Airport Parking Quotes

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She loved airports. She loved the smell, she loved the noise, and she loved the whole atmosphere as people walked around happily tugging their luggage, looking forward to going on their holidays or heading back home. She loved to see people arriving and being greeted with a big cheer by their families and she loved to watch them all giving each other emotional hugs. It was a perfect place for people-spotting. The airport always gave her a feeling of anticipation in the pit of her stomach as though she were about to do something special and amazing. Queuing at the boarding gate, she felt like she was waiting to go on a roller coaster ride at a theme park, like an excited little child.
Cecelia Ahern
I’m falling in love with you, Mike Haines.” As I spoke, with every word his arms got tighter and tighter and his face, already close, became a breath away. “Angel, you’re already gone.” I blinked and asked, “Sorry?” “I read your diaries. I caught your pass in that hotel room. I listened to your offer to stay. I saw you wave good-bye at the airport and got your call before I’d pulled out of the parking lot. You fell with a kiss. I know, honey, because I was right there with you.
Kristen Ashley (Games of the Heart (The 'Burg, #4))
It was almost noon when the plane touched down at the Triad airport on the outskirts of Greensboro. There was a hire car waiting for me; I waved my notepad at the dashboard to transmit my profile, then waited as the seating and controls rearranged themselves slightly, piezoelectric actuators humming. As I started to reverse out of the parking bay, the stereo began a soothing improvisation, flashing up a deadpan title: Music for Leaving Airports 11 June 2008.
Greg Egan
When she says margarita she means daiquiri. When she says quixotic she means mercurial. And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again," she means, "Put your arms around me from behind as I stand disconsolate at the window." He's supposed to know that. When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading, or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he is raking leaves in Ithaca or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate at the window overlooking the bay where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels drinking lemonade and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed where she remains asleep and very warm. When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks. When she says, "We're talking about me now," he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says, "Did somebody die?" When a woman loves a man, they have gone to swim naked in the stream on a glorious July day with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle of water rushing over smooth rocks, and there is nothing alien in the universe. Ripe apples fall about them. What else can they do but eat? When he says, "Ours is a transitional era," "that's very original of you," she replies, dry as the martini he is sipping. They fight all the time It's fun What do I owe you? Let's start with an apology Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead. A sign is held up saying "Laughter." It's a silent picture. "I've been fucked without a kiss," she says, "and you can quote me on that," which sounds great in an English accent. One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it another nine times. When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the airport in a foreign country with a jeep. When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that she's two hours late and there's nothing in the refrigerator. When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake. She's like a child crying at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end. When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking: as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved. A thousand fireflies wink at him. The frogs sound like the string section of the orchestra warming up. The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.
David Lehman (When a Woman Loves a Man: Poems)
Go ahead, throw this book away. Spit on me. Revile me. I dare you. Cast me out of your intellectual orbit. Throw me out of your backpack. Pitch me in the airport trash bin. Leave me on a bench in Central Park! What do I care? No. I don't want you to do all that. Don't do that. DON'T DO IT!
Anne Rice (Blood Canticle (The Vampire Chronicles, #10))
There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast. "The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways. "Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller. "I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state. "You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.
Tim Dorsey (Florida Roadkill (Serge Storms, #1))
EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure—electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston, or San Francisco. Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest.
John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man)
He had expressed his desire [to a TMZ reporter, who’d ambushed him in an airport parking lot with a video crew] to cook hemlock, a very Shakespearean entrée, for Trump and Kim Jong-un. I guess it’s just a matter of protocol; the Secret Service had to make sure he wasn’t serious
Laurie Woolever (Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography)
Gate C22 At gate C22 in the Portland airport a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed a woman arriving from Orange County. They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking, the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island, like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing. Neither of them was young. His beard was gray. She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish kisses like the ocean in the early morning, the way it gathers and swells, sucking each rock under, swallowing it again and again. We were all watching– passengers waiting for the delayed flight to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots, the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could taste the kisses crushed in our mouths. But the best part was his face. When he drew back and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost as though he were a mother still open from giving birth, as your mother must have looked at you, no matter what happened after–if she beat you or left you or you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth. The whole wing of the airport hushed, all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body, her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses, little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.
