So it was time to go home:

The last week we spent in Dubai was a whirlwind of work, final preparations and frenzied activity. We'd just gotten done with a move from apartment to apartment, so we also got to settle old accounts while prepaying the new ones, bundle everything together while trying to discover where things had been packed, getting to know the new apartment workers while telling them what to do - or not do - while we were gone, juggle two jobs... so on and so forth.

From here it's a blurred memory, but from there, while it was still going on, it was quite a mess. I'm highly surprised I made it through all that stress in one piece. But I think it was also highly purgative, in some ways. You could look at it as a sweat lodge that lasted for several weeks - it's never pleasant while you're in it, but afterwards the benefits are pretty clear.

The trip itself was quite pleasant, in spite of an airline traffic control strike in continental Europe. Not only was I able to get a good deal of sleep on the Dubai - London stretch, but we were able to catch the England-Brazil match of the World Cup in an English pub in Heathrow. It was bad luck for England, unfortunately, but good luck for us as we could sit at a table for several hours, have breakfast, down water and OJ and just enjoy the goings-on before having to leave and go find a chair.

Heathrow is a bit difficult on a traveler. They list departures on their screens, but they won't tell you what gate the planes are going to leave from until about an hour and a half - sometimes less - from takeoff. So the only thing you can really do is try to sit yourself in a central location, keep an eye on the screen and be ready to hoof it when the gate is finally announced. In the meantime, the chairs in the central waiting areas do not provide good back support, and the best chairs to be found are - surprise, surprise - in the restaurants. So it's all you can do to get up every so often, stretch your legs and get something to drink.

In our wanderings, we ran into some police with canines on a leash. They were absolutely gorgeous floppy-ears of some variety, and quite friendly. One policeman joked that they were super-secret ninja attack dogs: "One wrong move and they'll jump up, go for the face and lick you to death." We had a good laugh over that, but it later struck me that these adorable pooches were most likely there to sniff for explosives. (Of course, nothing beats the one time, a few years back, that we encountered some of London's finest toting big semiautomatics that were velcroed to their flak jackets...)

As it turned out, we were lucky this time around: the entrance to our gates was very close to where we'd plunked down, and the way there was rife with moving walkways. There were convenience shops and restrooms in that little wing of the terminal, too, so we didn't have to long-march it back to attend to matters at hand.

While we were waiting, I overheard a family - American, judging by the accents - talking about terrorists on planes. The eldest daughter was asking what to do if one should appear, and the father's sage comment was to expect to die. The girl went white as a sheet and spent the rest of the time staring out the window. Oddly enough, the younger kids with them took this with utter aplomb and went back to being... well, younger kids within a few short moments.

Just like the old tagline for books on the Vietnam War: it's a question a child might ask, but not a childish question. What do you do? Hijackings used to mean that you'd just be diverted somewhere, threatened and eventually let go. These days it can only be viewed as a crapshoot between being held hostage and being part an unwilling part of a flying bomb. And the former scenario was scary enough...

You could always hope that the Air Marshal would be there to save your bacon, but in the absence of such a deterrent, the best line of defense is the passengers, themselves. You don't need armed pilots if you have just enough angry passengers who are willing to turn their fear into anger and let the bastards have it. Throw travel blankets over them. Use carryons as improvised weapons or shields. Overpower them. Take them down.

But no - the parental wisdom for the day was "expect to die." I lost track of that family between the time we got on the plane and when we got off of it, so I don't know if that gal's mood ever improved. All I can hope is that someone, somewhere, gives her better, more proactive information. Defeatism breeds surrender.

On the way down the gangplank to the plane, I noticed there was a secondary carryon screening going on. In the vestibule between the stairs and the gangplank proper, people were being stopped and having their things looked through. My wife and I probably should have been stopped, given our bulky bags - backpack, shoulderbag, camera case - but we weren't. Instead, they nailed other people, and as I looked back I couldn't help but notice that every person they were nailing was distinctively not white...

Touching Down Backwards:

The plane flight? I don't want to bore you with too many details of that. It was a mite delayed on the ground - due to the aforementioned strike - but was both terror-free and well-heeled, the latter courtesy of our being bumped up to World Traveler class. This meant that we got to spend the flight sitting in a somewhat ungainly cross between a fold-up fan and a barcalounger, enjoying great food and premium movies and - in my case - catching more sleep.

It also meant that, due to the positioning of my chair, I got to learn what it felt like to take off, fly and then land facing the rear of the plane. It was very interesting, especially at takeoff: instead of my body being made to feel heavy, I felt as though I was falling without watching the ground come closer. And as for touchdown...

And then I was back home, and wondering what it was going to be like going through Customs. I'd been dreading this part of the journey, expecting everything to go wrong at once and not being able to reply in any state of coherency due to spending more than a full day on the go. This incoherency, coupled with a suspicious point of origin, the henna on my wife's hands and general bad luck could lead to any number of misunderstandings... thus ensuring an up-close and personal meeting with the Airport Proctologist.

