Notes

So, WPPI.

I'm back and I'm horribly jet lagged but I need to get this down before it all fades - the atmosphere, the excitement, the adrenaline.
So I went, I saw, I conquered, yes I did. But more of that later.

First off, I missed my plane. My plan was to wake and leave early enough before my 8 year old daughter woke up. This was the first time I had left her and it was the first time for travelling alone since... well since I got married 20 years ago. I was once a fearless globetrotter, in fact I met my Italian husband while living in the Sinai, and back in those days sleeping on the very filthy floor of Cairo airport and 12 hour dusty bus rides with ,for some strange reason, Egyptian music blaring from the tiny tv on the bus all night long was no biggie.
20 something years later, and my main worry is the crying girl in my lap, who heard me and woke to say goodbye and then burst into sleepy tears. I couldn't let her go, and I was tempted to abandon this stupid idea altogether.
But I put my focused, business head on and finally kissed her goodbye. But I missed my plane. Traffic + queue jumping Italians and me being generally dozy meant I the checkin was closed and barricaded, as I had already checked in online and printed my boarding pass I just needed to check my suitcase and if I ran through security I could still make it. But no.
I felt so defeated. I pictured myself driving home and crawling into bed, chalking it up to fate and yet another failure on my part. my husband called; I told him I was ready to come home. I braced myself for criticism and "you should'ves" but he told me "get on another plane. There is one in a few hours. You're going to Las Vegas!":

Yes. I was going to Las Vegas. In for a penny etc. The ticket I had purchased was ridiculously cheap: I arranged the logic in my mind so that with the cost of changing the flight, it still came out as a reasonably priced flight. I bought the new ticket using my phone and sat next to the check in desk until the new ticket pinged through. My luggage was sent; I was on my way.

Instead of stopping at Newark, the new flight I was on went via Chicago. And as I waited in line to get through customs, watching the fearful faces of some darker skinned families as they were questioned before being fingerprinted, I noticed how they were questioned far longer than white people, even though we were all on and therefore eligible for the same visa waiver program. Those requiring visas and with green cards went through a separate channel.

I flew through the fingerprint and iris scan in minutes, and was feeling tired but jubilant as I came through to the public areas of the airport. Immediately I saw the lawyers crowded at tables furiously tapping away at their keyboards, and several people holding signs offering legal assistance. Tired and emotional, I got teary and walked up to a girl/woman with a "we are not afraid: refugees welcome" placard in her hands. I put my hand on her arm and said "congratulations". What I meant was "congratulations for doing this, for being such a good person, for being so selfless". But she looked at me, shocked and said "you heard already?". Turns out the travel ban had been overturned nationwide just a few seconds earlier. It wasn't even on twitter on the breaking news headlines yet. We chatted for a while,