looking for the table. I called James back.

“Are you going to stay out and drink like men, or will you be going back to your hotels soon, like small girls?” I asked. Amy looked up from her book, surprised at my turn of phrase.

No less than I was. I guess personality really is relative to situation. Probably I should be glad I didn’t say something much worse.

They passed the phone from hand to hand, their noncommittal answers barely audible over the clamor of the dinner rush around them.

Noncommittal answers from Hunter and James, who had invented Fight Club in 1996 at the end of a whisky-soaked liberty night in Kodiak, returning to the ship after a friendly fist fight with bruises and at least one black eye, about which an explanation had to be dreamed up the next morning for the higher-ups; from Skip, who had once gone out drinking for at least one night with what later turned out to be a collapsed lung; from Bruce, who used to invite you to join him in polishing off a bottle of booze apiece on lazy Saturday afternoons.

We were 12 years younger then, sailors trying to ignore the floating prison waiting at the end of the port break. Now the group comprises a college administrator, a federal agent, a systems engineer, a Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer, and some sort of freelance writer.

My fire banked and dimmed a little, and I realized that I was relieved not to be hearing roars of assent, and that I wouldn’t now be forced to hold to my self-selected role as the late-arriving bad influence. Relieved, too, that I wouldn’t be reeling from a hangover while exploring Seattle the next morning, on my first visit to the city since I drove down the pier away from that ship, 12 years ago.

I’m still willing to seize the day, I just like to keep the next morning in mind a little as well.

“Maybe I’ll just see you guys at lunch,” I told James.

I turned off my phone and dropped it on the blanket next to Amy.

The sun was almost out of sight behind the Olympic Peninsula, the waters of Pugent Sound now black and mainly theoretical below the grassy bluff where we were sitting.

Is it just boring at this point to report that this morning’s flight to Missoula is delayed one and a half hours (so far)?

Tell you what. From here on out, I will only post if our flight is on time. Otherwise, assume we are experiencing what now appears to be “the usual.”

At least we are in the terminal, not on the runway.

“We’ve been released and should be on our way shortly.”

From the flight deck: “ATC is aware of our situation [i.e., that the pilots will need their milk, cookies and naps soon] and we have priority over other flights on the east coast.”

The crew’s “flight day” runs out in 50 minutes. Maybe the actual flight time doesn’t count as part of the “flight day,” since a computer actually flies the plane between takeoff and landing, otherwise it’s not clear how we could still fit in a flight to Chicago within the next 50 minutes.

Perhaps they are simply keeping us calm. Perhaps they have no intention of launching this aircraft and would take us back to the terminal right now if they could, but ground traffic is too backed up to allow them to do so any time soon. Rather than risk open revolt by announcing that we will be returning to the terminal in 50 minutes, they will wait until they can actually start rolling that way before doing so.

Just a theory.

Also, one curious detail. On the Flight Stats page for O’Hare, the following text appears:

Ground Stop – This airport has issued a Ground Stop affecting flights departing to it between Aug 19 03:11 PM UTC and Aug 19 05:00 PM UTC due to WEATHER / THUNDERSTORMS. Flights are being delayed an average of 116.8 minutes.

Ground Delay Program – This airport has issued a Ground Delay Program affecting flights arriving between Aug 19 08:00 AM and Aug 19 10:59 PM due to WEATHER / THUNDERSTORMS. Flights are being delayed an average of 137.7 minutes.

Delay – This airport is experiencing departure delays of 60 to 75 minutes due to Weather:Thunderstorms since Aug 19 10:11 AM.

Now, the flight crew has said that this flight is affected by the “ground stop.” Does the fact that the ground stop was issued for all flights departing between 11 p.m. last night (UTC, or Greenwich Mean Time, is currently four hours later than Eastern Daylight Time) and 1 p.m. this afternoon mean that the ground stop was issued before 11 p.m. last night, meaning, in turn, that United has known about it since then? I have heard that planes delayed on the tarmac do not count as “delayed,” in the absurd calculus by which airlines avoid having to behave like actual businesses. Did they pack us on the flight and get us out here, even though they knew we would be delayed or even canceled, to avoid being tagged for a delay?

Just another theory.

12:52 p.m.
The pilot restarts the engine to power the air conditioning. A relief, but what implications does this have for our fuel?

No word from the flight deck yet, but the delay has allowed A. to complete the rabbit she was knitting for Grace’s christening present.