Ellen Bass (The Human Line)
Justin: I am falling so in love with you. Her body electrified. Celeste wiped her eyes and read his text again. The drone of the plane disappeared; the turbulence was no more. There was only Justin and his words. Justin: I lose myself and find myself at the same time with you. Justin: I need you, Celeste. I need you as part of my world, because for the first time, I am connected to someone in a way that has meaning. And truth. Maybe our distance has strengthened what I feel between us since we’re not grounded in habit or daily convenience. We have to fight for what we have. Justin: I don’t know if I can equate what I feel for you with anything else. Except maybe one thing, if this makes any sense. Justin: I go to this spot at Sunset Cliffs sometimes. It’s usually a place crowded with tourists, but certain times of year are quieter. I like it then. And there’s a high spot on the sandstone cliff, surrounded by this gorgeous ice plant, and it overlooks the most beautiful water view you’ve ever seen. I’m on top of the world there, it seems. Justin: And everything fits, you know? Life feels right. As though I could take on anything, do anything. And sometimes, when I’m feeling overcome with gratitude for the view and for what I have, I jump so that I remember to continue to be courageous because not every piece of life will feel so in place. Justin: It’s a twenty-foot drop, the water is only in the high fifties, and it’s a damn scary experience. But it’s a wonderful fear. One that I know I can get through and one that I want. Justin: That’s what it’s like with you. I am scared because you are so beyond anything I could have imagined. I become so much more with you beside me. That’s terrifying, by the way. But I will be brave because my fear only comes from finally having something deeply powerful to lose. That’s my connection with you. It would be a massive loss. Justin: And now I am in the car and about to see you, so don’t reply. I’m too flipping terrified to hear what you think of my rant. It’s hard not to pour my heart out once I start. If you think I’m out of mind, just wave your hands in horror when you spot the lovesick guy at the airport. Ten minutes went by. He had said not to reply, so she hadn’t. Justin: Let’s hope I don’t get pulled over for speeding… but I’m at a stoplight now. Justin: God, I hope you aren’t… aren’t… something bad. Celeste: Hey, Justin? Justin: I TOLD YOU NOT TO REPLY! Justin: I know, I know. But I’m happy you did because I lost it there for a minute. Celeste: HEY, JUSTIN? Justin: Sorry… Hey, Celeste? Celeste: I am, unequivocally and wholly falling in love with you, too. Justin: Now I’m definitely speeding. I will see you soon.
Jessica Park (Flat-Out Celeste (Flat-Out Love, #2))
The children in my dreams speak in Gujarati turn their trusting faces to the sun say to me care for us nurture us in my dreams I shudder and I run. I am six in a playground of white children Darkie, sing us an Indian song! Eight in a roomful of elders all mock my broken Gujarati English girl! Twelve, I tunnel into books forge an armor of English words. Eighteen, shaved head combat boots - shamed by masis in white saris neon judgments singe my western head. Mother tongue. Matrubhasha tongue of the mother I murder in myself. Through the years I watch Gujarati swell the swaggering egos of men mirror them over and over at twice their natural size. Through the years I watch Gujarati dissolve bones and teeth of women, break them on anvils of duty and service, burn them to skeletal ash. Words that don't exist in Gujarati : Self-expression. Individual. Lesbian. English rises in my throat rapier flashed at yuppie boys who claim their people “civilized” mine. Thunderbolt hurled at cab drivers yelling Dirty black bastard! Force-field against teenage hoods hissing F****ing Paki bitch! Their tongue - or mine? Have I become the enemy? Listen: my father speaks Urdu language of dancing peacocks rosewater fountains even its curses are beautiful. He speaks Hindi suave and melodic earthy Punjabi salty rich as saag paneer coastal Kiswahili laced with Arabic, he speaks Gujarati solid ancestral pride. Five languages five different worlds yet English shrinks him down before white men who think their flat cold spiky words make the only reality. Words that don't exist in English: Najjar Garba Arati. If we cannot name it does it exist? When we lose language does culture die? What happens to a tongue of milk-heavy cows, earthen pots jingling anklets, temple bells, when its children grow up in Silicon Valley to become programmers? Then there's American: Kin'uh get some service? Dontcha have ice? Not: May I have please? Ben, mane madhath karso? Tafadhali nipe rafiki Donnez-moi, s'il vous plait Puedo tener….. Hello, I said can I get some service?! Like, where's the line for Ay-mericans in this goddamn airport? Words that atomized two hundred thousand Iraqis: Didja see how we kicked some major ass in the Gulf? Lit up Bagdad like the fourth a' July! Whupped those sand-niggers into a parking lot! The children in my dreams speak in Gujarati bright as butter succulent cherries sounds I can paint on the air with my breath dance through like a Sufi mystic words I can weep and howl and devour words I can kiss and taste and dream this tongue I take back.
Shailja Patel (Migritude)
And the silence, ​like the taxi ride to the airport/ For a 4am flight. / ​Even when you’ve just woken up, There is something in you that is perfect.
Charlotte Sabina (The Ghost of Hyde Park: Poems)
The next time you drive into a Walmart parking lot, pause for a second to note that this Walmart—like the more than five thousand other Walmarts across the country—costs taxpayers about $1 million in direct subsidies to the employees who don’t earn enough money to pay for an apartment, buy food, or get even the most basic health care for their children. In total, Walmart benefits from more than $7 billion in subsidies each year from taxpayers like you. Those “low, low prices” are made possible by low, low wages—and by the taxes you pay to keep those workers alive on their low, low pay. As I said earlier, I don’t think that anyone who works full-time should live in poverty. I also don’t think that bazillion-dollar companies like Walmart ought to funnel profits to shareholders while paying such low wages that taxpayers must pick up the ticket for their employees’ food, shelter, and medical care. I listen to right-wing loudmouths sound off about what an outrage welfare is and I think, “Yeah, it stinks that Walmart has been sucking up so much government assistance for so long.” But somehow I suspect that these guys aren’t talking about Walmart the Welfare Queen. Walmart isn’t alone. Every year, employers like retailers and fast-food outlets pay wages that are so low that the rest of America ponies up a collective $153 billion to subsidize their workers. That’s $153 billion every year. Anyone want to guess what we could do with that mountain of money? We could make every public college tuition-free and pay for preschool for every child—and still have tens of billions left over. We could almost double the amount we spend on services for veterans, such as disability, long-term care, and ending homelessness. We could double all federal research and development—everything: medical, scientific, engineering, climate science, behavioral health, chemistry, brain mapping, drug addiction, even defense research. Or we could more than double federal spending on transportation and water infrastructure—roads, bridges, airports, mass transit, dams and levees, water treatment plants, safe new water pipes. Yeah, the point I’m making is blindingly obvious. America could do a lot with the money taxpayers spend to keep afloat people who are working full-time but whose employers don’t pay a living wage. Of course, giant corporations know they have a sweet deal—and they plan to keep it, thank you very much. They have deployed armies of lobbyists and lawyers to fight off any efforts to give workers a chance to organize or fight for a higher wage. Giant corporations have used their mouthpiece, the national Chamber of Commerce, to oppose any increase in the minimum wage, calling it a “distraction” and a “cynical effort” to increase union membership. Lobbyists grow rich making sure that people like Gina don’t get paid more. The
Elizabeth Warren (This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class)
Is anyone in the U.S. innocent? Although those at the very pinnacle of the economic pyramid gain the most, millions of us depend—either directly or indirectly—on the exploitation of the LDCs for our livelihoods. The resources and cheap labor that feed nearly all our businesses come from places like Indonesia, and very little ever makes its way back. The loans of foreign aid ensure that today's children and their grandchildren will be held hostage. They will have to allow our corporations to ravage their natural resources and will have to forego education, health, and other social services merely to pay us back. The fact that our own companies already received most of this money to build the power plants, airports, and industrial parks does not factor into this formula. Does the excuse that most Americans are unaware of this constitute innocence? Uninformed and intentionally misinformed, yes—but innocent?
