The San Francisco International Airport

It was on a Tuesday that I made the decision to fly out to California with my boyfriend, Carter, for a flight that was leaving on Thursday of the same week. We had only been dating for a few weeks but he had decided months before meeting me that he wanted to attend the Champ Car, preseason races, at Laguna Seca in Long Beach, California, so I, having never been to California before and really wanting to get away with him on our first vacation together, agreed extremely last minute to book a flight and go as well. As the fates would have it, the flight Carter was taking was full so I had to book another leaving virtually around the same time but flying direct versus his flight having one stop-over, putting me into California almost one hour earlier. The inconvenience of not being able to fly on the same plane with my boyfriend, on our first vacation together no less was a bummer. Waiting around the airport for an hour for him also wasn’t too appealing. Under normal circumstances it would not have been worth it for me to spend the money on the ticket and fly out there. The flight was 6 hours and I knew next to nothing about Champ Car, I had only knowledge of NASCAR but didn’t even watch that. Everything told me not to go but because I really liked this guy and he really liked Champ Car, I was determined to go and try and like Champ Car, too. I was sucking up the fact that I would have to sit alone on the plane or get stuck talking to a stranger for hours and hours. Rhode Island to California is a long trip and I wasn’t used to going places like that alone but despite that, I was going and at least we were both flying home on the same flight together.

My 5 hour and 40 minute flight from Providence to San Francisco went pretty smoothly. I was looking forward to visiting California and getting to experience one of Carter’s favorite hobbies. After landing at the airport and getting off the plane, California time was 8 pm so while there was much passenger activity to and from airplane gates, there was little open in the way of magazine stores or restaurants. I had to find a place to sit out of the way of foot traffic and settled on a bottle of Pepsi and crackers from a vending machine. I hadn’t eaten dinner before leaving for the trip so with little else to eat on the plane but a bag of pretzels, I was hungry. After glancing around my surroundings and realizing that the airport had shut everything down but the gates, I figured I would wait until Carter got there and we’d pick something up once we left. I moved to a better location where I could spread out my stuff and nearer to the wall where there was an electrical plug so I could charge my cell phone because the battery was acting funny. There was a clock overhead so I was glad I would be able to keep track of the time while my phone was off charging but behind me in a sectioned off area there was construction going on and I found that noise annoying. I looked at my phone and was thankful I only had about 35 more minutes to deal with this and then Carter and I would be leaving.

First, I thought his flight was just delayed landing on the tarmac. I had waited until five minutes past nine to phone him giving his flight a few extra minutes to unload and giving him a few minutes to get his cell phone turned back on. No answer. The electric saw started up again behind me and I couldn’t even hear myself so I had to move down the escalator to step outside and tried calling him again from the curb. I missed hearing the low battery beep that warns you of little battery power left. No answer. I pulled out my last cigarette, smoked it faster than most people take 5 regular breaths, dialed his number again and heard his voicemail message. It’s one thing to be stood up in your hometown or local surroundings but 6,000 miles away at 9 at night when I was out of cigarettes with no way to get to our hotel was wrong. I was scared but I couldn’t lose it now, I had to hold it together and figure out what was going on. Carter wouldn’t just leave me here, something logical must have happened. I went back up the escalator and resumed my position against the wall near the construction and plugged my phone back in. It dawned on me the phone wasn’t charging. No sooner did I plug the phone in and have the thought that it rang and showed Carter’s number. Thank God! Just as soon as my joy went up at anticipating his arrival any minute, it came crashing down when he told me his plane had technical problems in Chicago and due to the delay of their replacement plane, hadn’t even taken off yet on the last leg to California. His best guess was that it would be another 6 hours until he landed in San Francisco. 6 hours until I would be able to eat some real food…6 hours until I could see my cute boyfriend…6 hours until I could buy more cigarettes…6 hours until I recognized a friendly face in this endless, busy mob of strange faces…6 hours.

There’s no way I can do this I thought to myself, if I hear that electric saw or those construction workers talking to each other in a language I don’t understand for one more minute, I’m going to lose my mind. My stomach was so empty at this point I could feel it turning on and eating itself. It was grumbling so loudly it sounded like I was hiding a starving child in my carry-on bag. My cell phone battery dilemma seemed more like a devastating crisis. I felt completely deflated and hopeless, like the universe was punishing me for something I was unaware I had done. I hated California, I hated Champ Car (even though I still didn’t know what it was) and I really hated myself for making such a last-minute, sporadic decision that I was obviously paying for now. To add insult to injury, it was sometime after Carter and I hung up with each other, about 6 minutes into my crying rant on the phone with my mother who was trying to comfort me and sort of starting to, that my cell phone died. The tears started rolling down my cheeks and while I was busy catching everyone with my fist so people walking by wouldn’t notice and scolding myself for having been so stupid as to have a broken cell phone, no cigarettes, no hotel name, no boyfriend for so many more hours and no way to get food, I heard a little boy walking by with his family yell, smile. I looked up as he was yelling it again to see a tiny blonde haired boy with a bright red Florida sweatshirt and tan shorts take a picture of his parents, who obeyed and were smiling. The irony of it all, I thought, this family so happy and all together and me, so upset and feeling so alone.

The clock above my head read the same time it had when I had first arrived at my spot against the wall so I realized it wasn’t working and when I heard the electric saw start up for the millionth time I figured it must have been shut off for the construction. I wasn’t wearing a watch and my cell phone was dead so I had no way of telling time. Moments after the boy in the red sweatshirt went by I got up and went back down the escalator, outside to the waiting area on the curb to ask someone for the time. Everyone I asked, which was a total of 6 people, couldn’t be 100% on the time so between all their answers, I guesstimated what time I thought it must be. It was still hours to go until Carter landed but I decided instead of focusing on the negatives about it, I would instead start to view this fiasco as an adventure. I looked around. It was then that I noticed the comfortable looking metal benches lined up along the curbside for waiting passengers to sit down and take a load off. I also noticed the temperature was really nice, a lot warmer than the 36 degrees I left behind back in Rhode Island in January, so I took off my top shirt and sat down. I took a deep breath, maybe I could do this. A proper looking businessman approached me while I was sitting outside and asked if I had a light. I pulled the lighter out of my pocket and as he was handing it back to me I asked him if he had an extra cigarette I could have. He said yes and gave me one and all of a sudden I noticed that things were starting to look up, just a little. Maybe San Francisco wasn’t so bad after all and just maybe I could do this.

The obnoxious construction had the power off in the entire section of the San Francisco airport where my plane flew into. There was no working screen to show which flights had arrived and which ones were departing. The restaurants weren’t just closed for the night; they were closed for the restoration. So on the floor against the wall I sat and I waited and I sat and I waited and I watched the area where Carter would be coming out of. Finally, after thousands of different faces and glasses and baseball caps and flowers and endless styles of carry-on bags, I recognized the face that appeared out of the crowd and remembered seeing the red and black carry-on bag in his closet…it was Carter. He smiled and I smiled and I ran to him from where I was, covering a distance of about forty feet in less than a second. The electric saw began again in the background and I wasn’t even bothered by the grating sound, I was hugging Carter. We were together, he was finally in San Francisco, we were leaving together to feed us and get my cigarettes, and our first vacation was officially beginning. I had survived a difficult, exhausting, stressful, endlessly never-ending disaster of events from the moment I exited the gate on Thursday until Friday, early morning when Carter arrived yet if asked today what vacations really stand out, San Francisco is one of them, for Laguna Seca and for the airport.