Phoenix Flying

I'm still not used to the fact that I live in the desert, in one of the most popular holiday destinations in the world. When I fly in and see the sun beating down on the mountains, the tall saguaros dotting the sparse expanse of desert, I still feel like I'm going on vacation, not coming home. Which isn't a bad feeling to have. Ali said that when she first flew into Tucson, she thought that the cacti landscaping was "so cute," until she drove out past the airport and realized that the same stuff grows wild along the roads. This is big sky country, and tumbleweed does occasionally blow across the road as you drive.

I am home. The night of graduation, I decided to go with Sorina to the airport, catching the bus at 2 a.m. We didn't sleep (this is getting to be a habit with me--I'm just waiting for all the sleep deprivation to kick in), watched a three hour Bollywood film with Reshma and Pat that had us laughing and crying and dancing over the sofas in Lincoln College's rec room. Then with their help, I dragged some extraordinarily heavy suitcases across Oxford to the bus station. (I was going to mail all the books and papers back - The Riverside Chaucer alone probably weighs 10 pounds - but even slow mail would have cost 54 pounds, so that wasn't happening!)

The idea was to drop off Sorina and my luggage, then head into London for the morning, hitting the British Museum again (I can't think of that place without a sigh), then coming back for my afternoon flight. I am rather impulsive. I don't always check out the options thoroughly, so didn't find out that they wouldn't let me check my luggage until 3 hours before the flight, and the storage place would charge me 24 pounds (48 dollars). So I stayed at the airport, took naps on top of my luggage, and looked like the Bride of Frankenstein by the time I climbed on the plane.

Rolled off the plane and school started the next day. I just heard this morning in the staff meeting about the liquid bomb terrorist plot - I missed that one by two whole days. I flew direct to Phoenix. I went straight to the Langs' pool and took a swim. There are worse things than coming home to a pool surrounded by mountains, lying on a raft and staring up into a cloudless sky. Yesterday I got in my car and drove, windows down, across the desert, back to Tucson.