Preflight

Before we left for the airport we tried to eat as many of our leftover clementines as we could. We had eaten most of our food, but somehow the clementines had escaped us. Luckily our friend Rachel was able to swing by and pick up the rest of the bag of clementines before we got sick of them.

We got through airport security no problem, and with all our extra time we looked for something to eat for lunch. Lizy spotted a sushi place, but wondered if there might be something better if we kept walking around the airport.

“Sushi is your favorite food,” I said to her, “So what could top this?”

Lizy got sushi and I got a combo udon noodles.

Our flight got delayed by two hours, but I didn’t mind because I had packed the annual Cartoons and Puzzles issue of the New Yorker. I spent my time doing a puzzle that was sort of like a crossword, but instead of vertical and horizontal clues, there were two clues for each row and then a collection of clues that could be used to fill in paths on the grid. To stretch my legs I walked around the terminal a bit, and at the food court I stopped to listen to live music put on for the holidays.

Lizy wanted to be the first from Group 3 on the plane and she jockyed for that position. I questioned whether we needed to be so aggressive, but there was no stopping her and when indeed we were the first on the plane she turned to me as if to say, “see what I did for us.” And then when the stragglers didn’t have space to stow their bags in the overhead bins, she said to me aloud this time, “See what I did for us. That’d be you without me. Zoned out doing crosswords until everyone has their bag in the bin except for you.”

Two Aisle Companions

Lizy sat in the window seat and I sat in the middle seat. We had two aisle seat companions on the flight and they both managed to annoy Lizy. Our first companion we only had for boarding, but in that small amount of time she managed to draw out Lizy’s rath. When she was letting us into her row, she somehow managed knock over Lizy’s Matcha Late and spill the contents all over the floor that Lizy had to put her feet, and worst of all not only did she did not apologize, she didn’t even acknowledge what she had done as if she hadn’t noticed the incident occur at all. Lizy was whispering in my ear that I had to fight with this women over our shared armrest in retaliation, but before there was a chance she exchanged seats to sit with her friend.

The man who replace her, seemed to be in his mid 30’s and was wearing over ear headphones. I tried to say hi, but he was cacooned in his own world, nothing wrong with that. He was reading Americanah by Ngozine Adiche, and I thought about engaging him in a conversation about the author since I had read her other novel, but what would that conversation even look like, and I figured I’d leave him alone. As the flight progressed I heard a few coughs to my left from our companion. He’s clearing his throat I thought. But then he started sneezing and coughing. It became apparent that he was visibly sick. This would always freak Lizy out, but she was especially cautious now because she was on antibiotics and seeing her parents. “Couldn’t he at least wear a mask or something,” I knew Lizy was thinking.

The One Pencil

Lizy and I spent some time trying to solve a puzzle in the New Yorker. In the game there were a list of words and a list of transformation such as “Swap the first and third letter to form another word.” One had to match each word to a transformation. It was a really fun game to do together.

After we finished the puzzle, I started to do a crossword and Lizy read a book. The trouble was that I had two pens, and only one pencil. I wanted to use pencil for the crossword puzzle because it was especially tough and I was liable to make mistakes and Lizy wanted to use pencil to make notes in the margin of her book, I’m assuming, because pen would bleed through the page. We passed the pencil back and forth. It was no problem at the beginning because we both only needed it intermittently, but after not so long Lizy started highlighting every other word in her book and would grab the pencil out of my hand mid writing a word. At one point she went to th the grab the pencil for me, but I was about to write a clue so I resisted, she kep pulling, and then she pulled the inner part of the mechanical pencil out of the casing, and the spring went flying through the air.

“Why didn’t you let go?” she asked.

“Why did you pull so hard?” I replied.

“Because you wouldn’t let go. Now you’ve broken the pencil.”

“That was definitely your fault.”

But what did it matter who’s fault it was? The lead was lost between the seats and the spring was no where to be found. Lizy asked the flight attendant for a pencil, but she only had a pen. That’s life for you; when you need a pencil you find yourself drowning in pens.

Getting the Rental Car

There wasn’t much flight left. I ate the Iranian style frittata I had packed for the flight in a plastic bag and listened to an audio-book as we landed in Mexico City. As we descended, Lizy and I looked out the window to marvel at the sprawl of lights.

Out of the plane there was some confusion about the car rental reservation Andy had made with Infinity. Infinity didn’t have a boot, like Hertz, in the airport, so we didn’t know who to talk to. Lizy went to the other rental companies to try to figure out where to go, and the clerks seemed to not even know what Infinity was. Lizy’s parents were taking longer than expected to get their bags and we weren’t sure if should go to meet them at their terminal before figuring out the rental car.

Lizy really saved the day. She figured out a number for Infinity from the internet and was able to call the company to organize an airport pickup for us. Since she speaks fluent French she was able to usually understand Spanish and respond in a way that was understandable. I really admired her language abilities.

Infinity picked us up in a van. Lizy told him that we needed to pick up her parents in the other terminal. The other terminal ended up being miles away. With all the traffic it took much longer than I would’ve expected to get there. We greeted Lizy’s parents who were happy to see us, but tired from their long journey. From their terminal we fought the traffic to the Infinity lot.

Elizabeth and I sat on couches in the reception, while Lizy and her dad worked out the final details of the rental. Elizabeth was very tired as she normally went to bed early and it was already midnight her time back in Ottawa. Lizy and Andy ended up having a lot of questions and the language barrier drew out the conversation. The two clerk seemed to be in no rush and the finalization process I think ended up taking about an hour somehow.

Andy drove us to our Air B and B in Condesa, while Lizy told him directions from her phone. I noticed a lot of barbed wire fences along the highway near the airport. Not sure why. I also noticed street vendors selling delicious looking food which I was excited to try in the coming days.

Our first impression of the condo we had rented were that it was big and spacious. The kitchen was sparse, but adequate. The stairs to the second floor didn’t have a railing and Andy remarked that Mexcians must be more adapted to danger, because you could never build a stairway like that in Canada or the US.

We all went to sleep excited for the trip.