Five of Us Riding Nowhere: Don’t look back in anger

The first day of travel is always hard. It’s hard to get any sleep on a plane, especially when you’re a kid and that little screen is right in your face beckoning you for hours. It’s even harder when you’re sick, like Jess.

Few of us got any sleep on the first leg to Iceland, and we stumbled off the plane to get on the next flight to London. We were surprised to find only one guy in the boarding line, whereas the gate right next to ours had a fairly long line. “Sally” was visibly angry in that line when we walked on by, and when the boarding time came near, she shoved her way past Jess and snarled, “we were here first!” The only reasonable response to this, on a flight that holds hundreds where you have a reserved seat, is “that’s nice.” An unreasonable response would be to kick her in the shins and yell. Jess chose wisely.

The flight was filled with some surprising weirdness as someone shoving their entire fist in their mouth to eat pumpkin seeds and smacking loudly. At the end of the flight, it’s important to note that luggage in the overhead bins may shift during the flight. I’ve only heard this a hundred times, so it’s still easy to forget. A couple kept out of their seats and had their bags in the aisle so no one else could get out of their seats. I thanked them by opening the bin and dropped a backpack bomb on the woman’s head. “You say sorry!” was her response, as she glared at me in anger. I could have been nicer, but I didn’t kick her in the shins or yell. To follow all this with an hour in the passport control line at Heathrow, it was hard not to be angry.

You know who’s really angry? Brexit protesters in London. Arriving at our Parliament tour, we were greeted by 700,000 of them with signs and yelling. We pushed upstream to get to our tour, seeing democracy in action to get to democracy in practice.

At this point, we were all incredibly tired. Dinah couldn’t fight it and fell asleep with a thud on the table at dinner.