Phoenix.

In the time before I left for Denver I went to a store in Ann Arbor called Hollander’s. The lovely Kat accompanied me and helped me pick out decorative papers. I had wanted to take up bookbinding for some time, but my spending was still a bit impulsive—to the tune of one hundred dollars. On the rare occasions I was separated from her in the following week or two (and sometimes when I was not), I made a 128-page blank book from scratch. It became my AmeriCorps NCCC book. The first thing I put in it were laundry instructions from my mother. Then I remembered a defunct blog of mine, and decided to make it my AmeriCorps NCCC blog.

The facebook group was our hub for communication, and I don’t think anyone’s posted a thing on there since we got to campus. People discussed flights there, saw who the government decided to put on the same planes. I was flying by Pioneer Airlines, and I was flying alone.

My suitcase was 57 pounds. The exasperated black lady who checked my bag had me take one or two things out and put them in my backpack, and just ignored the rest of the surplus weight. She was an odd mix of curt and helpful, and it cost me nothing to check my bag, instead of the 75$ it costs for an overweight bag. I still brought far less than most people, and I still brought a bit more than I needed. They fail to emphasize how much time you spend in uniform—eight hours a day, six days a week.

Flying delights me. It’s amazing to me, the things we’ve discovered. (But then, sometimes I’m equally as amazed by pasta. We figured out how to grow wheat, grind it up into flour, mix it with water into a dough, stretch, cut and dry it into noodles, boil them to eat. I’d have never figured that out.) The pressure from landing wasn’t as bad as I’d remembered from my last flight to Space Camp in 6th grade, but that was Florida, and not Colorado, and there’s a bit of an elevation difference.

I got my luggage and was directed by some team leaders and staff to a waiting room right in front. There were about 20 of us there for an hour, waiting for others to land, because we needed 50 before we could load onto a bus. I bought some Panda Express and gave half of it to the guy next to me—George, who talked slowly but was nonetheless eager to eat new people. He wiped off my fork with a napkin and ate the rest. Coincidentally, the first guy I talk to is directly across the hall from me.

My roommate had beaten me there. Dave has curly hair that he’s probably going to shave, and like many of the guys here, he’s taken to the scruffy look. We get along pretty well, though part of that might be because he’s practically never in the room. He sleeps here, and that’s about it. Like so many of us here, he fancies himself a writer. He likes some high-brow discourse, but conversation in the room is pretty sparse, since we see each other right before bed and right after we wake up.