You’ve been looking forward to this moment for the past 36 hours. Ever since you got to the airport and found out that the third party company you used to book your trip had cancelled your return flight and you began calling your bank and that third party company and the United States Department of Transportation to try and find a way to get a refund, you have been dreaming of coming back into your dirty living room you forgot to clean before you left and plopping down on your shitty little love seat with a nice fat doobie. As you drive for 30 minutes in your discounted ride share that still costs $30 for some reason to some shitty discount motel that only costs 30 dollars less than the nice ones by the airport but you still end up going there instead because your girlfriend made the hotel bookings and she doesn’t trust you to make reservations again after the whole plane booking fiasco, you picture coming inside you house and smelling those octopus dumplings you threw in the kitchen garbage right before you left. When you get home, you can take those rotting octopus corpses swaddled in egg noodle and throw them in the real garbage can before coming back inside, drinking the remains of that Strawberry Peach juice that has been sitting on the back shelf of the fridge for three weeks, and rolling yourself the nicest little joint any stoner ever smoked, but now you still have to wander the empty streets of St. Paul at 11 o’clock at night, hoping a Wendy’s or an Arby’s will still be open so you can eat for the first time in the last 12 hours (they aren’t.) You slowly drift to sleep as you hear your girlfriend stress vomit the leftover cuban sandwich she had for breakfast and dream of your broken toilet seat, which fell off the toilet right when you are about to leave (you can still put the seat on top of the toilet so you don’t have to hover, but it moves around a lot and falls off as soon as you stand up.) You wake up early, take two subways to get to the airport, then quickly scarf down a subway (spicy Italian) and try to read while you wait for your plane. You chug an over priced water bottle and your girlfriend rubs your feet as you try not to faint. You start to count down the hours, 6, now 5, before you will finally arrive. Of course, after you land, the bridge that leads from the plane to the airport breaks so you are stuck sitting on the plane another half an hour before being let out in the new Tom Bradley terminal which is exactly a labyrinth a way from the terminal 1 parking lot where your mother parked, and your girlfriend gets really upset because she is going to be late for her online class so you start running through the airport on your shitty sore foot only to get into another car which you have to sit in for an hour because L.A. traffic is the worst, but you eventually open your front door to your messy living room and that octopus dumpling odor (much less pungent then in your fantasies) and you take in a big long breath and exhale. Your apartment may not be perfect, but at least you aren’t traveling anymore.
Getting Home: 5 Stars