We had an afternoon flight out of Detroit so we got the rare treat of being able to sleep to a roughly normal hour, and even to eat lunch at home before setting out. The flip side of this is it was a redeye into Paris, so we'd be arriving about 8 am local time or as our bodies knew it, 2 am. And this bothered me because I was sure it was only a five-hour difference between Eastern Time and Paris Time; after all Paris is just about the same longitude as London and that is five hours ahead of us. So it turns out that France is not in the same time zone as Britain; it's on Central European Time and has been since the Nazi conquest in 1940. Six hours it is.
The only remarkable thing about the drive in was a couple spots of randomly clogged-up traffic, and the only remarkable thing there was a spot near Novi where traffic came to a complete stop, sudden enough I had to slam my brakes --- my tires squealed! --- and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger was not at all happy with this. Also my messenger bag slid, upside-down, to the space between my back seat and front seat where I couldn't recover it and couldn't straighten it until we got to the airport. Also at the airport I misunderstood the directions about which long-term parking garage we wanted, but we got that sorted out before I committed to any sudden last-minute swerves across lanes of traffic.
Most surprising thing about getting through security? That it was so not-bad at all. We didn't have to take shoes off, and didn't have to unpack our messenger bags to place laptops on the bare plastic bin surface or anything else. We just set our carry-on bags on the conveyor belt, and set our hoodies and belts and pocket stuff in bins, and walked through almost like the normal days of the 90s. Even the passport-checking was nothing big as they used facial recognition stuff, taking a picture that they claimed would be deleted within 24 hours. Same with getting on the plane; they didn't even check our boarding passes, with just a picture they pretend will be deleted within 24 hours serving.
We did get seated next to one another, albeit in the center two seats of a four-seat middle row, meaning we felt very constrained in getting out to use the bathroom. Wisdom told us to relax and sleep as much as possible and I gave it my best try, but didn't really. I ended up watching movies much of the flight over. I forget two of them, but one was First Man, a bio-pic about Neil Armstrong that was pleasant enough but struggled with the problem of Neil Armstrong as your center character. Armstrong was a quiet, meticulous, thoughtful person and you only really get to see understandable emotion at the start of the film, where he's taking down notes trying to understand and do something about his daughter's cancer. Still, where else are you going to see the drama of the failed Gemini VIII mission? Besides the HBO From The Earth To The Moon series, I mean? (And that at much less length). Anyway I liked the movie but it did spark to a fresh life whenever Buzz Aldrin, portrayed as a guy unaware he doesn't have to say everything that comes to his mind, intrudes. It's possible bunnyhugger will remember the other movies I watched; we talked about them a bit after the flight and she recommended one --- Flow --- that I did watch on the flight back.
Getting through passport control threatened to confuse and overwhelm us; the signs at Charles de Gaulle Airport weren't explicit enough for a couple people who can overthink directions like a mathematician and a philosopher. Mostly we followed where other people were going and ended up in a mass of queues that guided us, more or less, toward signs saying what countries were to use these stations. I'm happy to say I didn't have any trouble; I'm unhappy to say that bunnyhugger, who went to a different passport control self-service booth, had some kind of problem where the machine wasn't reading her picture, and was eventually sent into another line. And a line with a lot of people in it and signs that suggested to her that she was in the wrong line, so she spent the whole while --- during which I had no idea where she was or what was taking so long --- worried this was futile.
I spent a while just past the booths where an agent stamped my passport, worrying that I had somehow missed her, or she had missed me, and I should go to collect our luggage or something. Or stick around where I was because surely I'd have seen if she got through? I found the instructions to log into the airport's Wi-Fi --- sponsored by Channel, in case this wasn't enough of a French joke --- and was trying to figure the best way to message her since I didn't have a European data plan (she did), so I wasn't sure texting would work, and I, uh, never got around to setting up my e-mail on my phone. I know. bunnyhugger was torn between being appalled and admiring when she learned this. But then I saw her in her long line, so I knew roughly where she was and what was happening and I could wait for whatever would happen. I would like to explain what happened but who really knows? It was one of those things.
We found our way out of the passport control people, and got our suitcases, and now we had just ... like ... seven hours until our connecting train.
Still haven't run out of Jackson County Fair pictures, so I hope you like these too!
Model kits on display. I don't know where they come from except you can tell they're from real model-building enthusiasts because they're not built.
I forget why I thought it important to get this picture of the Capturing The Moment pictures; maybe just to get that dog-and-turkey picture? And then I didn't even see the reflection would make it so hard for bunnyhugger to see. Too bad.
Hey, one of the kid artists has that Joy Division album!
This is as close as I dared approach the ham radio guys lest I get sucked into that world of old white guys with vacuum tubes.
Back outside again and looking at some of the amusement area. The ticket booth I think was now giving out cards so you couldn't even have the fun of tickets.
The merry-go-round here; that's a nice purple-orange tiger horse.
Trivia: In 1955, Paris had less air traffic than Louisville, Kentucky. Source: Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure, Alastair Gordon.
Currently Reading: American Scientist, May - June 2024, Editor Fenella Saunders.
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Date: 2025-06-16 11:28 am (UTC)