I’ve written before about embracing my jetlag, and this return to United States soil is no different.  I have software training that starts at 9am today and tomorrow, and I must admit that I feel much more awake right now than I normally do before 9am (at least in recent months).

In fact, I was awake so early that I was able to shower, eat a leisurely breakfast, stumble around my house attempting (and failing) to locate my American mobile phone charger, go back upstairs to put earrings on, send an email, drive to campus without getting annoyed at the long line of slow drivers, find a parking space, and settle with an iced latte at Starbucks for some prime people-watching.  It has been truly fantastic; when I arrived, for example, there was a man in a pink pinstriped suit.  The baristas here are fascinating in their ability to be perky without being irritating; they manage to be perky whilst simultaneously seeming understanding of and sympathetic to customers’ obvious tiredness, managing to come off as energetic and soothing all at the same time.  And all sorts of people come in: young people, old people, skinny people, fat people, men, women, black, white, Asian, in pairs or alone, people in fashionable dresses and people in shorts hiked up to their armpits, people that appear to be the picture of physical health and people with arms in slings or visible limps.  It makes me so ridiculously happy.

I also have to say that this jetlag experience is far superior to my jet experience.  The seven-and-change hours it took to get from London to Philadelphia weren’t that bad, really, though I continue to be fascinated with certain things–like how there is less room on an enormous jet than other planes, less room for my carry-on luggage under the seat in front of me and less room for my knees.

The other thing I found truly irritating was the food situation.  On all other airlines I’ve ever flown, ordering a vegetarian meal means that you get a vegetarian meal, usually earmarked for you and brought to your seat.  On US Airways, it apparently means you might get a meal, if they remembered to put one on board.  I was one of the lucky ones, but I suspect that vegetarians further back in the cabin may not have been so lucky.

But here’s the real thing: the vegetarian meals handed out seem to come with certain assumptions about the sorts of people who are vegetarians.  To wit: at “lunch” time, passengers were served sandwiches.  Everyone else got some sort of sub with meat in it; it was about 8 inches long and looked hearty.  I was given a bag of apple slices and a sandwich that was, and I’m not exaggerating here, a bread roll that was about 2 inches by 2 inches square, with two pieces of tomato and two pieces of cucumber wedged in the middle.  It was fine and all, but, I mean, I ordered a vegetarian meal, not a child’s vegan sandwich.  I know that US portion sizes are out of control, and etc., but why do airlines assume that vegetarians want tiny portions of only completely healthy food?  Why does everyone else get a little chocolate bar as a dessert, and I get grapes?

Perhaps, had I been better fed, I would have been better about the second leg of my journey–from Philadelphia to Indianapolis–which was supposed to take two hours but also miraculously took about seven.  Bad weather in Indianapolis, you see; so that there was a lot of circling in a “holding pattern,” some landing in Louisville to re-fuel, and also one failed attempt to land in Indianapolis that involved bumpily descending into some ominous clouds adorned with lightning before giving up (in my head, I envisioned the situation in the cockpit like a dramatic movie scene: “PULL UP!  PULL UP!”).

So, despite the fact that I miss England horribly, it was still a great relief to step off the plane in Indianapolis, stop to pick up food on the drive home, and then pass out in my own bed still partially clothed and with a cat sleeping on top of my head.  Welcome back, self!