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leaving Mexico City
Wednesday, February 28 2024
location: suite 301, Hotel Parque Mexico Boutique, La Condesa, Mexico City
Today we'd be leaving Mexico City and flying back to the temperate East Coast. Gretchen had arranged for an Uber to pick us up at 12:30pm and the hotel said we could stay until then, even though normally checkout is at 11:00am. They also finally managed to get us some coffee after two days of telling us they'd be bringing it and then doing nothing. Since we had a whole morning left in Mexico City, Gretchen wanted to go on a walk, perhaps all the way around Amsterdam (the site of a horse racing track that belonged to a presumably eccentric countess). I came out with her just to have one last look at the dogs in the dog park. (I'm genuinely surprised watching dogs in dog parks isn't more of a thing.)
I returned to the room and continued reading about human sacrifice in Mesoamerica while drinking the rest of my Negra Modelos (it wasn't yet noon, but I didn't want them going to waste). Eventually Gretchen returned with yet another loaf of bread, but then she went out for a second walk. When she came back, it didn't take us long to pack up our shit.
The tour guide yesterday had warned us that congestion would be especially bad today, so we'd scheduled a whole hour to get to the airport. But our Uber got us there in half that time. Getting through security went about as quickly as those things go, even though Gretchen was randomly flagged to receive additional wanding with a metal detector.
While I sat with out stuff at our gate, Gretchen spent a lot of time walking around. There was free WiFi, so I could fuck around with my phone while doing the physical therapy moves that are helping me heal my left shoulder (which now so improved that I have to actively remember to do the exercises). It might've been strange to see a middle-aged man waving his fist back and forth like I was. "Is he waving at me?" But I didn't care.
At some point I got a chance to walk around on my own, and I realized as I did so that I wasn't getting quite as much oxygen as my body expected with every inhalation. I realized this before connecting it with the fact that I was over 7000 feet above sea level, which explained the phenomenon perfectly.
Our flight to JFK was via Delta and was on a conventional plane with a single aisle. We were way back near the back of the plane in row 44, bottled up behind a rando Asian woman wearing a mask. There were a couple loud babies nearby, so Gretchen gave me a xanax to make things easier for me. I started Avatar: the Way of Water, but it just looked like a stupid videogame to me; the effects aren't as impressive as they were back in 2009, and, let's face it, James Cameron doesn't put any effort into developing complex characters. Eventually the xanax and three ounces of gin kicked in, and when I next was conscious, we were already somewhere over Indiana. (We were flying a more westerly route to avoid storms).
Periodically we'd hit a patch of turbulence and the plane would shimmy violently back and forth or do a vertical move that would briefly make us experience zero gravity. Gretchen turned to me a few times, laughing, and said, "Well, if this is it, then..." (I couldn't hear.) Our rando rowmate with the mask looked over on one of these occasions and I could tell she didn't think it was funny.
The flight was just under the amount of time above which a meal would have to be served, so we snacked on leftovers, particularly all the bread we now had and those yuba noodles from last night.
After landing at JFK, I was sure we'd be stuck in a long line at immigration given that we'd be among the last people off our plane. But somehow we managed to run past a bunch of people (humming, as we always do, the "Wicked Witch of the West Theme" from the Wizard of Oz as we did so) and get to the immigration line with not all that many people in front of us. The whole process took maybe six minutes, and we were out of the airport well before we expected to be. The weather was very different from how it had been in Mexico. Cold gale-force winds were blowing, but it wasn't anywhere near cold enough for the precipitation to be anything but rain. This was a miserable combination, so I dug into my luggage to retrieve my hoodie. Meanwhile Gretchen's phone was acting up and refusing to communicate with Fern's phone. So I had her use my phone instead, and soon we found Fern in a nearby parking garage. Charlotte was strange indifferent to our return, though Neville was so happy to see me that he climbed up from the backseat to sit in my lap until Fern had driven us to the Palisades Parkway. I took over at the point and drove us the rest of the way home.
I took some photos as we rose up out of the Mexico City basin. Click to enlarge.
You can see what appear to be wetlands, the remnants of the now-mostly-drained lake that Mexico City mostly occupies.
Click to enlarge.
That almost looks like some sort of symbol.
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Interesting clouds over Mexico.
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Darkness encroaches.
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