GEEETRRDUUN

Time to go to work, if you can call it that. I've just arrived in Brussels after my two flights, and I'm feeling intense. There's something about sleep deprivation that flicks a switch in mind. Maybe it's also the fact that flying overnight to Europe just feels like one super long day, and I only hit my second wind once I realize how backwards it all is. There's a deja vu aspect to this as well. I've felt like this before.......INTENSE........or maybe just crazy.

I flew out of JFK at 6, and landed in Dublin at about 5:25am. Light had just begun to peak out from behind the green hills, and most of my fellow travelers were rubbing their eyes. I just sort of stared straight ahead, not having the strength to do much else. My connecting flight to Brussels was to leave at about 6:50am, and the gate was to be closed at 6:25 - or at least that's what my boarding pass said. After winding my way through the Dublin airport, following all the signs and signals, I came at a fork in the road. To the right were the A gates, and to the left the B and C gates. I looked up slightly cross-eyed at the departure schedule monitors and saw the word "Brussels" next to the symbol A65. Naturally, I made a right turn.

The path to the A gates was under construction, and every couple of minutes I would see a sign saying "allow 5 minutes" for flights out of the A terminal. I chalked this up to caution, but soon found out the walk took altogether about 8 minutes; I was strolling along at a snail's pace. When I got to gate A65, there was a long line of irish, all of them wearing a similar face of befuddlement and exhaustion. I noticed the planes oustide were RYANAIR; my ticket said AerLingus (there's a crude joke there, but I'll be a cunning linguist and refrain from making it). This is the point where any rational, thinking, rested human being would conclude he was standing in the wrong terminal. But not this human being. Guessing it a mere peculiarity that the name on the plane didn't match the name on my ticket, I patiently shuffled step by step up the que (cue? how the hell do you spell that?) to the gate. "There's NO WAY there could be TWO planes heading to the same place......this has gotta be the one....." The ticket-taker took my paperwork and silly passport and did a little double-take, both at my passport pic and the boarding pass itself. "This is an AerLingus ticket," he said matter-of-factly. "Yes. To Brussels," I replied, as if he didn't already know that. He took a moment to soak in my stupidity before pointing to the letter "C" printed in black ink below the word "terminal." I looked at the clock, which now read 6:17am, about 8 minutes from the cutoff time for my actual flight, located about 2000 yards away in the AerLingus wing of the airport. With no time to waste, I took off like a freak down the terminal, a panicked blur of carry-on baggage and blue pants whizzing past the "allow 5 minutes" signs.

I don't think I've ever been so freaked out, exhausted, and pissed-off in my life. As I got to gate C44, I was panting, dripping sweat, about to pass out as I managed to blurt out, "ISITCLOSEDYET?" (that's not dutch....). The man looked up calmly at me and said, "we'll be boarding in about ten minutes." And MAN did i feel like a horse's patoot. Now i was the really sweaty, slightly psychotic looking guy waiting online to board the plane. There's something terrible about being the only sweaty person amongst a group of non-sweaty people. I have experience in this, too. Often i play tennis in manhattan and forget my change of clothes in my car, parked next to the L train back in brooklyn. What this means is that I have to ride the subway COMPLETELY drenched in sweat, ashamed, stinky, and fielding more than a few what-the-hell-did-that-guy-just-do stares.

Anyways, once I was on the plane, the only eventful thing that happened was the fat irish man sitting next to me waking himself up once every ten minutes with a massive snoor/snort. So, having avoided a sure SNAFU, I have arrived safely in Brussels. We will be leaving in two hours to go to the festival venue at Pukkelpop. I can't wait. More to come later.