The Great Cyclone Fiasco of 2015

It's about noon on Saturday in Brisbane and I'm sitting here in the comfort of the world's smallest library (no joke, there's one table and around 10 bookshelves) while the rain continues to pour as it's apparently done for the past couple of days.

So in case you missed it, I'm now a temporary Australian citizen. After a delayed flight yesterday, I moved my life into a hostel I'll be staying in until I find an apartment in the city. I know I'm about two weeks behind (I'll get back to you on New Zealand in the coming days), but I did manage to scrape up a few thoughts while waiting yesterday in the Queenstown airport and again from 35,000 feet in the air:

Friday, Feb. 20

It’s 2:30 in the afternoon and I’m back to my favorite place in the world—the airport. Normally airports excite me—picture the scene in It’s a Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart picks up his suitcase and declares that he’s going to cover it in labels from all sorts of exotic places like Italy and Baghdad and you’ve got my feelings about travel in a nutshell. Not today. While I may have a suitcase for 1,001 nights, I don't quite have the mentality or physical energy to carry it any longer. This being my fourth flight this month, I’m a little tired of lugging around my life in a two-piece luggage set and a cripplingly heavy backpack. I’m tired of going through airport security, of taking my shoes off and walking along floors that thousands of dirty feet have walked along and of filling out immigration forms from 35,000 feet in the air. (That being said, I’ve finally mastered writing the date backwards and completing the forms like an expert migrant.) 

We’re in the Queenstown airport. It’s hot, somewhat crowded and from the terminal I’m eye-level with the tarmac and can see the jagged peaks of the Remarkables jutting out in the distance. I don't hate the view. Queenstown’s airport is nice—it’s small, it’s straightforward and the architecture is around 70 percent glass meaning we can get one last look at the beautiful landscape we’ll soon be leaving behind for tropical cyclone Marcia who’s now making her way over Brisbane. 

I’m sad to go. I’ll miss the people who’ve made everywhere in New Zealand feel like a second home, the range of people you meet by sharing small hostel rooms and the dialects you hear while walking down any street, the incredible landscapes that no photograph can ever really capture and the excitement that comes with finding new places and willingly losing yourself in the beauty that surrounds you on all sides.

But I am ready—I’m ready to have a home where I won’t have to live out of a suitcase, a semi-permanent address and a familiarity with the place I will soon be living in for the next few months. I’m going to Australia homeless. I should probably be more nervous than I am—but I’ve learned to love the hostel and I don’t mind staying in one until I find an address to my liking.

So here’s to New Zealand—a place that now holds a very dear place in my heart. A place that showed me one corner of the beauty that can be found in the world, a place that satisfied my inner nature-lover and wandering soul, and a place that showed me that while there may be no place like home, some places are capable of feeling like one—at least temporarily. 

 Queenstown from above

In-flight Thoughts

You know those flights where everything goes wrong? Not the ones you see featured on those god-awful History Channel features about unsurvivable plane crashes and take-off disasters—I’m thinking more along the lines of that video featuring Sir Patrick Stewart imitating every poor bastard’s worst plane nightmares: the bad passenger stereotypes. 

We’re a little over two hours into the flight somewhere over the Tasman Sea. Cyclone Marcia is going strong over Brisbane and St. Lucia’s city council is probably still placing sandbags along the river somewhere in the throes of what I hope is an event somewhat tamer than a Day After Tomorrow scenario. All that’s visible right now is the semi-blinding reflection of a thousand cumulus clouds hovering above the Pacific and a white warmth that feels like it’s capable of tanning my left arm. The inside of the plane is different. 

We’re a bit higher up because of the apparently unexpected turbulence that intermittently tap dances along my nerves and raises my blood pressure to a level that I’m sure would upset my physician. I’ve got the window seat, an unruly backseat neighbor who has a penchants for kicking my seat and a screaming toddler and his clueless parents who can’t quite seem to console him despite multiple attempts at shoving rice cakes and sugar cookies down his throat—hey, I’d probably be crying too. 

This is probably the most stressful of the four flights I’ve been on in the past month. Our plane was a half hour late, we’re expecting one of Shakespeare’s tempests in Brisbane and I still have to worry about whether my ride from the airport to my hostel will be waiting for me, despite an unexpected delay in our schedule. Oh, and baggage—I’m perpetually convinced that the airline is going to misplace my baggage.

So maybe the last three flights were a stroke of good fortune that has now dissolved with the last grains of sand through the hourglass. Here’s hoping the rest of this interminable flight ends on a higher note and that I won’t need a Huck Finn-style river raft to make it to my accommodations in Brisbane.