Going to Spain by Way of Iceland: Day 1

“IT’S VACATION DAAAAY!”

This is how I stumble out of sleep and disturb Dan’s industrious activities, which include making seven sandwiches while I do nothing, because we share our lives equitably. 

Vacation Day means that we are finally setting out for Spain by way of Iceland to celebrate my 30th birthday. No matter that my 30th birthday was in January and I have effectively been 30 forever, I am finally living my childhood dream of when I tried to change my birthday to June because January is a garbage month in which to have a birthday, seeing as how Christmas has just happened (something that does not matter to Dan) and it is cold and terrible and you want to bring cupcakes to class but you’re six and somehow have seasonal depression already.

So my birthday is in June this year. Presently, in fact! If you forgot to wish me happy birthday, now is your chance. Do not fuck this up.

Vacation Day is particularly exciting because we have somehow nailed the best itinerary in the entire world. We do not have to be at the airport until 12pm for a 2pm flight, and we are flying on a Wednesday afternoon which means everyone else is working instead of doing the decent thing, which is patronizing the Iceland economy. Dan and I float towards PDX on a cloud of superiority and land at The Country Cat, because we have eschewed all of our earthly possessions to Icelandair and now need drinks.

Yes I will accept your bucket of liquor.

We drink and I eat a salad because I am under the impression that I will be healthy for this flight. In fact, I am under the impression that I will be healthy for the duration of this trip. I tell Dan that we will be having pushup contests every day, and by pushup contests I mean I will drink wine while telling him to do pushups and then throw cocktails at his head when I ask if I’m fat and he asks if I want the truth or the much fatter truth that could have been regular truth if she spent less time drinking and more time doing pushups. 

The time comes to board, and I ask Dan if he knows anything about Icelandair. My knowledge extends to the fact that they say they can let you live in Iceland for a while if you fly with them, which sounds like when sailors would Shanghai people and say, “You said you wanted to go sailing so I brought to China also do you want to build some stuff also it’s not an option please remove your pants and get to work.”

I did not read any books to support those statements.

Dan says he does not know what Icelandair is like, so we settle in to our slight drunkeness and hope it’s enough to carry us through a 7-hour flight. We board the plane and sit in row 27, and pray to any god listening (he picked Jewish god, I picked god of the hearth in any denomination, they’re usually not busy at this hour) that no one takes the middle seat between us. After about ten minutes of plane boarding, we hear the most beautiful words known to man:

“All passengers are boarded and we are preparing to depart.”

And the unthinkable happens.

NO ONE IS IN THE MIDDLE OF US. 

WHAT IS THIS HEAVEN ON EARTH AND ALSO IN THE AIR.

In fact, no one is really in the back of the plane at all. Because when one thinks of planes, one thinks of flying to New York and London and places people want to go, and very few people consider that a flight on Wednesday morning from Portland to Reykjavik might not be full. 

Here is a pro travel tip: Wednesday flights to Reykjavik are not full. People are not going to Reykjavik on Wednesdays.

I immediately kick off my shoes and burp really loud to claim my space on the plane. Dan says none of that is necessary because we literally paid for these seats and they are ours now but I am not convinced, although I stop short at peeing on the seat. I mean, has anyone seen an empty middle seat in years? Who knows what the etiquette is for keeping it these days? Nobody. It’s the Wild West and adverse possession laws apply. But I keep my pee to myself because Dan is old and wise and strong and could probably knock out anyone who wants our seat with no claim to it.

We eat a couple of Dan’s seven sandwiches (one for each ocean? I’m not sure why there are so many) and decide to watch Three Billboards Outside Ebbings Missouri, because it is classified as a comedy on Icelandair. Dan maintains that it is not a comedy, and I maintain that maybe it is because people are hitting each other and that is funny, but they are not hitting people in the funny way. When the movie concludes, Dan says he is floored by the movie, that it is is a wonderful representation of how forgiveness dominates in the worst of situations. I say the movie is about how nothing matters and people are dust and everyone is terrible and small towns are very lax on arson laws so we should consider moving. He says we are not moving just because people will not investigate arson in smaller towns and also he’s really tired of having this conversation stop it Roxanne it’s not happening. I tell him I thought getting engaged meant we shared each others’ interests but FINE WHATEVER. No arson.

I bet these clouds would let me commit arson.

Our next endeavor is navigating jet lag. Dan maintains that our friend Will has guided him well to beating jet lag, and that means sleeping on the plane. I tell him I read something that says you should stay awake for 48 hours and start hallucinating a little and then you're hallucinating which is fun and cool. He tells me that we can both test our theories, and I chicken out and decide to take a nap.

Or at least I would have loved to, except the woman across from us was born from an egg and had never seen a sun before, or so I assume because this bitch would not stop opening and closing her window shade to look at the sun. OPENING AND CLOSING HER WINDOW SHADE ON A FLIGHT WHERE EVERYONE WAS TRYING TO SLEEP BECAUSE WE WERE LANDING AT 6AM LOCAL TIME. 

I blurred out her face but I wish I had blurred out her life.

I grow murderous because Dan tries to avoid her terrible behavior by very cutely trying to cover his head with an airplane blanket, but the blanket is probably covered in semen and only one of us is used to that sort of thing. Eventually I sit and stare at the woman, and Dan’s Roxanne Sense kicks in which is when he realizes I’m operating outside the laws of normal human behavior. He asks what is wrong and I say I am considering shooting a blowdart into that woman, only I don’t have blowdarts so probably I’ll just throw my whole body at her. He says I should not do this and I say I want to tell her she sucks and he says we are on a plane and if she wants to admire the wonders of a plane that chases the sun towards the North Pole that is her right. I make a note that Dan is a saint and also check to see if I have anything to sedate him with so I can murder the woman anyway.

I have nothing, so I go back to sleep.