Actually, she still needs to finish the tail, but that require scissors, which, of course, no one is allowed to have on a plane.

At least, however inconvenient this is, we are safe from scissors-wielding maniacs.

Also, the baby behind us isn’t crying. Much.

As I type, A. and I are sitting on United Flight 487, which in turn is sitting on the runway at Philadelphia International Airport. Our destination is O’Hare Airport in Chicago, where we had hoped to attend our niece Grace’s christening today. We actually planned to be a little late, but a member of the flight crew just announced that — due to “some weather” — it looks like we will be very late. O’Hare is “ground-stopped,” meaning that nothing is landing and nothing is taking off. Meanwhile, ominously, our flight crew is “running up against the limits of [their] flight day,” meaning that we could conceivably be delayed long enough that they will need to be replaced before we can take off. (Pilots are notorious weaklings who cannot be expected to remain awake for more than a set number of hours each day without napping with their blankies; in the world of ships, you simply stay awake, for as long as it takes, sleep when you’re dead, etc. Guess this is why the Air Force is known to the rest of the military as the Chair Force.)

We are promised an update in an hour and twenty minutes.

We hope everyone who has some hope of our visiting them in the near future will understand our refusal to board a plane for the next several years, by which time the world should be mostly out of oil anyway and there won’t be any more flying at all for non-millionaires.

According to our itinerary, we would be in Missoula around noon, western time, after one stopover in Chicago.

At the BWI United check-in counter, we learned that “thunderstorm activity” in Chicago had delayed our first flight two hours, which meant we would miss our connection. The United clerk’s solution was to put us in a cab to Dulles for an 8:05 a.m. flight that would get us back on track.

The cab pulled away from BWI at 6:55 a.m.; though the flight we were trying for was eventually delayed until 8:25 a.m., we did not arrive at Dulles in time to catch it. At Dulles, another United clerk suggested a new itinerary, with layovers in Pittsburgh and Denver, that would get us to Missoula by around 1:00 a.m. that night. But we were worried about the effects of keeping Zuzu drugged and confined for this long, and so we decided to spend the night in Denver — at our own expense — and catch the final flight to Missoula the next morning.

We reached Denver uneventfully (except for a medical emergency on board, which was dealt with handily by the emergency-room doctor who happened to be among the passengers) and spent the night at the Red Lion hotel, giving Zuzu a hotel towel on the bathroom floor for litter. The next morning, trying to minimize the time that Zuzu would spend sedated, we arrived at the Denver airport only an hour and a half before our flight, but — because Denver International Airport puts all passengers through one security line, instead of having a separate line for each of its three terminals — this was not enough time to make our flight, despite our mad dash along the half mile to our gate at the far end of B terminal, wheezing in the mile-high air, shouting at people to get out of our way. (Punch the words out in a deep voice, from the diaphragm, and they veritably leap to comply, I note with interest.)

Because missing this flight was “our fault” in the larger scheme of things or at least the way airlines think about such matters, we could never again be “confirmed” on a Missoula flight on these tickets and would instead have to wait on standby for any empty seats. But because such small planes (and so few of them) serve Missoula, and because the order of standby — we learned — is determined not on a first-come-first-serve basis but rather by the number of frequent-flier miles a passenger has, it gradually became clear that we were not likely to ever receive seats on one of these flights. “Customer-service” representatives were not moved when, later in the afternoon, I pointed out that keeping our cat sedated and confined to a bag for days on end might hazard her health, nor could they even be bothered to express sympathy when, simply making conversation, I pointed out that we had indeed arrived at the airport 90 minutes early, as recommended on the United ticket envelope for customers taking domestic flights with checked baggage.

“Really you just need to be here on time to get on the plane,” snarled United clerk Marjorie Gray, a horrid little goblin about whom I will only say that I hope she is as unhappy as she seemed.

Desperation set in. We considered flying to other airports and driving to Missoula, but the fact of having a cat with us complicated this, as airlines restrict the number of pets that can travel carry-on on a given flight. We considered renting a car and making the 12-hour drive to Missoula, but none of the five rental companies whose Bangladeshi reservations staff I reached by cell phone from the crowded, noisy waiting area had cars available that afternoon. A. was in tears and I felt like I was losing my mind from the forced passivity of the situation (yes, yes, I know, control is an illusion, thank you, John Edwards and also the Buddha) when I saw a woman I had earlier heard identified to another passenger as a United supervisor. I decided to make one last effort to get the hell out of Denver. Somehow I managed to convince the supervisor of the direness of our plight (lots of eye contact, quavering voice, vague reference to the back story and to a sobbing wife and near-death cat), and she was able to confirm us on a flight for the next morning at 8:25 a.m. after five minutes or so of tapping away at a computer terminal. A. restrained me from going back to the desk of unhelpful people from earlier to tell them that I thought they were bad people and that I hoped their children would one day realize this.