Who? Oh, come, now. I'm sure you've probably imagined meeting him, or her: built like a brick shithouse, impossibly squeezed into a black uniform, idly snapping white, rubber gloves as s/he waits for a chance to crawl up your nether regions and make sure there isn't a bomb lodged in your lower intestine?

Back in college, I had a friend who wrote a song called "Violent Cavity Search." He only ever penned about eight lines of it, but that was all that was needed to cause shudders of disgust and somewhat-justified fear in those who heard it. This, of course, made me love it, but I was singing a different tune as I tromped off the plane, slowly making my way down the gangplank and towards an uncertain rendezvous with guns, guard dogs and rubber gloves...

As it turns out, I didn't have much to worry about. We got through the passport control just fine - in fact, the guard, noticing the henna on my wife's hands, asked us if we were on our honeymoon. I was impressed, and I was also somewhat relieved to notice a distinct lack of gun-toting army types stomping about the luggage carousels once we got past passport control, snarly anomaly-sniffing dogs in hand.

But we still had to get through the final checkpoint - a process exacerbated by the fact that our bags were next-to-last to come out of the hole in the ceiling. Once we got them, we bundled them onto a cart and started wheeling it towards the checkpoint. And then, once there, the officer looking at our passports put a big, green "A" on the form and sent us not to the exit... but to the Green Line.

I gulped. Damn. What the hell was this? Damn. Was this the part where we got to drop trou and have our polyps massaged? Damn. Damn damn damn. I was more than a little apprehensive about this one.

But, again, I had nothing to worry about. He'd sent us to the Green Line - Green for agricultural. The UAE is still listed as being a risk for Hoof in Mouth disease, hence the check. The bad one - the Red Line - was all the way down at the end, being attended by folks who'd brought in way too many bags and whatever other, no-doubt numerous Customs sins they'd violated.

"You're from Dubai?" the guy at the line said as we piled our stuff into yet another x-ray machine. Yes, we were. "Dubai, UAE?" the guy asked his other two compatriots, who were sitting at a metal partition and seemed to be worried about something else. They just shrugged. So, once our bags went through, we collected them and out we went. No problems.

I don't know whether it was good or bad that we had such an easy time going through. I figure I may yet encounter the glove when it comes time to go home. But at that moment I was free - free to go wait for an eternity for our rental car bus, then go spend some time getting my admittedly-odd prepaid voucher figured out and processed, then wait for the car to take back to Ohio, and then to get on the road heading up to Weyauwega.

Flags Without Poles:

I missed the frantic phase of flag-waving - that much was clear. The best estimates I could get was that it'd died down in most places by December, at the latest. But you could still look and see telltale signs that it had, indeed, been there.

First off - Car flags. There was a medium-sized American flag sticker on the driver's side, rear door window, as if there was any doubt that the car was meant to be driven in America. It was a nice touch, of course, but I wonder what sort of fate such a car might have if I drove it down to Mexico.

It'd have good company, though. I saw lots of flags on cars, especially on construction vehicles on the way up from Chicago. They were flapping on aerials, draped across back windows, put on bumpers, painted onto the sides. Flags, flags everywhere.

Secondly - the shirts. On the way up, we kept seeing people wearing patriotic t-shirts. Flags. Bald eagles. Lady Liberty. Cutesy slogans that sound adorable coming out of a young child on the 4th of July, but seem a trifle odd coming from the belly of a biker whose wardrobe was otherwise done by Mssrs Roadrash and Handlebar. Not that I'd ever denigrate anyone for patriotism, but at certain venues it does seem a little weird: kind of like finding a mint-condition Rodan in front of an abandoned public lavatory.

Thirdly - the road signs. A number of patriotic-themed ones are dotting the landscape around here, all with the tagline of "Pass It On." What makes us special? they ask. The most common answer I've seen is "Unity," but there's others as well. Class and Grace. Determination. I think I might have seen Hard Work, too, but that could have been something else.

There were other incongruous displays as well, such as one restaurant chain's advertisement of 'The Butter Burger,' along with the tagline "What A Country!" Equally amusing was one motel's marquee board, which read 'God Bless America - Coffee TVs Remotes Free HBO,' and some store's advertisement 'God Bless America - Lawnmowers 50% Off!'

And then there was the sheer number of flag-related products on sale: an endless supply of American flags on everything. Mug holders. Shirts. Mousepads. Plates. Signs to put in your yard. I'm not sure how much was remaindered and how much was meant to go on sale for the 4th of July, but a lot of it had the feeling of mark-downs - and the price tags to match...

But the signs of good old, crude American humor were still there, and that's something I've always appreciated: Calvin - or a close facsimile thereof - can now be seen urinating on Osama bin Laden on any number of rear view windows. Before he was seen urinating on Ford, Chevy or Bill Clinton, amongst other targets of opportunity.

Good old Calvin - at least his bladder is quite ecumenical.

(Next installment* - tooling around Wisconsin and travelling to Iowa City)

"Everybody runs." - Tom Cruise, from 'Minority Report'

*(No further installments in this series were written. Chalk it up to lack of time, space to write, inspiration or what have you. Pity.)