north to alaska
So I’m heading to Alaska — with the flu that dropped me to both knees the day before — and I’m admittedly not at 100% when I go through security at South End International. Full body X-rays now, bag checks for medium size toothpastes and shampoos. No underwear packing terrorist is getting through this gauntlet, allah akbar! There must be at least 10 TSA agents to every passenger.
I unbuckle, empty pockets, unshoe, de-hat, pass the breathalyzer, tell them who won the Series last October and get passed on to my gate terminal. I’m in a fog and a fever and a funk. “Good day,” as Chief Joseph or Sitting Bull or some luckless upstart indigenous said, “to fly.” Alaska. Winter. Glacial. Just what the doctor ordered for a rough bout of the flu.
At my gate I realize I have everything but my winter coat. It had apparently not come off the scanner conveyor and I hadn’t waited to see if it was being rescanned or donated to the nearest Goodwill. Alaska. With no coat. The flu. With no coat.
I had time to go back on the train, walk up the stairways, hurry down a few corridors and see what TSA had done with my coat, no problem, I was sure. Except TSA didn’t have it. They gave me a Lost and Found slip and said they’d gladly ship it to me if and when it turned up. They’d even ship to Alaska, they said, no charge. Can you say hypothermia? I felt like the trapper who falls through thin ice in subzero weather and no matches for fire.
Although the gift shops sell sweatshirts and matching scarves. Maybe buy two, layer up, look for a genuine bear fur Inuit eskimo parka up in the Anchorage outfitters’ supply tomorrow morning. Keep the rental car heater maxed and running, I’d be okay. The homeless do it every day. The Occupy crowd up there might scrounge me up a tent and a coat. I’d be fine. Really. Like that kid in “Into the Wild” who just launches off into the tundra, no clues, just learn on the job.
Course he didn’t have the flu. Or chills and fever to begin with. In the end he died. Then again, he was a city kid. Crazy to boot. I’ll be just fine. Don’t worry about me. Really.