We retired to Timbers Inn (Red Lion was full) for our second night in Denver, and when I say “retired” I mean waited in the hot, exhaust-choked curbside area for more than an hour for the hotel shuttle. Weirdly, my brother, who is as I write driving across the country on his way to San Francisco, arrived in Denver that evening, and he and I ate dinner in the hotel restaurant while A. went to bed early with a headache. Earlier I had walked along the highway to a gas station convenience store and bought a tin of tuna for Zuzu, who continued a remarkable run of well-behavedness in all of this (even deciding to do her first business of the evening in the tub, for convenient cleanup), until sometime in the night, when she climbed onto the room’s desk and urinated on one of our duffel bags. (Urinating on duffel bags is a predilection of hers; I believe this was number three.) We discovered this little surprise before dawn, as we prepared to check out and catch the 5:30 a.m. airport shuttle. A. piled into the shuttle with our luggage while I loped through the dark parking lot to the McDonald’s next door and threw the duffle bag into the dumpster.

This time we were at our gate more than an hour before boarding, with time for breakfast at the New Belgium Brewing Company, served by a wonderful bartender called Meatloaf whom we had first met the day before, when I had realized I either needed to get a little bit drunk or I was going to kill someone. Meatloaf runs easily the most pleasant bar I’ve ever been in — not the most pleasant airport bar, mind you, but the most pleasant, period — and demonstrates what an amazingly healing service a bartender can provide simply by listening to your troubles, taking your side against the world, and cracking some jokes. On the Pittsburgh flight the day before, after the ER doctor had finished helping the old man who had fallen ill, I heard him thank her with a heartfelt quaver of gratitude in his voice; it was a similar emotion that I felt toward Meatloaf, who may very well have saved my sanity simply by offering a friendly face.

We boarded the plane without a hitch, fearful all the while that some final complication would stand in the way, but the flight was trouble free (other than the vomiting woman in the seat behind us). As we circled in over smoke-shrouded Missoula (according to today’s Missoulian, “Montana is the epicenter of this year’s firestorm”), we dared to hope that we were close to finally reaching our destination, though of course we knew that some catastrophe might still divert us. And then the tires bit the runway and a little while later we were walking up the jetway, squeezing past the Army Ranger hugging his wife and kids. Incredibly, our checked bags had even made it to Missoula as well, though they were not on the carousel and we had to ask for them at the United counter.

We collected our car at row F in the long-term parking lot and drove out the gate into sunny, smoky Missoula.

In security, the pregnant women come and go, discussing pregnancy. A new mother pushing a stroller is an elder statesman among them. Everyone quickly establishes how old the baby is. (8 months.) Apparently, he wasn’t even sitting up at Easter, and now look at him. The usual sounds of adoration are made.

“I don’t know what the hell happened to Trent Lott,” says the mean-faced man behind me in the security line. “He’s making nice with Pelosi and the rest of them.”

At the gate, I am one of the last people to join the “C” line, the third and final boarding group on a Southwest flight. This means I am doomed to a middle seat.

“We’re going to be last?” says an old woman in front of me. “Don’t they make allowances for senior citizens?”

“Yes, get out your AARP card,” says a middle-aged woman, standing with her balding, pink-scalped husband. Their hulking sons crowd the door of the jetway.

“Oh, I’m well past that,” says the old woman, mysteriously. (Is there an upper limit for AARP membership now?) “I’m 72.”

“Oh!” says the second woman. “I’m in my 50s, and I would have guessed you were my age.”

Her husband: “I would have guessed 30s.” He does not in the slightest appear to be joking.

The wife: “You have great skin.”

The husband: “And great teeth.” He looks like a dentist, come to think of it.

The wife: “You must hear that all the time.”

“Well, yes, I do,” answers the old woman. “But it’s all genetic, of course,” she continues, the very soul of modesty. Though I suppose these days it’s worth pointing out that it’s not all plastic.

