Ithaca
Ithaca, NY to my front door just off the Cowley Road: 4000 miles, three flights, two trains, and one long and bizarre detour through upstate New York, oh my. Also thirty hours in transit. Sic transit gloria mundi. My head hurts.
The problem, you see, is that Ithaca-Tompkins regional airport is an, um, regional airport, and lacks such modern conveniences as instrument-aided landings and X-ray scanners. (All bags are opened and inspected, and bottles of liquid opened, and then the suncream cap not screwed down again properly leading to suncream everywhere, TSA I'm looking at you.) And when I left, early in the morning I think yesterday, there was fog. Thick, slightly eerie, muffling fog, and I was watching while the visibility dropped to twenty metres and then ten, and then nothing at all, and then the incoming flights from Philadephia and Newark circled the runway and turned back, and then the airport was closed.
I went to the Delta desk with a feeling of encroaching despair. (US domestic airlines, hi, they all indiscriminately suck.) But for once, they didn't. I frantically explained that unlike the people around me I was not making a short hop, I was trying to make a connection through Detroit to Heathrow. The agent typed and clicked while I panicked, and then said, how about this. "We fly you out from Elmira, NY, to Detroit, then to Paris, then to Heathrow."
And before I could say anything else, "We'll get you a cab to Elmira. Oh, and I'll put you in first-class transatlantic."
I could have kissed him.
The taxi-ride through upstate New York was eerie. Elmira was the closest airport with the capability for take-off in fog, so that's where the diversion took us, and it was about an hour's drive through a landscape that soared around through the low-lying mist. In England, the landscape rolls; there it loomed. Elmira when it appeared was pretty tiny, and the aircraft even tinier - propellors! - but it got me safely to Detroit, and thence onwards towards Paris. The upgrade was fabulous. I got served dinner on a tablecloth! And then slept lying flat whilst 30,000 feet above the Atlantic. It was marvellous. I even caught myself wishing the flight were a couple of hours longer so I could really catch up on sleep. (I have just emailed Delta about their wonderful customer service, in lieu of kissing their agent.) I got home this afternoon entirely exhausted, but it really wasn't the worst experience ever. I even got to practice my very bad French in Paris.
But, but. Ithaca, you guys. Ithaca is gorgeous. (Despite the tourist board's sloganeering, I liked it so I put a U in it.) It really is. It is teeny teeny tiny - you wander around the downtown area and keep coming to the end of it by mistake - and a good half of it is made up by Cornell, which sprawls handsomely around the town with its imposing buildings and enormous swathes of greenery. Everything is so trim, so pretty, with the gorges as these sudden, beautiful gashes in the landscape. Because I am the smartest person on the planet, I picked Cornell's reunion weekend as my weekend to visit (how I found somewhere to stay is still beyond me), and the town was buzzing with people, and something of their excitement was in the air; at any rate, I thought it was auspicious to see Cornell for the first time when it was surrounded by people who loved it enough to have travelled miles to get back that weekend.
The law school, in particular, was having its fifty-year reunion, and was thus full of balloons and the class of 1960. They all added a suitably surreal touch to what was a surreal journey - I mean, I applied to Cornell, I was accepted, I've seen pictures, but still I couldn't picture myself there, in those halls that aren't so much hallowed as entirely alien, and I don't know if I can yet. But I made a step, I think; I made several steps. I opened a bank account, I signed a lease, I discussed with the registrar which courses I should take, I figured out Ithaca's rather marvellous public transport system, I climbed a lot of hills. (Am I doomed to hills? I currently live halfway up about the only hill in Oxfordshire.)
Mostly, I was surprised by the kindness of strangers. I got lost and was led to where I was going for miles out of their way by gently amused undergrads, a guy who was passing made calls on my behalf when I missed an appointment with a potential landlord, the people at the law school loaded me up with information, leaflets and gift cards to the local bagel shop. Strangers stopped me when I was clearly going in the wrong direction and put me right. About twelve different people assumed I was an admitted freshman but were still kind when I told them I wasn't. I would say, o hai, do I look seventeen to you, but I'm sort of afraid of the answer. One of the undergrads blushed and told me he liked my accent. What a wonderful place. And I'm glad I thought so, because I'm committed now: I signed a lease, and fell in love with a local restaurant (Moosewood, possibly the best vegetarian restaurant I've ever been to).
