Erik MH:

The road goes ever on…

He did not tell Gan­dalf, but as he was speak­ing a great desire to fol­low Bilbo flamed up in his heart — to fol­low Bilbo, and even per­haps to find him again. It was so strong that it over­came his fear: he could almost have run out there and then down the road without his hat, as Bilbo had done on a sim­il­ar morn­ing long ago. — LR §1.02.178.

I left my hats at home, inten­tion­ally, though I did leave behind a couple of items I’d meant to bring. Delta Air­lines warned me that because of “increased travel,” I should report to the air­port in Bur­l­ing­ton three hours before my flight. Know­ing it was Bur­l­ing­ton, we took that with a grain of salt and arrived at about 2¼ hours early. Snow plows slowed us down; they and the 5ºF tem­per­at­ure (-15ºC, for those of you sens­ible enough to use Celsi­us!) reminded me that I shouldn’t feel too homesick!

But Bur­l­ing­ton being Bur­l­ing­ton, Delta’s counter didn’t even open until fif­teen minutes later — exactly two hours before take-off. As it was, I was fourth in line. TSA was friendly and calm, and they didn’t make me take off my shoes or my belt (or my over­shirt with met­al but­tons) or even empty out my carry-on lug­gage. May the rest of my trip go as smoothly!

The trade-off to fly­ing from Bur­l­ing­ton is that there are very few flights: only two each day, for example, to JFK. Though I man­aged to get a seat on the (very full) 11:04 flight, I’m now facing more than a ten-hour lay­over in JFK. For­tu­nately, Ter­min­al 4 seems pretty sane. Just as well, since my con­nect­ing flight (non-stop to Lima) leaves at 23:30.…

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