2.
Partway through the flight, Southwest passes out “snack boxes.” Mine contains a plastic pouch of dried fruit, a foil pouch of “shortcake cookies,” and a package of peanut-butter cheese crackers. I stick with my peanut butter sandwich. The flight attendant, who has repeatedly spoken of herself as “the mom of the plane,” makes an announcement.

“We don’t throw food away, so if there’s anything in your snack box you don’t like, just leave it closed and we’re going to come through and collect those. If there’s something you want more of, you can take it then, just give us the stuff you don’t want. Cause we don’t throw food away. Now just so you don’t think we box it up and give it to you — ” (by “you” she is clearly referring to “people who ride our planes”; like many people in the service industry, she thinks of all of her customers as the same person, which is why they get so upset when you don’t understand some process they’re putting you through: they explained it to “you” just yesterday, after all) ” — we actually collect it and give it old folks’ homes, women’s shelters and food banks.” She pauses for the applause that is expected in this country whenever someone announces how virtuous/patriotic/strict at parenting he or she is. The applause comes, on cue.

“Oh,” says the woman sitting next to me, who has been studying a binder that outlines the rules and procedures through which the U.S. Marshall Service can seize financial assets. (Apparently they are able to do so using some feature of the AFT process the rest of us use to pay bills online.) “They don’t box it up and give it to us, they box it up and give it to other people.”

3.
I have 2.5 hours to kill in the Phoenix airport before my shuttle bus to Flagstaff departs. I wander the terminals. In a vending machine, I read the lead USA Today headline: “Troops’ 1-month breaks reduced.” This reminds of the apocalyptic science fiction I used to read in middle school, in which bloated interplanetary empires were depicted as sliding into ruins. This is the kind of headline that one of those writers would have thrown into the background details of the story, to evoke the giant dying slowly, of a thousand cuts. You’re already losing, of course, when such ideas start to seem like the only way to win.

The Phoenix airport, known as “Sky Harbor” (something else that puts me in mind of science fiction stories), is sprawling and small at the same time. There are four terminals (A,B, C and D), separated by a half mile of walkway apiece (with the requisite moving sidewalks), but, when you actually get to one of the terminals, there is often no unused gate at which it is possible to sit in peace and only a relatively small selection of restaurants. Through the tall windows by the moving sidewalk, it just looks hot outside.

4.
My shuttle “bus” turns out to be a van. I am the last one in and must make do with a sort of fold-down jump seat right next to the side doors. Close enough to the side doors that I take a very personal interest in whether those doors are locked. The seat belt is a strange jury-rigged affair that barely stretches far enough to close around me (and I’m svelte) and then prevents me from sitting up all the way, due to where it’s attached behind my back. I spend the whole trip in a mild crouch, braced for death in a fiery crash, a passenger van not being exactly the best choice for high-speed freeway travel. (Their center of gravity moves up and to the rear, the more you load them — in a bus, you might walk away from a highway accident, but, in a van of this sort, you will almost certainly die.) For this I’m paying more than Greyhound? But at least they pick you up at the airport, otherwise I’d have had to take a cab to the Greyhound station.

We battle our way out of the city, through traffic-choked freeways and past utterly uninteresting subdivisions and strip malls. My seat belt never once locks as our frenetic driver works the brakes.

5.
Near Camp Verde, firmly in the desert, with the old stagecoach road winding through the dusty hills below the highway, we stop at Burger King for bathrooms and sustenance before the final hour’s drive into Flagstaff. (The locals just say “Flag.”) I fall into conversation with a local, who then points out the natural features as we draw closer to town. To get to Flagstaff, the highway climbs up to the Mogollon Rim and onto the Colorado Plateau, where Flag sits 7,000 feet above sea level. The junipers give way to pines; the ground turns from dust to green. On a far hillside sits a rusted-out 1920s-era automobile, perhaps most recently used for target practice.

6.
A. meets me at the shuttle-bus stop at the train station, carrying a six pack.

The morning was no fun. We were both tired and reluctant to rise, because of said tiredness and also because rising meant packing and saying goodbye. But A.’s airport shuttle would leave at seven and we eventually accepted the inevitable. While we gathered her things, I turned on NPR on the radio. I did this with a certain amount of trepidation, since I hadn’t really followed any news since leaving Baltimore. What had I missed? A local politician was being interviewed about Louisiana’s impending cockfighting ban. There was “mysterious bubbling” in a lake in the northern part of the state. Some bombs had exploded, and some people had died.

