by Bethany Murley
Roughly 2500 flights leave the runways of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta each day. The frequency of departing flights drops sharply during the wee hours of the morning and then picks up again in the hours just before dawn. This morning rush is on behalf of commuters leaving early enough to arrive at their destination with enough time to still fit in a full, productive workday. Every few months that also describes me as I start up new work projects. Every few months, I too do airport mornings in Atlanta.
Airport mornings mean waking up in someone else’s bed because
you don’t have one of your own. You’re excited and anxious: excited to take off
on another adventure and anxious about the two thousand times you’ll look for
your phone, the possible flight changes, TSA checks, and seat mates. Also the
changes a road closure or even bridge on fire might make in your day, because
apparently flammable concrete is a thing in Atlanta now. Maybe, realistically, substituting the cost of
lodging, transportation, and parking for $400-$500 a month for shared rent
would mean you’d break about even… right? Don’t forget to figure in the cost
of travel fatigue which you wear semi-permanently on your face. Mentally add
the cost of anti-aging cream to your trip’s total tally. Why does
anyone do this for fun? How do
non-morning people do this at all? What
about before coffee was a thing?
Getting dressed, applying makeup, and packing the last of
everything takes forty-five minutes, not fifteen like you calculated at 11:47 p.m.
when you set your alarm for 3:45 a.m. It feels weirdly difficult to pack
the toiletries you’re accustomed to handling daily. Zippers are tricky in
certain stages of exhaustion. Everything feels heavy… terribly heavy. You
imagine throwing away belongings to lighten your luggage while the counter
agent stares without sympathy.
The city is silent and dark as you cruise toward the airport
with only a few other commuters for company. The city lights, glittering in
high and low rise buildings, are strung above like a web of gold sequins and
you wonder about the light bill and whether other humans are actually up there
through the night. America works too hard, you think grimly, and wish for
coffee.
Parking is a horror, of course. There are always questions:
will your car get broken into? Will your
gas be stolen? Will your battery start
again? And for pity’s sake, couldn’t you
have found time to vacuum the car? The air fresheners in the 2000 Accord,
ironically scented “new car”, have expired too. No matter. Don’t think about
it. You’re leaving and it’s going to be a great adventure. The shuttle
driver is from somewhere in Africa where rudeness is entirely acceptable and
service industries do not usually exist. The hour is too early for
understanding but you don’t have to see him again after today, so you tip
anyway.
The bedlam of check-in sets in the moment you disembark from
the parking shuttle. After paying for TSA pre-check and Global Entry this year,
your expectations of pre-flight processes at Hartsfield-Jackson are simply too
high. Lines still exist at the counter, at self check-in, and somehow you still
have to go to special services (an extra long line) to guarantee TSA pre-check
is really added to the boarding pass. All the while you’re looking at your
watch, calculating how long the still-long TSA pre-check line through security
will be, whether there will be Starbucks on your concourse, and how long you’ll
have to sit in peace at the gate watching the sun rise over the huge
infrastructure of the Atlanta airport as your phone comes back from the 25% it
dropped to on the way here. Inevitably, it will drop below 20% on the subway.
NEXT IN LINE bellows the disgruntled counter agent, jolting
you out of the moment of peace you’d managed to create in your own mind.
Slightly tripping over the ungainly wheels of your suitcase (how are things
always falling apart just enough to make you look too gifted to function, or
like an artist maybe, or even a distracted academic?), you move forward. “Put
your bags on the suitcase,” the agent says, like you should have known. But
never have assumed – that, too, earns you the stink eye in that constantly
shifting scenery of security theatre. The
luggage weighs in at 48.1 and 52.3 pounds respectively. You let out a sigh of relief as the agent
simply rolls her eyes and throws your luggage on the belt behind her. If anyone wants to judge you for packing
heavy, let them try packing for everything they need in a corporate apartment
for two months. After discussing – no,
insisting – on TSA pre-check at length, you have your boarding pass and are
suitcase free.
There’s a sort of camaraderie that builds between you and
your neighbors in the airport security line, especially the general one. The
TSA pre-check line is more likely to be made up of people who do not want to be
there, paid a lot of money not to be there, and therefore ignore the rest of
their line cohorts on principle. However,
they are usually extremely well-dressed because they expect to be treated well
on the plane. You look with respect at the brilliant lapels, starched cuffs
(few links out of respect for metal detectors ahead), and effortlessly great
hair. One man has his suit jacket off,
exposing a shirt in a shade of white you once owned for two hours before it attracted
coffee, a mud puddle and miscellaneous debris. You sigh in an admiration and
despair over that shirt.
In pre-check, the airport has upgraded the bins for the
conveyor belt with carry-on luggage so that one always pops up ready for you: hopefully
experimental and coming soon to the masses in the general search and seizure
zone. It seems to prevent the inevitable
pile-up of trays that creates a pile-up of people trying to separate the trays,
remove their shoes, remove their laptops from bags, and remove their belts all
at once while being shouted at by representatives of the TSA like it’s some
form of hobbyist boot camp no one signed up for and no one is paid for… in
times of U.S. government shutdowns, not even the TSA representatives are paid. However, they are lucky in that we are a
culture that knows how to stand in line and respect directions. You wish
someone would tell the Hartsfield-Jackson TSA officers that non-compliance at
the airport is usually borne of ignorance rather than disobedience. Then again,
with their non-essential government job status, that realization might not make
any difference.
Now you’re past security, at the subway: the best part of the
Atlanta airport. By this time, you’ve been here enough times to know which part
of the train to board for a speedy exit. But many people waiting in line have,
too. You avoid eye contact and make sure no one’s trying to steal your identity
or credit card information. When the train arrives you surge forward, pushed
from behind, only to be blocked by two large exiting wheelchairs. While trying
to be polite and not barge past a wheelchair, a lady whose derrière features
prominently has taken the best spot.
Which gate are you again? After grabbing Starbucks coffee at
C gates, you’re back on the train scanning your boarding pass to make sure you
don’t end up in Ohio. This is exactly the sort of checking and re-checking that
consumes your travel time that normal people (you suppose) use to reflect and
create and recharge. Yours are the D gates, and you’re able to run up the
escalator freely. As you found the corner and see the long hallway of gates
right and left, you smell breakfast wafting from a nearby restaurant, you see
the peak of dawn behind the VOR tower, and you know that it’s going to be a
beautiful day.