Sir, You Smell Like Bologna.

This is long and sort of all over the place.  You probably shouldn't read it.

Over the holidays, we were able to return home to spend time with family.  We flew into Lubbock, TX about 9:00 p.m. (and boy, were our arms tired!  Ba-dum-ching!).  Getting to fly into a tiny West Texas town for the holidays is just one of the benefits of marrying well.  And by "marrying well," I mean "marrying a man whose brother works for an airline and gets us a kickass deal on plane tickets."  And we get the added adventure of flying standby.  With a family of five.  Try not to be jealous.

Sometimes people ask me, "What is this 'standby' you speak of?"  For those of you who've never known the joys of flying standby ("non-rev" in industry speak), allow me to enlighten you.  It means this:  Your ticket works just like any other ticket you bought on hotwire or orbitz or wherever.  You reserve your flight, head to the airport the requisite hour and a half early.  (Unless you're flying out of Orlando.  Better make it there at least two full hours ahead of time because, y'all, that shit is crazy.  Security borrowed Disney's genius style of line-routing, so you basically walk up to the line you can see and say to yourself, "Look at this short line.  I'll be through in no time."  But then you round the corner to be confronted by a massive monster line, snaking back and forth for an eternity, "accidentally" kicking the gentleman in front of you every couple of feet, partly because he keeps knocking into you with his Mount Everest expedition backpack, but mostly out of pure frustration and general pissed-offness.  And because his shirt is weird and ugly and loud, and he smells like a bologna sandwich.  Finally, you reach the end of this weary, shuffling labyrinth to find a badass roller coaster. Just kidding.  It's just a metal detector and a weird guy with a wand.  And a power trip.  And a bad mustache.)  Anyway, (still with me?) so you check your luggage with the nice lady at the ticket counter, who informs you, with friendly, caffeine-induced cheerfulness, that "this bag weighs too much." Smile. Blink blink. Twitch. Smile.  So then you do the suitcase shuffle to cram all your heavy shit into the kids' tiny suitcases.  Now it's time to proceed to the aforementioned security labyrinth, complete with bologna-scented minotaur.  From there, it's on to your gate, where it's clear sailing.  Except when it's not.

Airport hell

And this, my friends, is where the adventure begins.  See, you only get to fly non-rev if the airline has unsold seats on the flight to your desired destination.  If they don't, you're staying right where you are.  It's even better when you get out of the airport where you started, only to find there are no seats on your connecting flight.  That's when where you are is where you'll be until you're lucky enough to catch an open flight out.  That's happened to us before, but not this time.  There were lots of unsold seats on the flight to Lubbock.  I suspect that this is because nobody wants to go there.

Lubbock, TX - This is a new picture, not old like it looks.
It's just that brown there.

So in a kind of circular story-telling, we are back at the beginning:  After an uneventful flight, laden with friendly Texas flight attendants and equally friendly passengers (many of whom were wearing cowboy boots and/or dripping with turquoise jewelry and cosmetics), we flew into Lubbock, TX about 9:00 p.m.  Tired. As. Hell.  So we found a hotel and crashed for the night, none of us up to the challenge of the three-hour drive to Roswell, NM. Yes, the city of aliens.  Also the city of pecans and my husband's grandparents.  I don't think they are aliens, but if you'd ever seen my husband load a dishwasher, it does present the possibility that he may be of extraterrestrial lineage.  The next morning, we all knew we'd made truly made it to the great state of Texas, a state defined by its size (and the size of its hair), its hats, its wide open expanses of remarkably flat nothingness, and its cows.  Oh, and by its weird sense of "I'm an American technically, but I'm actually a Texan, so don't fuck with me (or my guns and/or cousins.")  How were we so certain?  Because our continental breakfast at the hotel featured whiskey, calf fries and Texas-shaped waffles.  Ok, no.  It only had waffles and fruit and stuff, but the waffles were totally shaped like Texas.  No kidding.  Dallas was pretty much the best place to put the butter, for even distribution, you know?

Texas waffles, y'all

Bellies full of Texas waffles, bags packed, we checked out of our friendly West Texas La Quinta and headed out into the high plains nothing.  If you've never visited the West Texas/Eastern New Mexico high plains, you have no idea what you're missing.  It is big, flat and overwhelming in it's level of dry brown-ness, and it's dotted, at any given time, with no fewer than a zillion tumbleweeds, ready to wind-surf out onto the road at a ridiculous velocity and stab right into the paint on your car.  Or into your body if you are walking.  Really, though, one of the most remarkable things about the landscape is how the trees all grow sorta sideways.  This is because the wind blows all the damn time.  Not just a brisk breeze - a howling, gusting constant wall of wind that throws small rocks at you just for fun, like a mean little kid.  And don't bother with chapstick, no matter how parched your lips become (and they will), because the dirt sticks right to it, and suddenly your lips are crunchy, and you could probably file your nails with them.  Yum.  Another impressive local characteristic is the unique aroma.  My dad always called it "the smell of money."  Apparently, money smells like cow shit.  My friend Sean calls it "Eau d' Bovine."  See?  There are lots of cool things about the area where I grew up.

Trees growing sideways - one of the rare days when the
wind wasn't blowing.  They just grow like that.