What do Delta Airlines and the Ice Pits of Hell Have in Common?

There's a moment when you travel, a special moment when time stops and your stomach turns into an ice-lined pit. I've had several lately.

Such as when I lost my wallet. For several moments I stood by the baggage claim groping my pants front and back like an oversexed middle-aged woman who'd suddenly taken over a man's body and was checking for, you know, inventory. After a few minutes the feeling faded and from then I only had to adjust to a new reality. Was it hope, hope that I was mistaken, that fueled my panic? (Say, I got it back. The airline totally came through.)


Another afternoon I stood on the marble roof of the Duomo, Milan's huge central cathedral. There was a stone ridge down the center that I needed to stand on to get a picture. It was less than two feet tall. I jumped. I jumped because I can. I can still do a standing jump and land on the kitchen counter. Hopping atop a little chunk of rock was no sweat.

Sweat. Maybe I was fooled by the slope. My toe caught the edge. The world wheeled around in slow motion. Isaac Newton was flying the ship now. Somehow as my shins scraped along the sharp marble edge I rolled so that I would land on the other side on my shoulder instead of my face. It was an instinctive move to save the camera. I flailed my camera hand in the air, willing to sacrifice the body for future photojournalistic opportunity. And in the silence that lived in the open mouths of horrified Japanese tourists, I heard the crunch of camera lens on marble.

Again, as I sat bewildered, the ice pit opened. I cared not if my wrist was fractured or neck snapped. I cradled my camera and checked for injury. And again, the pit melted away. The rim of the skylight filter was so bent it can't be removed, but the filter itself -- which I've broken and replaced twice on previous trips -- was otherwise undamaged. Likewise the lens and the camera itself. Luck city. A guard came and asked me many times if I was all right, and I insisted I was, and I really was, no aches or pains at all (except for a four-inch loss of skin along the ridge of my shinbone).


Another day we got off the #3 bus-boat at Piazza San Marco in Venezia. Our train tickets back to Milano were in my wallet, and a bunch of cash, and the ATM cards I'd got back when the wallet showed up, and everything. I'd been keeping it in a right-hand pocket. I checked for it. Wasn't there and the pocket zipper was open.

I stopped, my eyes like betelnuts, and said, "Oh, shit," thinking of Italy's famously skilled pickpockets. Thinking of train tickets. Thinking of yet another lost or stolen American Express card. Then I remembered moving it to the left side for easier access. Still there. The ice pit had formed but could go now. Color began to return to my wife's face, and she said I was hard to travel with.


Right now I'm at the airport in Atlanta awaiting my final flight home. I would die if I had to fly without reading, taking notes, whatever. My eyes are typical for my age and I can't do shit without a set of drugstore cheaters. Just before boarding at Milan Malpensa twelve hours ago, I checked for my glasses.

Yep. Ice pit city. Somehow they fell out, maybe while getting my boarding pass, manhandling luggage, whatever. Do they sell reading glasses right there in Terminal B? No. They sell water (frizzante o naturale) and magazines and little bottles of booze, but no glasses. But again, fate and luck and preparation intervened, and I remembered I had three spare sets in my laptop backpack. So all was well, as it always seems to be given time. But damn.