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By Todd Constance

After three years in Bangkok and a year away from Tryon, we were eager to return to our favorite place in the world. It was quite the emotional rollercoaster, selling and gathering up our possessions while trying to gather our emotions as well. They don’t package neatly and nicely, and with many tears, we said our goodbyes. 

During a normal week, I hardly spoke any English to anyone but my wife, Julie, and our wonderful neighbor, Tootka, which made my goodbyes to my fruit guy and my open-air market produce/beer guy even more difficult, as they had close to zero English. Thankfully, we caught the market guy’s son there, who has decent English, and had our driver/dog sitter, Ann, with us when I saw my fruit man on the way to the airport. I would get four peeled pineapples every day or two for $1.50 and four for the guards at our gate. At the market, I would sit on a concrete bench across the street, sipping beer with a few others as they talked, joked, and laughed. I always listened closely with my big ears, but still never got much out of it.

Bangkok is a big, hot, and dirty city that we really did like, with its many Wats, temples, the Grand Palace, incredible and inexpensive food, nightlife, and countless other things that make it a fantastic city—but we didn’t love it. The great news was that we had fallen in love with the whole of Thailand itself during our roaming, especially Northern Thailand, as well as the islands with their empty beaches and night markets. Northern Thailand reminded us of Western North Carolina, and we often explored the higher mountains. 

The native Rhododendrons took me back home a bit, the same as when we saw them in Nepal. Some of the foods also brought me back home, with boiled /steamed peanuts, cooked greens, steamed chopped pork BBQ buns, pork ribs, and a few others that flashed me back to a time, usually years ago. I picked up some boiled peanuts that had been shelled and then roasted for a train trip once, and they were the best peanuts that I’ve ever eaten, with a light crunch that was a bit like corn nuts. I over-roasted them when I tried to duplicate them at home, but I will give it another go at a later date.

Although it was certainly sad to leave Bangkok, as we had hoped to stay for maybe another year to travel more, the school was a disappointment to us, especially with Julie’s critical thinking approach to teaching rather than relying on test results. So when the decision was made to leave, I was eager to get home to Tryon for a month before the next posting. We were going to leave our dog with our sitter, and I was going to fly back and pick him up in a month, but our plans got altered on our next posting, so I ended up flying back without them with our four giant duffle bags filled with the stuff we hadn’t shipped home to Tryon.

My flight home turned into the biggest ordeal of my traveling history. While in Ukraine, I went back and forth often as both my parents had gotten sick, and it was never too difficult. This trip was Bangkok-Tokyo-Dallas-Charlotte. It started to go sour in Tokyo after a long layover, when they kept postponing my flight enough that I would miss my Dallas connection by hours. We finally taxied out from the gate to the runway lineup but then sat waiting for the weather to clear, long enough that we had to return to the gate for more fuel, which prevented us from taking off. Three hours later and 10 hours late, we headed to Dallas.

In Dallas I was booked on a new flight at noon and it kept getting bumped up until at 6 pm we headed towards my N.C. About the moment we should have started our descent into Charlotte I felt the plane bank north and out loud said. “No, no!” Moments later the pilot informed us that Charlotte airport was closed due to weather, all gates were full and we were headed to Nashville. Arriving there the pilot suggested we stay on the plane as he would try his best to get us to Charlotte. An hour later we were off and waiting in a giant line to get hotel, taxi, and food vouchers. 

Lucky Toddy was in the very last seat after four hours, and the very last in line, I was vouched for. Since I was last, I wandered the closed down terminal for hours playing with my yo-yo, distracting the cleaning crew, and watching the TSA coming in to open up for the morning rush. All of the people in line had gotten to know each other a little bit that night waiting. Finally got to my hotel at 3:30 a.m., and with me asleep by 5 and up at 7 to head to the airport, I was more than ready to get home. 

Donna, my sister in-law, and my friend Robert had both driven all the way to Charlotte and back to fetch me that long day and night  before, only to drive home alone without me or my witty conversation.

As unfortunate as it is, “bad days make good stories,”  and this is one of those stories that seems out of touch with what you hear about airport travel behavior and etiquette. This flight was the exception rather than the rule. After six hours of delay in Dallas, folks were starting to look familiar. It’s an airport thing where you recognize someone from here or there, and I will  call this brotherhood ‘GateMates’ from now on. The next morning the gang of us showed up at the airport and my fellows looked at me with my six bags and gave me sad looks although I was cried out and dry by then. I was 50+ hours in on this trip, I just couldn’t break! 

Finally at the gate, they informed us that it was the same plane and it hadn’t been stocked. I whimpered about my back and the bags I had been dragging around, instead of just maybe leaving them on the plane…

What frames this flight as unique or different to me is that  no one got upset during the whole ordeal…during all of the delays, and through the long night. American Airlines have the best people, except maybe the keeping on-time guy. And most of the people were from N.C., which does help explain it to me a little bit. We were all talking and sharing information and it felt like we had been on a tour for two days somewhere. Our pilot had been very informative and said, “I’m going to get you home as fast as I can!” And he did. 

We taxied onto the runway with the pedal to the metal already, and he got us to Charlotte 15 minutes early. I truly hope he didn’t get grief for all the extra fuel and brakes we used up. 

The most touching part happened at the gate in Charlotte. The head steward got on the PA and told us that they had spoken, and we were the coolest group of passengers they had ever had among themselves. I was numb, as I don’t sleep well on planes or in airports, but it certainly sounded sincere to me. I was proud of the human adventure that day.

Coming home after being away for even just a short time is one of my favorite sensations. The butterfly feelings of “this is where I belong” intensify as I draw closer to my familiar places, as well as the faces I love and adore. I spoke highly of our little town with many of the other folks on AA Flight #17033; many either knew of Tryon and were revisiting, or will be visiting for the first time soon. I suppose we survivors should get t-shirts made.

So, that is what this boy had to do to get home, and it was worth every moment to be back in Tryon.  Safe travels, and remember to leave slowly and come back quickly!