More than anything else, I was sorry to leave. I think I'm really doing this.
The problem, you see, is that Ithaca-Tompkins regional airport is an, um, regional airport, and lacks such modern conveniences as instrument-aided landings and X-ray scanners. (All bags are opened and inspected, and bottles of liquid opened, and then the suncream cap not screwed down again properly leading to suncream everywhere, TSA I'm looking at you.) And when I left, early in the morning I think yesterday, there was fog. Thick, slightly eerie, muffling fog, and I was watching while the visibility dropped to twenty metres and then ten, and then nothing at all, and then the incoming flights from Philadephia and Newark circled the runway and turned back, and then the airport was closed.
I went to the Delta desk with a feeling of encroaching despair. (US domestic airlines, hi, they all indiscriminately suck.) But for once, they didn't. I frantically explained that unlike the people around me I was not making a short hop, I was trying to make a connection through Detroit to Heathrow. The agent typed and clicked while I panicked, and then said, how about this. "We fly you out from Elmira, NY, to Detroit, then to Paris, then to Heathrow."
And before I could say anything else, "We'll get you a cab to Elmira. Oh, and I'll put you in first-class transatlantic."
I could have kissed him.
The taxi-ride through upstate New York was eerie. Elmira was the closest airport with the capability for take-off in fog, so that's where the diversion took us, and it was about an hour's drive through a landscape that soared around through the low-lying mist. In England, the landscape rolls; there it loomed. Elmira when it appeared was pretty tiny, and the aircraft even tinier - propellors! - but it got me safely to Detroit, and thence onwards towards Paris. The upgrade was fabulous. I got served dinner on a tablecloth! And then slept lying flat whilst 30,000 feet above the Atlantic. It was marvellous. I even caught myself wishing the flight were a couple of hours longer so I could really catch up on sleep. (I have just emailed Delta about their wonderful customer service, in lieu of kissing their agent.) I got home this afternoon entirely exhausted, but it really wasn't the worst experience ever. I even got to practice my very bad French in Paris.
But, but. Ithaca, you guys. Ithaca is gorgeous. (Despite the tourist board's sloganeering, I liked it so I put a U in it.) It really is. It is teeny teeny tiny - you wander around the downtown area and keep coming to the end of it by mistake - and a good half of it is made up by Cornell, which sprawls handsomely around the town with its imposing buildings and enormous swathes of greenery. Everything is so trim, so pretty, with the gorges as these sudden, beautiful gashes in the landscape. Because I am the smartest person on the planet, I picked Cornell's reunion weekend as my weekend to visit (how I found somewhere to stay is still beyond me), and the town was buzzing with people, and something of their excitement was in the air; at any rate, I thought it was auspicious to see Cornell for the first time when it was surrounded by people who loved it enough to have travelled miles to get back that weekend.
The law school, in particular, was having its fifty-year reunion, and was thus full of balloons and the class of 1960. They all added a suitably surreal touch to what was a surreal journey - I mean, I applied to Cornell, I was accepted, I've seen pictures, but still I couldn't picture myself there, in those halls that aren't so much hallowed as entirely alien, and I don't know if I can yet. But I made a step, I think; I made several steps. I opened a bank account, I signed a lease, I discussed with the registrar which courses I should take, I figured out Ithaca's rather marvellous public transport system, I climbed a lot of hills. (Am I doomed to hills? I currently live halfway up about the only hill in Oxfordshire.)
Mostly, I was surprised by the kindness of strangers. I got lost and was led to where I was going for miles out of their way by gently amused undergrads, a guy who was passing made calls on my behalf when I missed an appointment with a potential landlord, the people at the law school loaded me up with information, leaflets and gift cards to the local bagel shop. Strangers stopped me when I was clearly going in the wrong direction and put me right. About twelve different people assumed I was an admitted freshman but were still kind when I told them I wasn't. I would say, o hai, do I look seventeen to you, but I'm sort of afraid of the answer. One of the undergrads blushed and told me he liked my accent. What a wonderful place. And I'm glad I thought so, because I'm committed now: I signed a lease, and fell in love with a local restaurant (Moosewood, possibly the best vegetarian restaurant I've ever been to).
More than anything else, I was sorry to leave. I think I'm really doing this.