We say that since change is inevitable, we should direct the change, rather than simply continue to go through the change.

Please bring your seat backs forward bitches. The video on the screen alerts me that it’s the law that I wear a mask at all times, and Delta will gently alert me if it comes off — even while sleeping. Basically, “we will wake you up, motherfucker”. Some of us giggle. The others likely just don’t “get” humor, nor science. No joke that shit actually happened to me on the train ride home from last winters 3000 mile ride. The train attendant woke me up; letting me also know that my bandana was insufficient. Time travel back to now and in my mind I reminiscently time travel back to a pre-911 buffalo-to-nyc flight I arrive 10 minutes before takeoff and make with plenty of time. So far from that; so far from anything real. Masked up and lined up and conformed. The robots have definitely won, we are their pitiful rope bitches — the winged tin can rolls down the tarmac.

A bit bumpy on the take off there, capitan. Does any airline show that Denzel flick Flight on flights?

Attención: I have with me no bike; just some hiking boots — and upon cruising altitude speed we will be moving much faster than a train. Roads? Where we’re going… I need a Pase de Salud. For my bilingually-impaired friends out there, that’s not a salad, it’s Costa Rican for their new “fill this out to arrive in our country” form. A relative newbie back into the current state of international travel, I feel like a bit of a guinea pig. Or a scape goat. Some sort of animal no one wanted to be. Nonetheless, I suspect every nation that didn’t do this shit before is now gonna be doing it. More red tape, blue tape, tape tape. 1) Passport. 2) Boarding pass. 3)Vaccination doc. 4) Health Pass. Whats next? It would be so much easier if Psizer could have just given me a chip that took care of all this bullshit so I can get through the tape and zone out to Sly & the Family Stone in blissful noise-cancelled AirPod peace.

Butt.

Delta Man and it’s been three and a half years since an amazing solo week in Costa Rica; matriculating and melting into the luscious landscape, increasing the vacate. It’s also been 586 days since stepping foot anywhere outside of the US&A. My worldview is bird poop since 27 Februaro of our great year of 2020 AD. It’s now year 1 AC, and in keeping with a decade long tradition, I’m adding new art in a wing of the museum that is my passport. Fuck yes. The shit. Though, yo. Fro yo? Whoa no! Mo joe, fo sho. Yodo. Er — Yoda, doing yoga… in a pagoda? The whole experience got me lucid and spitting jibberish, like bumping into the hottest gal on campus.

Hours later and I’m now in the bathroom just two rows up – descending with the flying bird, and these tight spaces are just bueno. Thank you to the NYS Fire Academy for that little bit of confined space training. It comes in handy. So much investment into morning coffee and water and the seat belt light comes back on just as the main vein starts to drain. Like right now right now. Midstream. I have to grab the wall and hold on for dear life with all this turbulence. Then an announcement I can barely hear poorly competes with the AirPod greatness that is Gil Scott-Heron’s, We Almost Lost Detroit. Probably telling me to hurry it up and sit back down. The diaper table shelf thing falls open and pops me in the head after I flush. The mild concussion induces a pseudo-psychedelic trip in my brain, a small ego death and suddenly its so clear to me in this moment that the real reason airplane bathrooms are so small has got to be to keep people from fucking in here. Probably the damn flight attendants, those motherfuckers are sex freaks. Anyhoo. The friendly skies finally stabilize; I manage to not get any on me. My brain turns back on. My eyes uncross. What the actual fuck? Ok. So. Damn it really is tight AF in here. Like the actual size of 1.47 seats. The airline executives must really need the money to do this to the working man. Assessing the situation….. hmmm. Ok. Among the things I CAN do in this brave new world of airplane bathrooms is turn myself around. And wash my hands. Absolutely no hokey pokey though. I’m grateful for that: the hand washing and lack of the hokey pokey being what it’s all about. I get back to my seat before this bird bounces hard off the Earf, like Will Smiths fist when in fact he actually says Earth – fuck mildly racist memes.

I am once again on foreign land. My world view returns in just a small measure. My handle on the Spanish language may take a few days. But the travel drought is over. Fin. Finito. After a lovely bus ride into the city center, I link up with the close homie Chase and we hit a BBoy jam, grab some grub and catch up. I have no real plan down here, just to actually be here. The real adventures are still to come, whatever they may be. Pura vida bitches.