John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man)
Our journey is full of rest stops- park benches and airport terminals- that signal the arrival of things we anticipate. Sometimes, they´re worth the wait; other times, the glory doesn’t shine quite like wed hope. Regardless, we need to learn to live in this tension, to appreciate what we have and still hope for.
Jeff Goins (The In-Between: Embracing the Tension Between Now and the Next Big Thing: A Spiritual Memoir)
The Jewish doctors and lawyers and the successful merchants who owned big stores downtown lived in one-family houses on streets branching off the eastern slope of the Chancellor Avenue hill, closer to grassy, wooded Weequahic Park, a landscaped three hundred acres whose boating lake, golf course, and harness-racing track separated the Weequahic section from the industrial plants and shipping terminals lining Route 27 and the Pennsylvania Railroad viaduct east of that and the burgeoning airport east of that and the very edge of America east of that—the depots and docks of Newark Bay, where they unloaded cargo from around the world.
Philip Roth (The Plot Against America)
LAST NIGHT IN THE CITY Written in the style of Andrew Fusek Peters…… by Charlotte Eden Aged 9. My granddaughter Last night I saw the city boasting. Fat and ugly office blocks gloated over poor and empty parking lots, and conceited takeaways mocked the fish and chip shops Last night I saw the city sleeping. The sun, as hot as an oven, began to rest its brightness, and the moon awoke from his deep slumber. Last night I saw the city breathing. Airports inhaled the landing planes, while cars wheezed in the Cold, frosty night. Last night I saw the city crying. The gleaming stars poured from the night sky, and landed in a cracked, glass puddle. Last night I saw the city chuckling. Owls laughed at the bats’ jokes, while hedgehogs made fun of the hibernating squirrels. Last night I saw the city performing. The thin trees danced in the puffing wind, and the stars put on a show in the moonlight. Charlotte Eden June 2016. Copyright
Ann Perry (Mirror on the World: Poetic Reflections)
It sounds like an innovative answer to the problem that everybody faces at an amusement park, and one perfectly in keeping with the approaches currently in place at airports and even on some crowded American highways—perfectly in keeping with the two-tiering of America. You can pay for one level of access, or you can pay for another. If you have the means, you can even pay for freedom. There’s only one problem: Cutting the line is cheating, and everyone knows it. Children know it most acutely, know it in their bones, and so when they’ve been waiting on a line for a half-hour and a family sporting yellow plastic Flash Passes on their wrists walks up and steps in front of them, they can’t help asking why that family has been permitted the privilege of perpetrating what looks like an obvious injustice. And then you have to explain not just that they paid for it but that you haven’t paid enough—that the $100 or so that you’ve ponied up was just enough to teach your children that they are second- or third-class citizens.
