Less than ten hours to go

A year ago, a couple of days before flying to India, I wrote that I felt the same way Jodie Foster felt towards the end of "Contact", when she was in that "ball", spinning, spinning, spinning, knowing that any second then the "ball" would free-fall, and she would set off on an amazing trip, all excited, nervous, and terrified at the same moment... It's always like that, those last few hours before setting off on a big trip, isn't it? You are terribly excited about leaving, but at the same time you stress over whether or not you have taken everything you should have. One moment you are dreaming of your destination, next moment you realize you forgot to get in touch with your hostel and confirm your reservation, making sure that after traveling for 44 hours there will be a bed waiting for you. One moment you print out the map of Chicago's blue CTA line, realizing that getting from the train station to the airport will be piece of cake, next moment you scratch your head wondering how the heck you are going to squeeze into your backpack everything you were planning to take with you. It's... madness, this is why I always make days before leaving a list of the things I should definitely take with me, so as to have a "calm voice" reminding me of little important details in crazy hours like these... I think it's the moment your plane leaves the ground that you... lay back, and let the engines' monotonous sound calm you down. In my case, that monotonous sound plane engines make will accompany me for hours and hours, teaming up with another monotonous sound, the one a bus engine makes. I am not exaggerating when I say that my going to San Diego, California, will take 44 hours (I wish I was...). In about nine hours from now I am flying to Munich, then I am flying to Washington DC, then I am flying to Cincinnati, from where I have to catch an overnight bus to Chicago, from where I will have to catch two more flights to reach San Diego, making a quick stop at Salt Lake City. My Delta flight arrives at San Diego at 6pm, local time, Thursday. Thessaloniki has a ten hours' difference from San Diego. Tomorrow morning I am flying at 8:20. Do the maths... It's 44 hours. Beats my going to Australia record, beats the 36 hours I spent a year and a half ago on a train from Istanbul, Turkey, to Aleppo, Syria, beats the 32 hours I spent on trains two years ago, going from Thessaloniki to Budapest via Zagreb, Croatia, beats the five flights I took last year to reach Hyderabad, India, the city my Indian trip started at. Did I mean to break any record? Hell no! Why then am I going to San Diego this way? Well, the short version of the answer is that... I'm plain stupid. The slightly longer version of the answer is that I made a mistake and now I am going to pay for it, even though it's not right calling it a "mistake". You know, you do something, and that very moment it looks like it is the best thing you could ever do, a brilliant choice, a ticket to a dream. Some time later, you come to realize that the dream is uncatchable, for a series of reasons. Does it make your initial choice a wrong one? I'm not that sure... A football player dazzles half a dozen opponents of his, gets the crowd on its feet, he approaches the other team's goalposts, he'll try to score, if the ball goes in it will be the highlight of the year, he finds himself alone in front of the opponent goalkeeper, and then, instead of "cutting" to the right, passing the keeper, easily pushing the ball to the net, he chooses to make things difficult, and cross the ball above the keeper. The ball goes above the keeper indeed, but the touch is slightly stronger than what it should have been, so the ball hits the horizontal post and goes out. Does the outcome of all this make the player's effort a bad one? Just because the ball didn't go in? You tell me... I say the line is damn thin, the line between right and wrong, clever and stupid, dreaming and seeing things the way they really(?) are(?)...
Almost midnight. I have to wake up at 5am (rrrrrrright, as if I will get any sleep...). Next time I write some lines, I will be at the "land of the free, the home of the brave" (I always liked the American anthem, guilty as charged, stone me).