Ciudad de Mexico
3:45 am. The alarm is buzzing in one ear. Roxy is snoring softly in my other ear. When did she crawl into bed? The house is quiet. Somewhere a faucet is dripping. I force myself out of bed and make my way downstairs through the dark.
The shuttle is outside. It’s the same driver I’ve had for the past 3 trips. He makes a remark about how much I’ve been traveling lately. Yes, I know. We make one pickup on the way to the airport. She’s headed to Atlanta for some kind of conference and is way too chipper for this god-awful hour of the morning.
The airport is quiet. Travelers are just beginning to line up for their early morning flights. I make my way to the self check-in kiosks. The kiosks are always empty. Tickets in hand, I round the corner and head towards the gates. Security is empty. TSA agents are just milling about staring at the ceiling, the walls, the floor. For some reason, which I don’t quite understand, the San Diego agents are more friendly than any other airport.
Upstairs, the addicts are waiting for their dealer to open. The women behind the counter, their eyes twinkling with black humor, ignore their pleas to serve early.
Boarding time. People shuffle slowly down the jet ramp. It’s still dark outside. The runway twinkles with blue lights. Orange safety lights from the baggage trains flash in the darkness. The plane shudders as it begins the race down the runway.
We’re airborne heading north to San Francisco. The sun is just beginning it’s climb, peeking ever so slightly over the clouds. I read. I watch the sunrise. I read.
It’s been awhile since I’ve flown into SFO and I’d forgotten how close to the water you get just before touchdown. The terminal is empty as I make my way of to the international gates. The international terminal is a 180 flip from the domestic gates. Gleaming marble on the floors. Duty free screams at you from all angles. Chanel. Swarovski. Gucci. Time slowly marches forward and the terminal begins to fill. A police office on a bicycle spins his way through the crowd. The Best Buy vending machine snags people like a bug zapper. I sit in the corner watching, munching quietly on a breakfast burrito from the restaurant across the way, and reading.
SFO quickly falls away as we make our south. Out the window, the Pacific stretches away to fade below the clouds at the horizon. Somewhere between L.A. and San Diego we begin angling east. I look up from my book and see nothing but barren desert. There is a small sliver of aqua marine, the Sea of Cortez, which slowly gives way to brown. Gradually the brown gives way to green. The flatness of the desert becomes deep canyon. We must be somewhere over Chihuahua and La Barranca del Cobre. The terrain looks beautiful but with a dark side.
The plane banks and I see nothing but sky. I watch the flaps on the wing and my ears pop. We drop through the clouds and I see the beginnings of the city high on the mountain slopes. The city is immense, stretching far across the valley. The plane banks again. I gain a view of the soccer stadium, the field a brilliant emerald surrounded by concrete. That place must be an experience on game day. Moments later we’ve landed and I make my way towards customs.