Nelson D. Schwartz (The Velvet Rope Economy: How Inequality Became Big Business)
This is why our short-term solution to the witching hour—to bewitch our children with technological distraction—in the long run just makes things worse. And as with all the things we do to our children, the truth is that we are doing it to ourselves as well. I am horrified at the hours I have spent, often in the face of demanding creative work, scrolling aimlessly through social media and news updates, clicking briefly on countless vaguely titillating updates about people I barely know and situations I have no control over, feeling dim, thin versions of interest, attraction, dissatisfaction, and dislike. Those hours have been spent avoiding suffering—avoiding the suffering of our banal, boring modern world with its airport security lines and traffic jams and parking lots, but also avoiding the suffering of learning patience, wisdom, and virtue and putting them into practice. They have left me, as the ring left Bilbo, feeling “all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.”4
Andy Crouch (The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place)
On my next-to-last day in the country, I flew into Tokyo from Sapporo and needed to get to Tokyo’s main railroad station, called Shinjuku. I climbed into a taxi at the airport and said to the driver, “Shinjuku station, please.” He didn’t seem to have any idea what I meant. I repeated my request, as articulately as I could, and he looked at me as if I had asked him to take me to Boise. I pulled a map of Tokyo out and showed him Shinjuku station. He studied this with a look of great dissatisfaction, but at length put the car in gear and we set off. We drove for what seemed hours through the endless, numbing sprawl of Tokyo. Eventually we entered a long, deep tunnel—a kind of underground freeway, it seemed. About a mile along, the driver pulled into an emergency parking bay and stopped. He pointed to a metal door cut into the tunnel wall and indicated that I should get out and go through that door. “You want me to go through that door?” I said in disbelief. He nodded robustly and presented me with a bill for about a zillion yen. Everything was beginning to seem more than a touch surreal. He took my money, gave me several small bills in change, and encouraged me to depart, with a little shooing gesture. This was crazy. We were in a tunnel, for crying out loud. If I got out and he drove off, I would be hundreds of feet under Tokyo in a busy traffic tunnel with no sidewalk or other escape. You’ll understand when I say this didn’t feel entirely right. “Through that door there?” I said again, dubiously. He nodded and made another shooing gesture. I got out with my suitcase and went up three metal steps to the door and turned the handle. The door opened. I looked back at the driver. He nodded in encouragement. Ahead of me, lit with what seemed emergency lighting, was the longest flight of stairs I had ever seen. It took a very long while to climb them all. At the top I came to another door, exactly like the one at the bottom. I turned the handle and cautiously opened it, then stepped out onto the concourse of the world’s busiest railway station. I don’t know whether this is the way lots of people get to Shinjuku or whether I am the only person in history ever to have done so. But what I do know is this: it’s why I like to travel.
Bill Bryson (The Best American Travel Writing 2016 (The Best American Series))
Phoebe Kitzke?” The man had stopped in front of her. He had a deep, beautiful voice that made her thigh muscles quiver. This close she could see the multiple shades of deep blue that made up his eyes. He didn’t smile. On the whole she would say he looked about as far from happy as it was possible to be while still breathing. “I’m Phoebe,” she said, afraid she sounded as tentative as she felt. Why hadn’t Maya warned her? Saying Zane was good-looking was like saying summer in the desert was warm. “Zane.” He held out his hand. She wasn’t sure if he wanted to shake or take her luggage. She erred on the side of good manners and found her fingers engulfed in his. The instant heat didn’t surprise her, nor did the melting sensation. Everything else was going wrong in her life--it made sense for her body to betray her, too. She mentally jerked her attention away from her traitorous thighs and noticed that he had a really big hand. Phoebe tried not to think about those old wives’ tales. She tried not to think about anything except the fact that she was going to kill Maya the next time she saw her. “Nice to meet you,” she said when he’d released her. “Maya says the ranch is some distance from the airport, and I really appreciate you coming all this way to collect me.” His only response was to pick up her luggage. He didn’t bother with the wheels, instead carrying the bags out as if they weighed as much as a milk carton. Uh-huh. She’d nearly thrown out her entire back just wrestling them into the car. While in the past she’d never been all that interested in men with muscles, she could suddenly see the appeal of well-developed biceps. Zane headed for the parking lot, and Phoebe trailed after him. He didn’t seem to be much of a talker. That could make the drive to the ranch incredibly long.
Susan Mallery (Kiss Me (Fool's Gold, #17))
Almost as though this thought had fluttered through the open window, Vernon Dursley, Harry’s uncle, suddenly spoke. “Glad to see the boy’s stopped trying to butt in. Where is he anyway?” “I don’t know,” said Aunt Petunia unconcernedly. “Not in the house.” Uncle Vernon grunted. “Watching the news . . .” he said scathingly. “I’d like to know what he’s really up to. As if a normal boy cares what’s on the news — Dudley hasn’t got a clue what’s going on, doubt he knows who the Prime Minister is! Anyway, it’s not as if there’d be anything about his lot on our news —” “Vernon, shh!” said Aunt Petunia. “The window’s open!” “Oh — yes — sorry, dear . . .” The Dursleys fell silent. Harry listened to a jingle about Fruit ’N Bran breakfast cereal while he watched Mrs. Figg, a batty, cat-loving old lady from nearby Wisteria Walk, amble slowly past. She was frowning and muttering to herself. Harry was very pleased that he was concealed behind the bush; Mrs. Figg had recently taken to asking him around for tea whenever she met him in the street. She had rounded the corner and vanished from view before Uncle Vernon’s voice floated out of the window again. “Dudders out for tea?” “At the Polkisses’,” said Aunt Petunia fondly. “He’s got so many little friends, he’s so popular . . .” Harry repressed a snort with difficulty. The Dursleys really were astonishingly stupid about their son, Dudley; they had swallowed all his dim-witted lies about having tea with a different member of his gang every night of the summer holidays. Harry knew perfectly well that Dudley had not been to tea anywhere; he and his gang spent every evening vandalizing the play park, smoking on street corners, and throwing stones at passing cars and children. Harry had seen them at it during his evening walks around Little Whinging; he had spent most of the holidays wandering the streets, scavenging newspapers from bins along the way. The opening notes of the music that heralded the seven o’clock news reached Harry’s ears and his stomach turned over. Perhaps tonight — after a month of waiting — would be the night — “Record numbers of stranded holidaymakers fill airports as the Spanish baggage-handlers’ strike reaches its second week —” “Give ’em a lifelong siesta, I would,” snarled Uncle Vernon over the end of the newsreader’s sentence, but no matter: Outside in the flower bed, Harry’s stomach seemed to unclench.
