i am way too exhausted to type up all of my notes. Departure. Hello upside down reader. I am weary on the other side of the world. At the same time, my mind is racing and I am trying to think of the best way to tell our story thus far. It is an ominous task, knowing that we have just begun a journey. As I said to Andy and Matt at dinner tonight (Sunday), „It has been one hell of a day since Friday.‰ To put it in perspective, right now is the first time that I have been horizontal in an actual bed since Thursday. Yeah, you heard right. A series of long flights, delays, and layovers added up to 32 hours of travel. It truly seems like a waking dream, and not necessarily a good one. It is hard to say what is good, what is rich, what is poor, what is fair, what is funny. My sense of everything is turned around, not the least of which is the fact that I am actually on the other side of the world. And I can't sleep, dammit. Once upon a time, three optimistic travelers set out from humble RIC. I had the good fortune to sit behind two Gypsies and a Puerto Rican. No, that‚s not the start of a joke. They really were two Gypsies and a Puerto Rican. I was a little anxious about the trip and I couldn‚t get into my book, so I started playing the „Who the hell is that?‰ game. You all do it. What‚s his deal? Who does she think she is? What‚s with that guy's deformed finger? You try to fill in the gaps for the story that is written on everyone‚s face. Well at first, I thought that all three were Puerto Rican. Yeah, I stereotyped them. Two women and a man with deep tan skin and big brown eyes. The man‚s accent was unmistakable and one of the women had this sassy, big hoop earrings, pouty lip thing going on. The body shapes seem to fit. Except for the other woman who was a little gaunt, eyes set deep, a little frightened like a prey animal, shifting her glance from person to person on the plane. She looked me deep in the eye and I thought∑.maybe Spanish? At the exact same moment I could hear the other woman introducing herself in the way air passengers do (not like real people), saying that she was from Germany and was returning. She spoke perfectly good English, but the accent was funky ˆ not German, not Puerto Rican ˆ and it all clicked. Gypsies. Roma. There are probably a myriad of names. It all made sense. The deep mysterious gaze she gave me. The fidgeting nature. The restlessness about her. I am not sure how they ever got to the states in the first place, but it was clear as day that neither had flown before. The minute the plane started to pick up speed for takeoff, they were gripping the arm rests and taking big gulps of hope. Unable to resist, hoop earrings asked the real Puerto Rican what was happening. Heavily tattooed with large earrings of his own, he replied, „The plane needs to go very fast to get off the ground.‰ He proceeded to go into the most heartfelt albeit pedestrian explanation of Bernoulli‚s principle. It seemed to mollify the Gypsies for a little bit, until we hit some turbulence. Clearly repressing screams, they listened intently as the inked dude explained that there are ripples in air just like there are ripples in water. If you run into a choppy wave, it will bump your boat, but it won‚t turn it over. Again, they seemed reassured. There was much chit chat about Germany and Puerto Rico. No one ever came out and said, „We‚re Gypsies,‰ but I don‚t think that‚s how Gypsies roll. On our descent into Kennedy, the Puerto Rican guy explained how we weren‚t going to land nose first, driving into the ground, as the Gypsies assumed, but with the nose up, landing softly like a duck. He was so patient and gentle with them. I actually let out a small giggle. Rookies. It is for these moments of hubris, dear reader, that we are so often taught a lesson. JFK. Flying business class has its advantages. Not that I knew that. I have only ever flown wedged between a crying baby and a fat man or holding a chicken in steerage. Apparently there are „lounges‰ for you to experience all that it means to be a business traveler. Back rubs. Political debates. Searing wit over finely crafted, complimentary cocktails. Models. Bankers. Sophisticated, urbane internationalists. Flash forward to the Air India lounge (picture your dentist‚s waiting area), where an old Indian man is sitting in a chair with his head cocked all the way back, stone cold asleep, snoring to wake the gods. I could feel a rattle in my chest that had nothing to do with the jet engines outside. In fact there were no jet engines outside because our plane was still not at the gate some four hours after its scheduled departure. Matt seemed amused by the old man, but Andy and I could not hold our shit together at all. I was just giggling like a little school girl who got into mommy‚s stash of ecstasy. I don‚t really know how to explain the dynamic in the room other than the fact that everyone fell into two categories. One was the „I am going to pretend that it is not happening category‰ and the other was „Oh dear god, I am going to laugh myself into a coma.