Landing

There came a moment, passing through the stainless steel and class passage that separates the departing from the departed at Seattle Airport, that the journey took over, I gave up and the whole experience lightened.  It was too late now.  Too late to worry about moving a wheelchair halfway around the world, through Tuscany, London and back via Indianapolis.  It was all going to happen or it wasn't.  So, as a parting shot to things West Coast, why not have a final bowl of udon noodles, red pepper and sesame salt included, within sight of the Air France gate? 

Why indeed?  Two hours later we were eating again, high above Edmonton, Alberta.  Eating and peeing, of course.  The latter took me out of coach and into the strange world of Air France business class, a section of the plane amounting to all of 18 seats (I counted) in oval enclosures...more like 18 pods.  Most of the latter were unoccupied, but one could glimpse a head or limb here and there.  I let the pod people sleep and tried to do the same myself.  But it was hopeless.  Conditions were cramped, the hour was wrong.  The hour was going to stay wrong for a long time.

Few passengers at Charles de Gaulle Airport get a chance to see the underside of the corridors they rush through.  Wheelchair passengers get a close inspection.  With barely an hour between planes, I was in no mood to inspect anything.  At this enormously overcrowded airport, our plane had parked far from the terminal, double parked one might say.  The planeload of passengers walked down a stairway, just like in the olden days, wandered across the concrete, and boarded buses.  We waited.  The flight to Florence was two terminals away and becoming more distant by the minute.  Any minute, said one flight attendant.  Wheelchair?  Oh, you'll be getting a special bus.  In a gesture of intended efficiency, that felt downright magnanimous, I had checked my electric wheelchair right through to Florence.  No insisting that the thing be brought to the gate in Paris -- a push wheelchair with attendant would get me through the airport just fine.  That was the plan.

The same sort of truck with a lift that raises 300 trays of lasagna and cans of Sprite to your airplane's galley can also offload one cripple in a borrowed wheelchair, it seems.  Unfortunately, this involves a circuitous ride through Aeromexico baggage carts, Fly Bulgaria fuel trucks and acres of parked planes to French immigration.  We were running short of time, so our truck driver doubled as a wheelchair pusher and helped to hustle us through.  The French officials helped themselves, it must be pointed out.  In Western Europe border officials know the difference between a Jewish American cripple and an Al Qaeda terrorist.  No one in the US has spotted this nuance, so airplane boarding is a tedious frisking and remove-the-shoes affair. 

Fortunately, sanity reigned at Charles de Gaulle.  Okay, so Marlou had to toss out the free bottle of Air France wine I had sequestered in our book bag.  It seemed such a wise and penurious move, saving the small portion of free vin rouge, authentically French, for a rainy vacation day.  Nevermind.  Even to the French, a bottle of fluid is a bottle of fluid.  No frisking, just brisking, and you're free to go, sir.  And hope you make your plane.  Not to worry.  We began the reverse version of what we had just done on arrival.  Passengers were boarding a bus, as I was boarding a lift truck for another careening between, through and under terminals.  Yes, just look up.  The passengers walking down the glass hallway above you don't even know they're on a bridge, let alone that plaster has broken and fallen away from the structure that supports them.  Who cares?  We are now getting a strange view of Air France subsidiaries.  BritAir, for example.  I believe it serves Brittany.  City Jet is ours.  All these short-hop planes bear the Air France logo, as well as the subsidiary's.  Travel...you learn things...like the mass efficiency of America does not obtain everywhere.  Air France has a bunch of little airlines for a bunch of little reasons, so don't worry your pretty little head.  No, don't even worry about how with gas prices exploding Air France is operating flights like ours from Seattle one third empty.  Or why this plane we are boarding for Florence is a small four-engine BAC 146, notoriously fuel inefficient.  Instead, look down.  Where are we?  Descending over northern Italy, which turns out to be green and hilly beyond expectation.  Somehow, I thought there were the Alps then the flats.  Wrong.  This hilly region goes on and on, and I don't even know what it is, but I'm certain that I should visit.

Florence Airport looks like a small field for private planes that has been recently, and only partially, expanded.  Our plane touches down on a short strip, rolls to the runway's end and simply turns around.  There is no taxiway.  We roll right back up the runway to the tiny terminal.  Florence.  It's not hard to find the driver.  It's not hard to find anything at Florence Airport, including our disabled van, parked just outside.  It's a surprisingly nifty vehicle, and the Italian driver puts Marlou through the paces in minutes.  The van's back door opens, the whole thing kneels like a modern city bus, and the wheelchair rolls inside.  We thank him and roll away.  Of course, we don't get far.  It may be 2 p.m. in Florence, but it's 5 a.m. in California, and there is no way, no sane and legal way, out of the airport.  Marlou could drive the Kangoo -- our Renault van -- at high speed right through the wooden exit gate, but neither of us is certain that it is wooden.  I don't even believe it is an exit gate.  Marlou doesn't either.  We park.  Marlou scouts.  Magically extracting euros from some past trip, she pays the parking guy and returns.  We hit the road.

Miraculously, it is the right road.  It is the road to Siena, not the motorway to Rome or Bologna, although signs offer these tantalizing possibilities.  No, we actually get on the Raccordo, the private motorway, the one financed by some Italian bank for reasons that are obscure.  And there it is, Colle val d'Elsa nord, our sign.  In our sexual role reversal, Marlou doesn't like to ask for directions, but I do.  So, naturally, Marlou has been following a set of instructions provided by MapQuest, while I was counting on the hotel's website version.  No wonder we are lost.  Marlou tells me she is running out of steam.  We are running out of Colle val d'Elsa, the town petering out into industrial outskirts.  It's somewhere to the left.  I'm certain.  It's in the country, not the town.  I've seen photos on the Internet.  Maybe it's up there.  It is.  The Eagle has landed.