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
I turned and entered the airport with my escort. Suddenly, I had a horrible realization: in order to return to the flight line I needed to move through a modern international airport complete with metal detectors and X-ray machines and I had a loaded pistol in my fanny pack. And, because of the ongoing civil war, security was beefed up and the guards were extra wary. Before we reached the first checkpoint, I pretended that I needed to use the restroom and told my escort to go on ahead. I needed to think. One option was to drop my pistol in a trash can and exit the airport, later claiming I lost the gun somehow. The lost-gun option had serious flaws. I couldn’t ditch my pistol because I had signed it out by serial number. Police could easily trace the gun back to me. My personal interpretation of the, “no weapons” order would probably not be an effective defense at my court marshal. My other option was to try and sneak through the airport onto the flight line, somehow avoiding a gauntlet of security checkpoints. This was the ninja option. This daunting course of action was fraught with serious danger. If guards confronted me and caught me with a loaded pistol I knew I would not have a pleasant day. There was no telling where that situation would lead; there was a real possibility I could spend time in a Yemeni prison. Despite the risks I decided on the ninja option. I figured I might have one slim advantage. Maybe the guards would remember me coming through the airport from the flight-line side with the embassy official and not pay me much attention. I was sweating bullets as I approached the first checkpoint. I tried to act casual and confident, not furtive and suspicious like a criminal. I waited until the guard looked away, his attention elsewhere and boldly walked behind him past the checkpoint. When I approached the X-ray and metal detectors I strode right past the line of people, bypassing the machines. I had to play it that way. I could not hang out near the detectors waiting for guards to look the other way and then sneak past; there were just too many. As I brazenly strode around each checkpoint I feared to hear a sudden barked command, rushing feet behind me, and hands spinning me around to face angry guards with drawn weapons. The last part of my mission to get on the airfield was tricky and nerveracking. Imagine being at an American airport in the gate area where people board the airplanes. Then imagine trying to sneak out a Jetway or access door without being stopped. I remembered the door I had used to enter the terminal and luckily it was unlocked. I picked my moment and quickly slipped out the door onto the airfield. I boldly strode across the airfield, never looking behind me until I reached my plane. Finally, I turned and looked back the way I came and saw … nothing. No one was pursuing me. I was in the midst of an ongoing civil war, surrounded by fresh bomb craters and soldiers carrying soviet rifles, but as scary situations go, so far Tiger Rescue was a relaxing walk in the park compared to Operation Ninja Escape.
William F. Sine (Guardian Angel: Life and Death Adventures with Pararescue, the World's Most Powerful Commando Rescue Force)
Squeezing breasts into pancakes all day has to be one of the worst jobs ever, in a serious tie with driving a Hertz bus in circles between the airport terminal and the parking lot. And those museum guards.
Linda Yellin (What Nora Knew)
You’re almost home.”                         The front doors of the Richmond International Airport part long before Cole and Ruby approach them, sensors imbedded in the floor pushing them to the side. Even at just nine o’clock in the morning, the outside temperature is already stifling, a harsh reminder that their time on the coast is over.               Wet, sticky air hits Cole’s skin as he passes into the harsh overhead sunlight, his eyes squinting from the glare. It has been almost thirty hours since he slept or changed clothes, his appearance making both very apparent.               The morning rush, if such a thing exists at RIC, has come and gone. The foot traffic is light as they walk through, nobody giving them so much as a second look.               The sound of a pained squeal draws Cole’s attention to the left, Esther running towards them, arms outstretched. Behind her is Maxwell, his black SUV parked along a painted curb, a pair of
Dustin Stevens (Be My Eyes)
The attacks on the Taj and the Oberoi, in which executives and socialites died, had served as a blunt correction. The wealthy now saw that their security could not be requisitioned privately. They were dependent on the same public safety system that ill served the poor. Ten young men had terrorized one of the world’s biggest cities for three days—a fact that had something to do with the ingenuity of a multi-pronged plot, but perhaps also to do with government agencies that had been operating as private market-stalls, not as public guardians. The crisis-response units of the Mumbai Police lacked arms. Officers in the train station didn’t know how to use their weapons, and ran and hid as two terrorists killed more than fifty travelers. Other officers called to rescue inhabitants of a besieged maternity hospital stayed put at police headquarters, four blocks away. Ambulances failed to respond to the wounded. Military commandos took eight hours to reach the heart of the financial capital—a journey that involved an inconveniently parked jet, a stop to refuel, and a long bus ride from the Mumbai airport. By the time the commandos arrived in south Mumbai, the killings were all but over.
Katherine Boo (Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity)
The drive to the airport felt eternal. Jane turned the backseat radio to a rock station and worked hard at being more angry than sad. Angry was proactive. “Schmuck,” she kept muttering. It was at herself. Yes, Martin was a schmuck, too. The sheer certainty of that felt invigorating. But really, after all those boyfriends, you’d think she’d have learned that all men are schmucks. It didn’t help her humiliation much that she’d had no illusions about Martin. She knew that he’d just been a fling, motivated by her desperation to feel like a genuine woman amid the pageantry. But then she went and let herself get played. Stupid girl. She’d even convinced herself that Mr. Nobley might have been actually fond of her. “Dream on,” the radio crooned. “It doesn’t matter how it ended,” she muttered to herself, and realized that it was true. Real or not, Martin had showed her that contented spinsterhood was not an option. And real or not, Mr. Nobley had helped her say no to Mr. Darcy. She leaned her head against the window, watched the countryside go whirling by, and forced herself to smile. Pembrook Park had done its job--it allowed her to live through her romantic purgatory. She believed now in earnest that fantasy is not practice for what is real--fantasy is the opiate of women. And she’d buried her fantasy behind her in the English countryside. Her life now would be open to real possibilities. There was no Mr. Darcy, there was no perfect man. But there might be someone. And she’d be ready.
