South America - 12/29/15

6:45 a.m.
Finally boarded the plane.

7:10 a.m.
Due to an unexpected amount of frost on the plane’s wings, we are now “at the mercy of mother nature,” to quote the pilot. Now we have only to sit and wait for the sun to defrost our plane and we’ll be good to go. It is a waiting game . . .
A man somewhere behind me is snoring like my father. Or else somebody is felling redwood trees in the terminal with only a single buzz saw. 
Marie and I have this aisle to ourselves.

7:35 a.m. 
They found a ‘plane defroster’ which is, judging by my view out the port hole to my right, evidently a crewman on a cherry picker with a fire hose.
The plane is mostly calm and quiet. The captain informed us they’d topped off our fuel so we would be flying as fast as the plane could go in order to make up for lost time.

9:15 a.m.
Reality check over Tucson, AZ.
Marie has been nodding in and out of consciousness, with an emphasis on the latter, throughout the duration of our flight.
I have set the screen embedded in the headrest before me to track and display our flight in real time. I make sure to identify any major or notable landmarks we pass.

12:25 p.m.
Making our descent into Dallas Ft. Worth International airport. 
Currently north of Stephenville.
Captain warns of moderate ‘chop’ at lower altitudes.

2:00 p.m.
Landed in Dallas. Marie seems grumpy. I wanted either T.G.I. Friday’s or Popeye’s. She wanted either Dunkin’ Donuts or McDonalds. We got McDonalds. I want to ride the tram and people watch. She wants to watch X-Files. To each their own, I suppose. We are posted at the gate. Seven hours to kill. I tell her I will ride the tram, and I ride the tram around the airport twice in both directions before returning to the terminal where she sits still watching X-Files. She is upset I didn’t tell her I was leaving. I did tell her but she was so engrossed in the X-Files she didn’t process what I’d said.

3:45 p.m. 
I fell asleep for an hour. Woke up and went for a walk. Followed some people around the airport. Grew suspicious of myself and abandoned that activity.

4:50 p.m.
The man across from me is listlessly chewing his pinky as he intently fingers through a well-traveled teal colored paperback book of 5.5” x 7.5”. Though I cannot make out the exact title or author attribution, I judge by the cover’s appearance it is an Americana novella. Perhaps a murder mystery.
The reader holds it in soft, maroon, brown hands, hands of a reader, their only signs of wear being the creases in his palms. They are well moisturized hands. His thinning black hair holds its own where it remains, but still undeniably recedes to his cranium and away from his ears. 
His dark almond eyes pace the pages back and forth at a respectable rate, and every fifth or sixth turn requires he moisten his thumb and forefinger on his slim tongue to separate the dry withering leaves. 
He shakes his restless left leg unconsciously to redirect his tightly wound nerves, subconscious apprehension. From waiting, of knowing the flight to come? Inactive boredom? A similar tick taps his right index finger on his fleshy, wrinkled cheek when it is not turning pages, and his remaining fingers are lost in the aging folds of his now inelastic neck.
The motion of the turn itself! At once fluid as clear water, yet halted as the still mountain from which the stream descends, staccato. You can count the movements, one and three. One and three. The hand, stubby fingers, motionless and stagnant, descends to the yellow frayed page. One. Pinches the corner, the creases. Two. Flips and folds. Three. Taps, taps, taps his fleshy neck, chin, cheeks. Three. One. Two. Three. 
Alas, his phone has charged to its fullest, and the man vanishes.

Time Unknown - Afternoon Local Time
I looked up certain important phrases in Spanish to have on hand in case of an emergency, or necessity.
“We need a cab from ___ to ___.”
“Necesitamos un taxi desde ___ a ___.”

“How much does it cost?”
“Cuanto cuesta?”

“My first language is English.”
“Mi primer idoma es Ingles.”

We met a native Kentuckian at the main Buenos Aires airport and caught a cab to the city proper with him. He didn’t speak Spanish. He was here for three weeks. He took photos of the highway in the cab, and of the dilapidated, corrugated metal and cinder block apartments that lined the road along the way. The taxi took Marie and I to our Air BnB. We quickly departed ways from Parker, the Kentuckian. He found, I’m sure, his own accommodations. I never saw him again.