A. and I said goodbye at the door to the room and I watched her walk away down the hall, her duffle bag slung over one shoulder. The only thing for it was to keep busy, so I finished my own packing and did a little typing before checking out at eleven and locating our friend, Tracy, who was coincidentally on the same flight as me. For some reason, we had both arranged to depart from the New Orleans airport rather than Baton Rouge’s, and we had decided to join forces in figuring out how to get down there. A cab ride would cost $130, I had learned from guest services, so that was out. The night before, I had reserved a car from Thrifty; with taxes and “drop fee,” the drive would cost us only about $65. Thinking I might want to spend the day sitting in the hotel typing up my last notes from the weekend, I had ordered the car for two p.m., but Tracy convinced me that we should get it early and maybe knock around the French Quarter for a couple of hours. (Our flight was at six p.m.) So we caught the eleven a.m. airport shuttle. At Thrifty, they didn’t have any cars of the size I had ordered (economy). If they hadn’t had any at two p.m., the upgrade would have been on their dime. But since we were requesting the car early, we had to pay an extra $14 for a PT Cruiser convertible, which — surprisingly — was the cheapest rental they had on the lot. Since the only other option at that point was to sit in the Thrifty waiting area until two p.m., we decided to go for it.

We studied the driver’s manual for instructions related to the convertible top before leaving the rental lot. Not exactly rock and roll of us, I know, but then, neither are our bank accounts. Mainly I wanted to know if you could put the top up and down while moving, as it looked as though it might rain. (You can’t.) There was a ZZ Topp Memorial Day rock block on a radio station we found and we were blasting the rumbling instrumental bridge of “La Grange” as I accelerated onto the main road. I had visions of booming along the Lake Ponchartrain levy with the top down, but I couldn’t take the sun beating down on my sparsely forested skull after about 15 minutes and gave up. Tragedy was narrowly averted, too, when we stopped at a drug store for some cortizone for Tracy, who must have brushed some poison ivy on Sunday’s bayou stroll. We were just pulling out of our parking spot when a warning ding sounded; a little readout flashed “deck.” I had no idea what this could mean, but after a few fruitless minutes with the owner’s manual I decided to check the trunk. It was ajar, and a chill ran down my spine. An open trunk on a sedan is no big deal, but a PT Cruiser convertible’s trunk is accessed through a vertical opening in the back of the car, meaning that — if it is open — there is nothing but a little lip to keep the contents from sliding right out the back, like jeeps being parachuted out of the ramps in the rear of those massive Air Force cargo planes. I remembered closing and checking the trunk at the rental lot. Had someone popped it open while we’d been in the Walgreen’s? I opened it and Tracy’s roll-on suitcase tumbled out into my arms, which is what I guess it would have done on the road the first time I accelerated sharply. Nothing was missing, though the mystery of how the trunk had come open remained. We decided we were too paranoid to risk it and piled everything on the back seat before buttoning up the top one last time. As we drove, I tried to keep track of the billboards that involved plays on laissez le bon temps roulez (e.g., “laissez le profits roll”) but lost track after about six or seven.

In the French Quarter, we parked in a valet garage in hopes that this would keep the luggage safer (adding nine more dollars to the tab for our “cheap” method of getting to New Orleans, but of course a cab ride to the airport wouldn’t have allowed us to stop for lunch in the FQ) and set out on foot. A sidewalk hawker in a plaid shirt and striped tie tempted us into The Alpine, “a Louisiana Cajun Bistro” that turned out to be owned by the same people who run Oceana, the delicious seafood restaurant where our group hat eaten on Thursday night. During lunch, I noticed a headline on the TV: “Police shoot 80-pound lizard — unclear if it’s dead or just wounded.” Our po boys were delicious. We asked them to pour the last of our beers into “go cups” and set out to stroll the quarter. I wanted to at least look at Preservation Hall, a historic jazz venue that my dad, the jazz writer, had urged me to check out. (I see now, having just gone hunting for a link you could follow to learn a little more about the place, that I didn’t find the right one. I found someplace called “Maison Bourbon — Dedicated to the Preservation of Jazz” and assumed that perhaps the name Preservation Hall Jazz Band had simply adapted part of the name of the establishment. But I can see in the Wikipedia article’s photo and in the real Preservation Hall’s virtual tour that the building looks different from the place I found. Oh, well, pays to do your research ahead of time, I guess.)

