Winning the Lottery

As some of you may well know, air travel for me is anything but a guarantee. Usually my problems are as simple as always being right in front of a teary-eyed, table-tray-slamming baby, or having my luggage lost on five of six plane trips in a summer. Other times there is a miniature hurricane the day I'm supposed to leave and I miss my flight by literally two minutes and am thus forced to spend the next 21 hours in the airport listening to the world's smoothest jazz and bilingual luggage safety announcements rain down on me from the ceiling. This was, in fact, the case when I left Washington DC about a week ago. When I finally made it on the plane back to California, I was surrounded on all sides by cantankerous children - no surprise there.

I can say with the utmost surprise and happiness (while also probably sacrificing my future flying karma) that I ran into no such problems in my trip to Germany. We dropped my brother off at the airport on time, I was able to hang out with college roommate Chris in the few hours before my flight, I, too, made it to the airport on time and checked my bike without issue. When boarding the plane I was a little nervous, for unlike a Southwest flight on which you can intentionally place yourself in a corner by the bathroom to avoid small kids, we had assigned seats, so I had to surrender the pending comfort of my flight to chance. Upon sitting, I closed my eyes for fear of seeing a youth parade traipse into the rows adjacent to me, but lo and behold I was greeted by nothing more than a very friendly young German-American named Karl. We had several very interesting conversations in both German and English and found out quickly that we shared a love for cycling and Freegan-ism (We found out that we had the latter in common when we finished our dinner 'food' and both began politely asking the people around us if they were "going to finish that?" I got greedy and replaced the untouched cheesecake from the Romanian woman two seats to my right with my empty tin only to have to witness her noticeable disappointment upon discovering that her dessert had disappeared during her short trip to the bathroom...that's me building more bad flying karma). What's more, the man to my side opposite Karl quietly got up moments before takeoff and never came back, leaving me ample foot and elbow space, as well as an area to unobtrusively brush all the crumbs off my lap from the four rolls I rescued out of the wasteful hands of my neighbors. All in all, it was a quick and comfortable flight from San Francisco to Düsseldorf, followed by a simple connection to Munich.

When arriving at Munich, I went to the baggage carousel hoping (notice I didn't say expecting) to see my bags waiting for me. You see, this is somewhat of a game for me now after having been on the losing end of the Baggage-Wheel-of-Fortune so many times. But the streak of good luck continued when both my backpack and my over-sized bike box came in safely (although the bike box I had neatly and securely taped in California was now a collection of taped shreds.) Florian and my brother greeted me in the lobby of the airport where they informed me that while waiting they had test-driven a brand new Audi at an airport-hosted promotion event. How two unkempt twenty-something year old buffoons were able to walk straight out of the Bier Garten, into the Audi office and secure a pair of keys is beyond me. Amidst laughs and countless attempts to trip one another, we made our way into the city on the subway, grabbed dinner and checked into our hostel. Battling our mounting jet-lag, my brother and I fell asleep at about 8 pm. He was able to compose himself long enough to shower, brush his teeth and make his bed; I, however, did none of the above. I feel asleep fully clothed, contacts in, bed bare and woke up in the middle of the night to find myself using my brothers dirty jeans as a pillow. Instead of trying to clean myself up, I just shrugged and fell back asleep.

Today we made the two hour drive to the northern part of Bavaria to Florian's parents' house. I've done nothing more than lounge and eat since I've been here, simply relocating myself from one horizontal position to the other. Tomorrow it looks as though there is a chance of productivity, as we are supposed to meet Florian's grandpa on his 1901 era farm to chop wood and I plan on moving my things into mine and Stefan's flat in Würzburg. However, when Flo, Stefan, Brant and I are together the plan is, much like my air travel, anything but a guarantee. We'll see how much actually gets accomplished by the end of the day...