Shannon Hale (Austenland (Austenland, #1))
There was Customer Service, a chirpy brunette with a permanent smile behind the desk. And there was someone waiting there, someone dressed in jeans and a sweater, devilishly normal in the twenty-first-century crowd. He saw her, and he straightened, his eyes hopeful. Apparently, Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s barrister hadn’t been in his office to assure her that being a magazine writer doesn’t nullify a confidentially agreement. “Jane.” “Martin. You whistled?” She laid the rancor on thick. No need to tap dance around. “Jane, I’m sorry. I was going to tell you today. Or tonight. The point is, I was going to tell you, and then we could still see if you and I--” “You’re an actor,” Jane said as though “actor” and “bastard” were synonymous. “Yes, but, but…” He looked around as though for cue cards. “But you’re desperately in love with me,” she prompted him. “I’m unbelievably beautiful, and I make you feel like yourself. Oh, and I remind you of your sister.” The chirpy brunette behind the counter furiously refused to look up from her monitor. “Jane, please.” “And the suddenly passionate feelings that sent you running after me at the airport have nothing to do with Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s fear that I’ll write a negative review of Pembrook Park.” “No! Listen, I know I was a cad, and I lied and was misleading, and I’ve never actually been an NBA fan--go United--but romances have bloomed on stonier ground.” “Romances…stonier ground…Did Mrs. Wattlesbrook write that line?” Martin exhaled in exasperation. Thinking of Molly’s dead end on the background check, she asked, “Your name’s not really Martin Jasper, is it?” “Well,” he looked at the brunette as though for help. “Well, it is Martin.” The brunette smiled encouragement. Then, impossibly, another figure ran toward her. The sideburns and stiff-collared jacket looked ridiculous out of the context of Pembrook Park, though he’d stuck on a baseball cap and trench coat, trying to blend. His face was flushed from running, and when he saw Jane, he sighed with relief. Jane dropped her jaw. Literally. She had never, even in her most ridiculous daydreaming, imagined that Mr. Nobley would come after her.
Shannon Hale (Austenland (Austenland, #1))
Outside the airport, the caravan waited. Four silver Airstream trailers, three trucks, two parking violations and Aunt Dot. Stepping into the parking lot felt like coming home.
Hailey Edwards (Head Above Water (Gemini, #2))
We offer discount Detroit Metro Airport parking rates. Make online reservations and enjoy our door to door shuttle service.
BrandenBowen
is July 2009. We step off our respective planes and lug our gear into the sweltering Vegas sun. Our taxis creep through downtown tourist traffic, swing around the airport, and unceremoniously drop us off in a giant, industrial-looking parking lot. The Las Vegas Sports Center sulks unimpressively in the heat, but under the sounds of arriving planes, there’s also a low hum and periodic whistles. Inside, the air is cooler and smells vaguely of . . . what is that smell? Sweat? Feet? Happiness? And when our eyes adjust to the light, we see skaters from every corner of the world—their helmets whiz by in every direction looking as if they are floating on air. On their feet are skates—black skates, white skates, blue skates, camouflage skates—propelled by a rainbow of wheels. On the sport floor, coaches with names like Carmen Getsome and Miss Fortune are drilling a centipede line of skaters in the fine art of knocking each other’s asses to the ground. Refs and skaters gear up for the mixed league, multination, battle du jour: Team Australia vs. Team Canada. Someone hobbles by with an ice pack strapped to her knee, still smiling. We smile too. Across town, nearly one thousand other skaters throng the casino and head to seminars in the meeting halls of the Imperial Palace Hotel, with nothing but roller derby on their minds. This is the fifth annual derby convention known as RollerCon.
Alex Cohen (Down and Derby: The Insider's Guide to Roller Derby)
Less amusing was an interview in which Billy Shaheen, the co-chair of Clinton’s campaign in New Hampshire, suggested to a reporter that my self-disclosed prior drug use would prove fatal in a matchup against the Republican nominee. I didn’t consider the general question of my youthful indiscretions out of bounds, but Shaheen went a bit further, implying that perhaps I had dealt drugs as well. The interview set off a furor, and Shaheen quickly resigned from his post. All this happened just ahead of our final debate in Iowa. That morning, both Hillary and I were in Washington for a Senate vote. When my team and I got to the airport for the flight to Des Moines, Hillary’s chartered plane turned out to be parked right next to ours. Before takeoff, Huma Abedin, Hillary’s aide, found Reggie and let him know that the senator was hoping to speak to me. I met Hillary on the tarmac, Reggie and Huma hovering a few paces away. Hillary apologized for Shaheen. I thanked her and then suggested we both do a better job of reining in our surrogates. At this, Hillary got agitated, her voice sharpening as she claimed that my team was routinely engaging in unfair attacks, distortions, and underhanded tactics. My efforts at lowering the temperature were unsuccessful, and the conversation ended abruptly, with her still visibly angry as she boarded her plane.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
The train station is the ideal scenario for greetings and farewells. The car is too banal. What does it mean to set off in a car? Nothing. The airport is too exhausting and impersonal, the plane itself remote, unseen, the barriers and security disturbing. Here the powerful beast of the locomotive thrusts its nose under the great arch of the station.