We walked the narrow streets and took in the sights, the neighborhood seeming to blink in the bright sun. The sights included beautiful, time-ravaged old buildings, a splash of vomit by a bench, a “statue guy” performer posing as a football player in mid-pass, and strippers arriving at a club for an early shift. When we couldn’t take the oppressive heat and still, fetid air any longer, we struck out for Jackson Square Park, which turned out to be less shady than I expected. There was a guy selling prints by fence on the Riverwalk side of the park. At first the primitive, blocky designs looked appealing, but, when he started showing us how many different sizes and colors he had of each print, it all started to feel a little too mass-produced to be worth $30-$40 a print. We moved on after he asked me if I were studying creative writing “to impress my girlfriend.” “That’s not my girlfriend.” “But you’re still studying creative writing to impress a woman, right?”

What?

It was getting late and we had neglected to mark the precise location of our parking garage, so we picked our way back from one landmark to the next. A bar called Frat House. Hustler Hollywood, “home of the Hustler Honeys,” in case you’re ever looking for them. A balcony with a large papier mache head suspended from ropes. Jean Lafitte’s Old Absinthe House, which does not serve absinthe.

Back at the garage, Tracy went in search of a bathroom while I ordered up the car. As I waited for a valet to drive it down, his honks at blind turns echoing down through the levels of the garage as he got closer, a woman with an expensive-looking hairdo and wearing a black suit sat on a bench waiting for her own car, smoking a skinny cigarette. Another garage attendant, a heavy black woman in a sweat-soaked red polo shirt emblazoned with the name of the garage, asked the woman how it was going. Her tone did not give me the impression that she cared to hear much of an answer, but the blonde was off and running. “Well, I just got back from a business trip and they took us to a golf tournament and I didn’t know how to behave, I mean I guess you got to be real quiet and stop walking when they’re putting, I don’t know but I was about to get myself booted out of there.” The attendant nodded slowly, staring into space and fanning herself weakly with her hand. I had the distinct impression that, while the attendant might not have known how to behave at a golf tournament either, common ground had not exactly been established.

On the way out of town, next to the I-10 on-ramp, a giant billboard tempted drivers to a casino where they might win “one out of fifteen John Deere tractors.” In only slightly smaller print at the bottom of the billboard was the required advisory as to where to call if you have a gambling problem and want help stopping. In heavy westbound traffic, we found ourselves stuck behind a truck with a hand-lettered sign on the back: “Ladies go topless.” But in case you might be tempted to take offense, the driver had drawn a smiley face on the sign, too, so you would know it’s just good clean fun. We stopped at the edge of the airport for gas ($13, bringing our “cheap” ride to a grand total of a little over $100) and then had a hell of a time finding the Thrifty drop-off, which was not mentioned on any of the airports’ rental-car return signs. But we had allowed plenty of time, as it turned out, and arrived at the airport with a good hour and a half to go before our flight. I had trouble in security because I’d forgotten to remove the two bottles of water I’d taken along from the hotel room that morning, plus they also said I looked cold, calculating and dangerous, but I get that all the time. I talked my way through before too long. On the way to our concourse, Tracy asked if I had noticed the man ahead of us, traveling with two boys, who had carried his “go cup” of beer right up to the verge of the metal detector before downing it in one long chug. It was a shame about my water bottles, as I’d been dying for some water since leaving the French Quarter and hadn’t realized I’d had some all the time. I bought another one in the concourse for $4. I had to ask the clerk to repeat the price when she said it. I haven’t gotten that ripped off in a long time, but what are you going to do?

The walk in the quarter had exhausted me and left me grimy and sticky. I would have given anything for one last afternoon nap in a soft hotel bed but had to settle for sinking into a bench seat in the gate area. These seats looked soft but weren’t and only supported me up to about my middle back, as if they had been designed to discourage you from sitting in them for too long, which just seemed cruel under the circumstances.

My flights home were largely unremarkable, but I offer the following two findings for the sake of the permanent record:

1. Either I had the same pilot as when I’d departed Baltimore, or AirTran pilots in general really do favor especially sharp ascents from takeoff and long, dramatically pitched banking turns above the airport. Exciting!