‰ Either way, no one was going to do a damn thing about it, so the gigglers really won out. He just kept going at full volume with people pointing and laughing until he shifted and gave us all a reprieve for a brief moment. Then he would begin again. Priceless. We read Conspicuous Wealth Magazine (I can‚t remember the real name, but it was $35 per issue and featured only „articles‰ about private jets and third homes in the Caribbean) and helped ourselves to the free premium liquor. These were the only ways that we could hope to achieve a true business class lifestyle. We had long dispensed with the monastic advice we were given about long flights across nearly a dozen time zones. We had nachos, burgers, and beer before we hit the lounge. I played more „What the hell is his deal?‰ The game wasn‚t very challenging, though, because the loud, fat, bald, poorly dressed Brit that I was watching was all too excited to offer up the story to everyone in the lounge. He is one of those people that believe that volume of one‚s voice while using a cell phone must directly correspond to how physically far away the person on the other end of the line happens to be. You know those people. They yell into their cell phones because they think the message gets across a lot more clearly. I guess cell phones are much smaller than landline phones, so they need the extra boost from a big ruddy maw. Everyone knew his story. His wife, who sat beside him as he laughed into the phone, had lost her luggage (Jet Blue‚s fault) on the way from Miami to JFK. I didn‚t see what was so funny about that. Jackass. I know he‚ll get his in the end. I thought about dispensing some badass mile-high justice, but I refrained. The Long Flight(s). I can‚t tell you much about the flights other than saying that no matter how roomy business class is (it‚s roomy) and no matter how wonderful it was to be on the upper deck of a 747 (it was wonderful), you are still sitting in a chair for a VERY long time next to a person that you don‚t know. You want it to be a bed and you want that stranger to shut up, but that never happens. The first leg, to Heathrow, was 6.5 hours. The next leg to Mumbai (former Bombay) is 8.5 hours. I don‚t care how much you love any fucking chair, you are not going to sit in it that long. Ever Archie Bunker went up to bed every night. We dozed here and there and gorged on Indian food whenever they brought it out. It really wasn‚t that bad, until you awake to the sound of the crew saying, „Ladies and Gentlemen, we now making our initial descent into Mumbai. Per Indian law, we are going fumigate the cabin with a harmless mist.‰ Call me crazy, but „harmless‰ and „fumigate‰ don‚t seem to go together. Mumbai. We set foot on Indian soil and it became clear that we were definitely not in Kansas anymore. Hell, we weren‚t even in a neighborhood in Queens that has a ton of Indian immigrants. No, we were in India. The airport was made of marble, but run down. And it was humid ˆ a drink-the-air kind of humid, but, like the water, you got this sense that you shouldn‚t drink the air. An acrid, burned smell spread throughout the place and stuck to your face and clothes. We already knew that we were going to miss our connecting flight to Chennai, so we collected our bags amidst strangely dressed people who didn‚t speak much English and headed for the transfer ticket booth. If you have ever been to a Costco or a Sam‚s Club at a busy time ˆ or even a grocery store right before a big holiday ˆ you know the chaos of all sorts of checkout lines that are jumbled because everyone is jockeying for the better spot in the best line. Now take that Costco with the same amount of people in line and cut it down to two registers. Okay, now drop the ceiling and put in more florescent lights. Now make the Costco about twice the size of Play‚s lounge with one way in. Now get rid of the shopping carts filled with oversize pickle jars and replace them with one to two push carts each of luggage. Now take the suburban soccer moms with their toddlers and replace them with a bunch of people that have been on planes for 12+ hours with screaming babies, howling armpits, and all of their worldly possessions. Now put Ben, Matt, and Andy in the line, stoically trying not to go postal for about thirty minutes. And the cherry on top∑.picture us getting to the front of the line to be told that we don‚t have a certain stamp that we need and that we need to exit and start all over. We rallied and held our ground. I stayed with the bags and Matt and Andy went out to get „the stamp‰. I had a brief moment of panic when I thought they might not return, but I told myself, „It‚s 1:00 am and I have all of their cufflinks.‰ Lo and behold ,we were lucky, and we got boarding passes for a plane leaving at 6:45 am. Groan. Mumbai 2. We were so close to Chennai that we were optimistic, regardless of whatever six hour wait we were dealt. We found the lounge (glamorous) again. I cranked on the free cappuccinos. We talked with a man who grew up in India and now lives in New York. He was on his way to his 50th medical school reunion, which would make even Doogie Howser be about 70, but he looked in his fifties. Either he was lying or he eats tiger placenta for breakfast everyday. We explored the airport and found one of the best bookstores in the world. Who knew? I am not kidding, the guy running the place seemed to know everything ˆ especially about business books on innovation. Small world. Well, not that small. I have flown to the other side, I know.