Tim Parks (Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo)
I am horrified at the hours I have spent, often in the face of demanding creative work, scrolling aimlessly through social media and news updates, clicking briefly on countless vaguely titillating updates about people I barely know and situations I have no control over, feeling dim, thin versions of interest, attraction, dissatisfaction, and dislike. Those hours have been spent avoiding suffering—avoiding the suffering of our banal, boring modern world with its airport security lines and traffic jams and parking lots, but also avoiding the suffering of learning patience, wisdom, and virtue and putting them into practice. They have left me, as the ring left Bilbo, feeling “all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.”4
Andy Crouch (The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place)
It was with some regret that Derrick Storm left the Ford Expedition—and its attendant munitions—in short-term parking at Reagan National Airport. He briefly thought about trying to smuggle the RPG launcher and a few grenades through security, reasonably certain the Transportation Security Administration would miss it if he was clever enough to redirect their attention toward something that would really set off alarm bells—like a 3.6-ounce bottle of shampoo. But, ultimately, he had friends in the New York area who could outfit him with weapons if the need arose. Besides, he didn’t want to waste the shampoo.
Richard Castle (Heat Storm (Nikki Heat))
With a last-second turn, Jordan pulled into a gas station directly across from the Airport Shuttle and Speedy Park. When she saw the flash of the left taillight of Amanda’s SUV, she shifted into Park and waited. Within minutes, Jordan caught a glimpse of Amanda and the daughter boarding the shuttle. The driver took their bags and loaded them, and they were whisked away. With a final look at the van heading toward the departures area, Jordan felt confident enough to continue with her plan. She sped away and drove the twenty-minute freeway route
C.M. Sutter (Snapped (Agent Jade Monroe FBI Thriller, #1))
As the vaccinations were found to be ineffective, authorities would resort to the last available means of stopping the epidemic: mass quarantine. Public assemblies and gatherings would be banned in a desperate attempt to halt the viral storm. Airports would be closed, subways halted, and buses parked as mandatory travel restrictions would be imposed. Businesses would be forced to furlough employees while local governments curtailed their services to avoid debilitating their entire workforce.
Clive Cussler (Black Wind (Dirk Pitt, #18))
Cooper grinned at me. “So, are you going to see me off at the airport? Stand in the terminal lounge, staring out the window, waiting for my plane to take off?” I snorted. “Um, no. I was going to drop you off at the departure terminal so I didn’t have to get a parking spot.” He gaped and narrowed his eyes. “When you get home, do me a favour and Google the word chivalry,” he said flatly. “It’s spelled c-h-i-v—” “Shut up,” I said with a laugh. “Or even look up the definition of ‘nice boyfriend’. I’m pretty sure it says ‘does not drop off loved one at terminal gate’ or ‘does not tell boyfriend to shut up’.
N.R. Walker
Oh, the airport’s not far from downtown. It’s just a little over an hour commute each way, thanks to this amazing Seattle traffic. The hotel’s not much, but it’s all we need. There’s ten channels’ worth of cable on the TV, and clean sheets on our twin beds, and a picturesque view of the gentlemen’s club next door.” Jimmy thought he saw Agent Miller’s left eye twitch. Jimmy said, “I’m sure that’s very entertaining.” Miller couldn’t take anymore. “It might be,” he said, “if we had a view of the inside, but all we can see is a parking lot full of desperate, lonely men, all of whom seem to look in our window. They seem to be fascinated by the sight of two middleaged men lying in twin beds like Ernie and Bert, watching The Weather Channel because it’s the most exciting thing on. It’s like being an exhibit in an alien zoo, on the planet of the scabby pervs!
Scott Meyer
Oh, the airport’s not far from downtown. It’s just a little over an hour commute each way, thanks to this amazing Seattle traffic. The hotel’s not much, but it’s all we need. There’s ten channels’ worth of cable on the TV, and clean sheets on our twin beds, and a picturesque view of the gentlemen’s club next door.” Jimmy thought he saw Agent Miller’s left eye twitch. Jimmy said, “I’m sure that’s very entertaining.” Miller couldn’t take anymore. “It might be,” he said, “if we had a view of the inside, but all we can see is a parking lot full of desperate, lonely men, all of whom seem to look in our window. They seem to be fascinated by the sight of two middleaged men lying in twin beds like Ernie and Bert, watching The Weather Channel because it’s the most exciting thing on. It’s like being an exhibit in an alien zoo, on the planet of the scabby pervs!
Scott Meyer, Spell or High Water
Baseball player’s description of Cincinnati: “Horseshit park, horseshit clubhouse, horseshit hotel, lots of movies, nice place to eat after the game, tough town to get laid in.” We had to wait for an hour-and-a-half at the airport because there were no taxis and our bus didn’t arrive on time. It was three in the morning, but that’s no excuse. And do you know that all you can hear at the Cincinnati airport at three in the morning are crickets? Goddam crickets? While we were standing there Larry Dierker said, “This city isn’t a completely lost cause. Look, they’ve got one of those computer IQ games.” So we walked over, dropped a couple of quarters in and discovered the machine was broken.