2. Leaving your cell phone on during flight does not cause the plane to crash. I discovered this the way all true scientific research is done, by hazarding myself (and my fellow passengers) in mad pursuit of knowledge. Actually, I was just reluctant to turn the thing off because it does not reliably turn back on again, in which case I was afraid I might not be able to find my brother at the airport in Baltimore. I was reasonably confident that I would survive this experiment for two reasons.

a. The pilot, in his announcement concerning such devices, said “discontinue using” them, as opposed to “turn them off,” and I figured he would have more precise knowledge of the nature of any potential problems than would the flight attendants, who favored the “turn them off” formulation.

b. If cell phone signals actually posed a hazard for the plane, why on earth would we be allowed to bring them on board? You’re telling me I can’t bring a five-ounce bottle of mouthwash but I can carry a deadly communication device that will send the plane screaming toward the ground at the touch of a button? As we were circling Baltimore, I almost chickened out and turned the thing off, though, when it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t be gambling my life based on policies set by the federal decision-makers responsible for the nation’s safety and security, who do not generally seem to be what you would call “sensible” or “good at their jobs.” But I held out and before long we were safely on the ground.

At the baggage carousel, my suitcase popped open when I grabbed it from the conveyor belt. The AirTran packing tape I’d wrapped around it was broken, I noticed. I later found out that this was courtesy of TSA, who’d left one of their random inspection calling cards behind. I also found out later that the gift jar of “crawfish jelly” I’d packed inside was broken, although fortunately I had put it in a Ziploc and hardly any of it had leaked out. I want to blame TSA for this, though I can’t be sure it was their fault. I guess I just will blame them anyway.

Stupid TSA.

We piled my belongings into my brother’s Ford Taurus and made our way home, seeming to hit every red light possible on the way. After my restless sleep the night before, the 1,000-degree hike through the French Quarter, and a layover in Georgia, I was barely conscious by the time I crawled into bed, leaving my unpacking for Tuesday.

It wasn’t as soft and fluffy as the bed in the Sheraton, by the way.

But I suspect that there was no reference binder at all.

All petty complaints aside, we quickly became addicted to life inside the Sheraton’s shell. I’d never stayed in a “full service” hotel before, but I quickly saw the appeal, especially for this type of travel where one is not from the area and is also not really visiting “the area” (scenic downtown Baton Rouge, anyone?). Anytime we went anywhere we were dependent on other people for a ride, and dependent on their schedules as well, but we were in control inside the cocoon of the hotel.

The wedding ceremony would start at seven p.m. so we guests had the day off and a large party of us retired to the pool. There were pitchers of pina coladas, rum-soaked cherries, and synchronized swimming. Aaron stood on Kevin’s shoulders and left him bruised. I got some typing in but soon had to abandon the effort in favor of socializing like a human being. Such strange customs your species has…

For lunch, the groom wanted to go to Frostop’s, a local greasy-spoon chain. Kevin and Alison went along but A., Natalia and I decided we wanted to lay in some sort of counterbalance against the caloric excess of the upcoming reception dinner. We retired to Shuck’s on the Levee, one of the hotel’s restaurants, with a window-seat view of the casino boat and the muddy Mississippi, the tug boats chugging past with immense strings of barges. We ordered salads and were glad to finally finish a meal without feeling painfully full before even swallowing the last bite. In the late afternoon, everyone met up at the bar for a last round of drinks with Greg as a bachelor, as meaningless a term as that is among people who tend to live together for years before “the question” comes up, and then we all headed to our rooms to gussy ourselves up for the big night.

The wedding was an outdoor ceremony behind Erin’s parents’ house, officiated by a Unitarian minister who for some reason worked the fact that he was a Unitarian minister into his service about a half dozen times. Two to three hundred people watched from white folding chairs ranged in the grass. Trees loomed overhead (and power lines), and birds provided musical accompaniment. With the ceremony over, guests helped themselves to homemade etouffe and artichoke dip and crackers and cheese for appetizers, with two massive vats of jambalaya for the main course. One of Erin’s cousins, a mortician who moonlights as a limo driver, tended bar and mixed them strong. A local band played for the dancers, the average age of whom was kept low by a pack of little girls who spent the evening whirling and running across the dance floor. The cake cutting was in the living room, where a table groaned under the weight of nine different cakes. A groom’s cake in the next room was fashioned to look like a cheeseburger the size of a car’s tire.

The wedding party’s tuxedo rentals had been of sufficient quantity that the store had thrown in a limousine ride for free, and Erin and Greg were nice enough to offer a ride for everyone headed back to the hotel. Sometimes you see a limo going by and imagine that a wild party is ensuing behind those tinted windows, but really it was all we could do to stay awake.