a cast of characters

so i'm back. miami was a complete blur of 14-hour work days, dinners w/the client, room service, getting sick, not getting enough sleep, long meetings and sessions and then annoying connecting flights back to austin.

traveling so much for work these days made me think. anyone who knows me knows that traveling is one of my absolutely favoritest things to do... the adventure! the food! the little streets! the languages! but with travel comes, well, travel... that is, the act of traveling itself. the lost luggage, the delayed flights, the tight connections, the obese passengers seated right next to you.

but i tried to put a positive spin on it. i also love people-watching, and where better to have a captive audience of potential watchees than a contained plane where you have lots of time to kill and nowhere to go?

i now present, for your amusement, a little rundown of all the characters i came in contact with on my recent austin-miami whirlwind adventure:

1. the unclean mystery (austin to atlanta). he reminded me of bill gates in his dorky teen years... not that i knew mr. gates in his teen years or anything, he just looked like your textbook nerd. pale, doughy skin that probably never sees the light of day because he's too busy programming or something (sorry mccoy. you're a cool programmer). weird bulging eyes in a strange shade of steely blue (like what's her name in harry potter - luna lovegood). greasy looking brown hair that's kind of mussy but not in a hot, product-laced mussy way. wussy looking arms and ugly shoes. really horrible posture (he spent most of the flight slumped in this weird pretzel-ish way that made me wonder if he had any bones inside his body or just doughy skin everywhere). and, the piece de resistance - a beige t-shirt advertising some computer conference in san antonio. it would be better if i remembered the exact wording b/c it was SUPER DORKY and made my friend summer's "math rocks" t-shirt look really cool, but alas, it escapes me. so, the weirdest thing about mr. unclean mystery that makes him a mystery? a WEDDING BAND, people. a perfectly normal, white gold or silver or platinum or whatever wedding ring on his fourth left finger. i guess there really is someone for everyone out there... hot damn. i found myself really disappointed that mrs. unclean mystery wasn't on the same flight so i could check her out. plus i would have pegged him to be, like, 19 years old.
2. the perfect family (atlanta to miami). i sat next to Dad and Son. Mom and Daughter sat in the row behind. Dad was tall and lean, toned but not in a beefy way, wearing nice shorts and a pressed polo shirt. sandy colored hair, nice wrinkles, handsome, reading some interesting looking novel. Son was prob 13 or 14 but not in that surly way, just in that "i'm not a girl... not yet a woman" way (the male, non-britney-spears version, of course). he was polite to the flight attendants and spent most of the flight playing with some expensive-looking gadgets. i didn't see much of Mom and Daughter, but did see that Mom was still really attractive but not in a lame MILF-attention-grabbing way, just classy and pretty and nicely dressed and reading some novel. Daughter was gorgeous in that still-young (maybe 10?) but you're-going-to-be-beautiful some day way. there was a lot of quiet joking amongst all family members. i hope they had a nice vacation.
3. mr. international (miami to dallas). we didn't talk until the very end of the flight, but his look intrigued me. tan skin, very piercing blue eyes, kind of wiry body. he had work-callused hands and braided bracelets on one wrist and a really fancy looking cell phone and i just didn't know what to do w/him. we ended up chatting (while sitting on the tarmac for THIRTY MINUTES, for the love of God and all His holy angels), and he is mr. international b/c he is french, but lives in ecuador (quito to be specific) with his ecuadorian wife. he speaks four languages: french (which we spent most of the time using), english (also great), spanish (prob. fluent, given spouse and whatnot), and russian (b/c he sells helicopters! and a lot of his clients speak russian). americans are so lame.
4. brokeback mountain cowboys (dallas to austin). okay, so i don't think they were necessarily gay. and they were actually very nice. and maybe i was just sick and tired of traveling by that time. but these were two older white gentlemen that i'd put in their early-mid 60s. tall, comfortable in their own skin, white hair, glasses, weathered-looking skin, generous noses and kind eyes. they offered me the window (i had the middle) b/c they were traveling together, which was very nice of them. but the first question of my neighbor's mouth? "so, are you coming from an international flight?" it must have been my mcdonald's soft-serve cup, banana republic polo shirt, and reef flip-flops that made me look so un-american...