Thursday's child....

Ah tis 3xl here, up and ready to go on a long journey hence my poetic reference to Old Mother Goose and all that.

Now 3xl would not want to deceive his readers here in any way so let me put the record straight. Thursday's child may have far to go, but I am not a Thursday child I am a Wednesday child, and as we all know Wednesday's child does not have far to go. Wednesday's child is....full of woe!! Probably as a result of finding out, at the tender age of one day old, that their younger sibling gets to do all the traveling in the family, and they get to stay at home and be full of woe!!

Well dear readers not this Wednesday's child. Ever the rebel, 3xl decided that he would be the one with far to go in that family week, and just let that snotty full of grace sabbath kid deal with it!!!

Of course for Wednesday's Children (W.C from henceforth)the whole travel thing has not been free of woe, so maybe there is a place for compromise in this world view. Maybe I can be full of woe and travel too. In fact some security queue line, small baggy with liquids toting, departure lounge hardened folk would say that travel and woe are pretty much synonymous and I am not that inclined to argue with them.

3xl has flown over half a million miles with one airline in the last five years and it has not all been "full of grace," although in all honesty our local carrier, that is affectionately known as North Worst, Not Working, Never wonderful, etc you get the idea, airlines has not been too unkind to 3xl. The odd upgrade here and there and the fast track line are all eminently welcome in the struggle to get the best seat, space in the overhead compartment and a seat in the aisle, or when you need to change flights on the hop. Then, that bit of gold plastic with "elite" on it really helps to make the flight easier. I mean if you have to sit in one or more shiny metal tubes, hurtling above the ground for sometimes 30 hours, then you might want it to be nice for you, perhaps.

However there have been some WC moments for 3xl over the years, and some times when woe was a good description. However most of the time there is fun along with it and in many of these situations you might as well laugh as cry. Strip searching in Ben Gurion ranks up there as a WC moment, along with getting 75% of the way to Lahore from Karachi and then flying back to wait in the airport for ten hours while they cleared the runway in Lahore of water.

Mrs 3xl (Passion 1)is very good to me, but one time she had a lot of fun at my expense in Thailand. I had a nice crisp clean shirt to put on for my return journey courtesy of Mrs 3xl. I had a flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok before continuing internationally. Between the domestic and international airport terminals there was a long tunnel way that was patchily air conditioned and 3xl had to carry his bags through it for about 15 minutes in the Thai humidity and heat. After this mad dash and much "glowing"...okay, heavy sweating, I was a lather getting in to the plane. When I reached up to put my bag in to the overhead, there was a strange feeling and then a cool draft on my back, and then another and more. My shirt which had been a little too zealously bleached my Mrs 3xl was reacting to my "liquidity" and shredding and litteraly coming to pieces on me, to the point where I looked like Bill Bixby after the hulk had just arrived, with a tattered shirt hanging in shreds. First port of call since all my bags were checked on was to find a shirt, oh so full of woe.

Or what about this year spending 13 hours in Charles De Gaulle terminal F, mostly standing, waiting to go to Jo'burg because my pass only got me in to the lounge on terminal E and no I could not go to terminal E...bonjour!!!! Be warned, CDG is a cross between a boutique and a bus station. You can buy a $30K watch there from Rolex, but try finding a good hot meal, oh yes there was some woe on that day, but once on the plane it was all forgotten..... till now!!!

One other source of WC stress is the confusingly named... 'visa.' If you do not travel to certain countries you may never come across this phenomena and if like 3xl, you did even not board a plane till you were 24, you may be forgiven for being confused when you thought that visa was something that got you nice things at the shop, rather than a small piece of paper or stamp in your passport that can cost you lots of money and time to obtain, Then after all that, as I was so helpfully and encouragingly told at the American Embassy... they can refuse you at the gate for any reason.

What? I thought I was obtaining right of passage here not paying for something that could turn out to be worthless. Have you ever tried to get a refund for your visa, its not the same as with the flexible friend and darling of criminal door openers the world over, oh no. They are somewhat inflexible on that.

So dear readers spare a thought today for 3xl as he crosses oceans, borders and timezones today. Being away from Mrs 3xl and all the little 3xls is never fun and perhaps that is why WC should be full of woe today. Maybe together we can keep working on that full of grace thing.

3xl signing off, checking in, and shipping out for now...