Rolling the dice on a weekend in Madrid…

“I can’t believe we’re doing this!” I said. It was 5 AM on a bright pinkish-blue Seattle July morning. It was one of those Seattle summer mornings that people dream of for the other 364 days of the year…and we were headed to the airport to leave it behind.

“I know! Do you think we’ll get a first class seat?” I asked my wife.

“Oh geez I don’t know. It is summer” she replied. My wonderful wife works for an airline, so we “fly for free.” It sounds great doesn’t it? “Fly – for – free.” In reality, what that means is that we fly standby whenever we fly. Sometimes we get a seat. Sometimes we don’t. It also means that sometimes when we do get a seat, we get a seat in first class.

First class international. Maybe that’s why we decided to roll the dice on the long-shot of scoring two seats from SEATAC to SFO, then again from SFO to Frankfurt, then from Frankfurt to Madrid during the height of the summer travel season (and repeating that triple crown feat on the trip back the following Monday). A 14 hour international flight in first class cabin can be a vacation in itself. Free drinks, free food. Excellent service, movies, music, fold flat sleeper seat, warmed nuts, wine, champagne, beer, four course meals, a fully loaded MP3 player, ice cream sundays, port wine, sleep – sweet sleep. No cash – no cards. My passport is rattling in the dresser drawer as I type…But sometimes – the only available seats are in “economy” or as I like to call it “Ballast Class.” That would mean a 14 hour flight with my 6 foot 4 frame cramped into a tiny seat, elbow wrestling the guy next to me and trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep for 14 hours until about an hour before landing when I pass out from exhaustion. Unable to eat the crackers from my 14 dollar snack box because I can’t unfold my arms enough to open the impenetrable plastic pouch they’re wrapped in. Unable to fold myself in half in that tight space to put my shoes back on, and unwilling to disturb the gentleman who did manage to fall asleep next to me, I “hold it” way longer than I should until I have to make the mad dash and do the aisle dance in the lav line at the back of the plane.

It’s hard to explain to others (let alone myself) why we decided to endure airport security hassles and the risk of being cramped in an economy seat for 14 hours just to visit friends for a day and watch a soccer game when I won’t drive to Seattle from Mill Creek to meet for a drink. It’s hard to rationalize the decision to fly half way around the world to watch a 90 minute sporting event. It seems crazy. My wife and I are not the kind of people who enter into situations with unknown outcomes, especially on short notice. In other words, we’re not very spontaneous. But the night before we left we decided to go for it. If we couldn’t get to Madrid, we’d try for Frankfurt. If we couldn’t get to Frankfurt, maybe Washington D.C. If we couldn’t make it to D.C., we’d watch the game at a bar in the airport.

And I think that’s a big part of why we did it. It was crazy – spontaneous. In the life long process of discovering and defining who we are, we lay down a series of points that serve as a sort of connect-the-dots of who we are. Each dot represents a trait, a choice, a trying situation navigated. Taken together, the dots form a loose image of who we are. Our “weekend in Madrid” was an attempt to put down a new dot. A dot out beyond the edge of the existing image that defined us. The totally impractical trip served no practical purpose. I wasn’t going to be relaxing in the traditional sense. It wasn’t going to be easy. It could have easily been awful. We went to see good friends, eat good food, be present at a time of intense national celebration. But we also went to prove to ourselves that we are the kind of people who just might get on an airplane at the last minute, not knowing where we would end up, when we’d get there, or if we could get back.

Oh – of course, Spain won the world cup. Our friends tell us that the party went on for days. We headed to Aeropuerto Barajas at 5 AM the morning after the big win, so we didn’t see the aftermath. On the quiet drive to the airport, every few minutes our friend David quietly repeated the phrase “Valio la pena…” and glanced at us with a smile. After he dropped us off and drove away, I asked my wife “What was David saying in the car?”

“It was worth it” was her reply.