8,654 Miles (and Rain at Every Mile)

Mile 1 started on Monday with a lecture in American primary politics from my Afghan taxi driver on the way to Reagan Airport (a conversation sprinkled liberally with the word “bouul-sheeet”…) and Mile 8,654 ticked by on Sunday as I taxied into Abu Dhabi past Air Force One.

Mile 662? Nashville, where I mothered a group of NASA employees at a conference that my colleague unofficially labeled: The "I can't brain right now, I have the dumbs" Conference. Honestly, these people may be able to build space shuttles, but I’m not quite sure how they’ve managed to survive this long in the outside world. I’ll spare you the details. Luckily, I found respite at the Bluebird Cafe, www.bluebirdcafe.com , in some really tasty sweet potato fries and a string of fantastic country singers singing that night for a local hospice benefit:



After escaping Nashville I made my way to Mile 5141: Madrid, Spain. There I was greeted under the “airport taxi” sign by one of the most wonderful things in the world, a Molly hug! It was an superb start to a way-too-short-weekend in Madrid. Molly and Ben were tour guides extraordinaire. We wandered, we ate, we talked, we ate, we wandered, we talked and we tried very hard not to sleep so that we could wander, eat and talk some more. What can I say: the Prado, churros con chocolate, a cable car ride listening to Phil Collins, paella (but beware of misc. chicken bone shrapnel), Reina Sophia, street after gorgeous street to wander. To spend a mere 48 hours in Spain is, really, a terrible insult to the country. The weekend was amazing and fabulous and just good for my heart. And, to be a defacto member of the Monson family – like I said, amazing, fabulous and good for my heart.













Attempts to proceed forward were met with some obstacles. Well, 17 obstacles – which would be 17 kilos of overweight baggage (don’t ask…I clearly overpacked with great zeal). I forgot…Europe has stricter weight limits. This resulted in a rather tense conversation at the check-in desk and, consequently, a (more or less) 200 kilo heavy carry-on as I transferred about 15 of the kilos into my carry-on. My trick was spotted a mile off and, at the gate, they actually re-weighed my carry-on on a little bathroom scale. This, in turn, resulted in another rather tense conversation and a forced gate-check of my carry-on bag.


(me with the offending carry-ons)

Many movies, bad food, and incessant chatter between two guys behind me in an unidentified language and two guys to the left in Spanish, I gratefully made my way off the plane to a welcome Mile 8,654.

And, yes, it rained every mile of the way (and is still raining, by the way).