Tour Diary: Matt Costa: Americana, Americano en route to Portland

We made it with an hour to spare. We wait at gate C7 for American Airlines flight 1316 from Dallas to Portland. The flight leaves at 8:55 Saturday morning. Pamela and I are on the flight.

We made it with an hour to spare.

Half asleep I think of Hurricane Florence and then Lake Garda in Northern Italy. I wished I was flying to Italy. Take the long transatlantic flight, land in Amsterdam, transfer to Milan, baggage is held up by a worker’s strike and one angry American tourist starts raising his voice at an Italian officer. They start a shoving match. All the passengers wait two hours for baggage. I drive with no GPS through the narrow city center and find my hotel with cool tile on the floor and frescos on the walls. In a few days I would take a train to Lake Garda and walk among the olive trees and Roman ruins, take a ferry across the lake and stand at the back of the boat. The water sprays out into the Italian blue. To my right on an orange chair is a woman singing to her daughter, but not in Italian. She sings soft and low in German.

All this I think as I walk down the jet ramp to board the plane today, September 15. I find my aisle seat, sit down, close my eyes and start to think again of Italy. When I was young I visited Pompeii with my family. We were visiting some relatives. I can remember walking down stone streets and and people covered in ash, a mother covering her child. Frozen in that position for centuries. I ask my parents what happened and they explain how Vesuvius erupted and covered the city in lava and ash. I immediately want to leave.

Currently I wake up on my flight — it’s 10:23am Pacific Standard. I see Mount Saint Helens out the window in the distance and am thankful we don’t have volcanos in Southern California. The pilot says it’s a beautiful day in Portland and that we land in 35 minutes.