Another hotel…
I always feel better once I actually get to the ship, but the night before is always difficult. Hotel rooms aren’t really any fun by yourself, and they all do tend to look the same after awhile. Especially since every departure from Seattle the company puts us up in the same hotel. Sometimes it feels like I know this hotel better than I know my own hometown.
Despite the comings and goings of my job, I am not a fan of flying. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m a nervous flier, but I’m not precisely comfortable either. Airports are transient places, and when you spend a lot of time in them you start to feel a little less permanent yourself.
As we flew into Seattle there was a thick fog bank lying across the shoreline, it looked like a river of cloud, something I’ve never seen from above, at first they were nervous that we wouldn’t be able to land in Seattle because of the weather, but the fog clung only to the water line. Emerging from it the cars below shimmer like multicolored insects on the grey stretch of the highway. One thing about large cities I’ve never cared for is how grey they are, there are entire areas where there is not a single speck of green, where the only colour comes from the shimmering metallic roofs of the cars miles below.
After that it becomes a matter of the same routine. You eat dinner alone on the company’s dime, you take one last long hot bath while you still can and you crawl into bed..
5am comes awfully early..
As of tomorrow…Asia, here I come…
Despite the melancholy tone, I do want to point out that I am excited – just, the night before is always truly strange, and there aren’t a lot of people who’ll understand that, unless you’ve found yourself in similar circumstances…