We Travel To Travel

“Garbage! Garbage!” barks the air hostess as she works the Northwest Airlines aisles. Not quite the pale blue vision on KLM who apologised profusely for their lack of tomato juice. Northwest is full of American kids - a choir, it turns out - chattering loudly and being extremely sociable with anyone who makes eye contact. I bury myself in Quantum of Solace, and then Sideways, which has had all the swearwords dubbed out - Laid becomes Loved (as in “I’m going to get LOVED and you’re not going to stop me”) but my favourite is “her husband caught me on the floor with my fingers in her COOKIE JAR”.

The Indian kid sitting next to me spends the flight watching cartoons and filling out exam papers. He’s part of the choir. It’s his birthday, and there’s an announcement by the captain, who says he’ll be easy to recognise because “he’s the one with the red face now”. Only of course he doesn’t have a red face at all. He rolls his eyes and enjoys the attention.

The 3 hour stopover in Minnesota passes quickly. I wrestle with a payphone and book a room at Foothills Inn, where Josh stayed last week.

The air hostess for the final leg from Minnesota to Rapid City has to walk up and down the aisle in crab-like fashion, she’s just a bit too broad for the straight-up approach. She’s great - she makes small talk to everyone and works the crowd as she hands out soft drinks and snack boxes. When she gets to me, we talk about London, England. She went there once and had “crazy fun”.

I arrive in Rapid City to the news that North Dakota is facing massive flooding, and residents of Fargo and Moorhead (both places we’re set to spend time in) are sandbagging furiously and preparing their defences. Not the welcome we were expecting.