home again

It’s probably going to be a multi-entry day – I have a few things to say today.

First, I’m home, though I’d be even happier about that if I weren’t home alone.

The plan was to meet Ted at Schiphol (the Amsterdam airport) for dinner, so we could see each other between my business trip to Japan and his to Taiwan. The thing about Schiphol is that it works very well under nominal conditions but they don’t deal very well with any breakdown in the system as we saw last year. It snowed Friday, and yesterday it was well below freezing, so I knew they’d have lots of issues. My plane left Tokyo an hour late because of the weather at this end, but that was no big deal – I’d warned Ted in advance to check flight times, since he was going to the airport early to be there when I arrived, and I sent him a message before I took off.

I should mention at this point that it wasn’t actually all that much snow – they were predicting 2”. I don’t know what Amsterdam ended up with but it looks like about 4” here in Eindhoven. Because of the cold, it’s dry fluffy snow, no ice.

I got to the airport, and got into the KLM lounge and found Ted, no problem. Then he said, “I have bad news, good news, and bad news.” The trains to Eindhoven seem to be completely shut down today, so he’d driven to the airport, and my only way home was to drive back. Good thing we’d planned the meetup; otherwise he wouldn’t have had the extra time to figure out about the trains, and go get the car. For that matter, if he hadn’t had the trip out, I would have found out about the canceled trains when I bought a ticket and would have been marooned at the airport. And I really doubt there are any vacant hotel rooms there tonight, judging by the long lines at the transfer desk and airline counters.

Thing is, driving home was not in my list of the top hundred things I wanted to do today. For starters, anything requiring alertness after spending 15 hours in planes and airports is not a great idea. It’s about an hour and a half drive in good conditions (which these were at least – last year a Christmas we drove to the airport in snow and it took 6 hours). And I haven’t been sleeping well this trip anyway. But also – I’ve talked about it in bits and pieces here but not that much because it’s embarrassing. For the last couple of years I’ve had some issues with driving. It started with a dizzy spell plus what turned out to be a panic attack (but I didn’t know that at the time – a panic attack can feel very physical!) while I was driving alone on a Taiwan highway. After that I got to feeling on the edge of dizzy any time I was driving; I’m doing ok on local streets I know, now, but I hadn’t driven on highways since getting back from Taiwan – well, once, just for a short distance to an off-site meeting. I’d theorized that the dizziness could be a visual thing – distance vision is degrading again after the LASIK I had a few years ago (I wore glasses most of my life, had LASIK while in Taiwan, but now my distance vision is degrading again. It’s still good and if it wasn’t for the dizziness I’d be safe to drive without glasses, but it isn’t perfect any more. Also, one eye is 1/4 diopter worse than the other and I think that contributes to vertigo. I got glasses last fall and that seems to help, but I still hadn’t driven on highways, mostly out of fear and because I didn’t have to. (As nice as it’s been to not have to wear glasses for a couple of years, I believe that some of the other dizziness I’ve had is also from that. I would probably not have gotten the LASIK if I’d known all this would happen. I don’t blame the doctor, though, because I’ve never heard of anyone else having similar problems, and my eyes have never coordinated together all that well.)

The driving problems are getting to be an issue, though; we did almost 6000 km driving around Spain and France in December, and Ted drove the entire thing. (I did offer to spell him, but he always said he was OK.) Also, if I can’t drive our plans to take a year off and travel in an RV next year become unfeasible. we need to have two functional drivers for a plan like that.

Anyway, yesterday there didn’t seem to be any other good choices. I could have stayed at the airport overnight and tried to take the train today, but it was still forecast to be well below freezing, and if they’re going to stop the trains here any day, Sunday is the most likely day for it. Also, then the car would be at the airport; it would have cost a fortune, since he’d left it in short-term parking, and I’d have had to take the bus to work every day. If I’d moved the car to long-term parking it would have been hard to get the key back to Ted; we’d arranged to meet in the lounge, so he was already behind airport security, and once I got out I wouldn’t be able to get back in. Also, as mentioned above, it would probably have been impossible to get a hotel room at the airport, given all the disruptions, and being marooned in the airport all night would not have put me in any better shape for dealing with issues today.

So I did what I had to do; I believe you can always dig p strength to do what’s necessary. I drove home all by myself. And while I wouldn’t say it was fun, I survived it and my brain more or less behaved the whole way. I was able to talk it out of getting too panicky – literally, that trick Kiwi suggested a while back of keeping up a running monologue really helps. I think it’s because talking regulates my breathing. Once I got all the way home, I patted and both the glasses and the car.

(The saddest part is I never did get that dinner with Ted. It seemed smartest to get on the road right away and get it over with before I got any tireder.)

(The other sad part is that it might actually have been possible to take a train into Amsterdam and then take the train to EIndhoven from there. That one seems to be running.)