Jim Bouton (Ball Four (RosettaBooks Sports Classics Book 1))
Amid all this, I read Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick, a fascinating book by Wendy Wood, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California, who argues that habits change when they’re harder to practice. Addiction isn’t about rational decisions, she wrote. If it were, Americans would have quit smoking soon after 1964, when the US Surgeon General issued his first report on its risks. American nicotine addicts kept smoking, knowing they were killing themselves, because nicotine had changed their brain chemistry, and cigarettes were everywhere. We stopped smoking, Wood argues, by making it harder to do—adding “friction” to the activity. In other words, we limited access to supply. We removed cigarette vending machines, banned smoking in airports, planes, parks, beaches, bars, restaurants, and offices. By adding friction to smoking, we also removed the brain cues that prompted us to smoke: bars where booze, friends, and cigarettes went together, for example.
Sam Quinones (The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth)
Mr. Hardy had already booked two seats on a one-thirty airline flight. The boys drove to the airport, left their convertible in the parking lot, and were soon boarding a sleek jet. An hour later it landed at the Philadelphia airfield. Frank and Joe caught a taxi to the modernistic plant of the Noltan Medical Company. Mr. Noltan, a burly man in a tweed suit, greeted them with a firm handshake.
Franklin W. Dixon (The Short-Wave Mystery (Hardy Boys, #24))
As they moved on he was offered some STP, a powerful hallucinogenic which had become infamous after five thousand high-dosage tablets had been given away weeks earlier at the Summer Solstice Celebration in Golden Gate Park. The delayed onset of its effects meant a number of users had taken extra hits and ended up in hospital.302 Harrison declined the STP, but his response was seen as a snub. ‘I could see all the spotty youths,’ he recalled, ‘but I was seeing them from a twisted angle. It was like the manifestation of a scene from an Hieronymus Bosch painting, getting bigger and bigger, fish with heads, faces like vacuum cleaners coming out of shop doorways… They were handing me things – like a big Indian pipe with feathers on it, and books and incense – and trying to give me drugs. I remember saying to one guy: “No thanks, I don’t want it.” And then I heard his whining voice saying, “Hey, man – you put me down.” It was terrible. We walked quicker and quicker through the park and in the end we jumped in the limo, said, “Let’s get out of here,” and drove back to the airport.’303 The crowd began to grow hostile as they returned to the limousine, and those outside began rocking the vehicle as their faces pressed against the windows. The narrow escape increased Harrison’s resolve to move away from LSD. ‘That was the turning point for me – that’s when I went right off the whole drug cult and stopped taking the dreaded lysergic acid. I had some in a little bottle – it was liquid. I put it under a microscope, and it looked like bits of old rope. I thought that I couldn’t put that into my brain any more.
Joe Goodden (Riding So High: The Beatles and Drugs)
I am horrified at the hours I have spent, often in the face of demanding creative work, scrolling aimlessly through social media and news updates, clicking briefly on countless vaguely titillating updates about people I barely know and situations I have no control over, feeling dim, thin versions of interest, attraction, dissatisfaction, and dislike. Those hours have been spent avoiding suffering—avoiding the suffering of our banal, boring modern world with its airport security lines and traffic jams and parking lots, but also avoiding the suffering of learning patience, wisdom, and virtue and putting them into practice. They have left me, as the ring left Bilbo, feeling “all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.
Andy Crouch (The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place)
I, however, did not fare so well. I was wound up like a bottle rocket, sleeping poorly, eating terribly, prone to weird sicknesses and pains. Vertigo, for one. I threw up whenever I was stressed out, frequently in airports and parking lots. And yet I kept going, because I had learned long ago that one’s body is a perfectly acceptable offering on the altar of ministry. It did not occur to me that “stress barfs” are a warning sign. I knew better than to let our family suffer. My regret, though, and it is sizable and tender, is that I let myself suffer and deteriorate, body and soul, and it’s naïve to think that didn’t have profoundly negative effects on my children and my husband. I know it did. I cared for all three of them the best I could, but the person I was dragging back to our home, week after week, was a poor substitute for the wife and mother I wanted to be. I was not well, but I was very, very productive. And it didn’t occur to me to stop.
Shauna Niequist (Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living)
Gulberg greens are a great venture started by IBECHS. It is situated in the central location of the twin cities making it a goldmine for the aspiring investors. There are two main roads that conjoin at Gulberg greens including Airport road and G.T road. Pakistan’s first of its class business mega centers are located in Gulberg greens. It is a well-developed area and present on an ideal location in the heart of the twin cities. Gulberg’s commercial mega-developments are built considering the professional needs of Pakistan’s trade and business community. It has four main commercial areas: (1)Civic center (2)Business Park (3)Business Square (4)Blue Area (5)D-Markaz
Areeb Khalid
it explains how they were brilliant at home, the Jackson 5, the Temptations, and “Tizita” on their lips, a perfect Afro on their heads, bell-bottoms swishing above Double-O-Seven boots, and then the first foothold in America—behind the counter of a 7-Eleven, or breathing carbon monoxide fumes in a Kinney underground parking lot, or behind the counter of an airport newsstand or Marriott gift shop—has turned out to be a cement foot plant, a haven that they are fearful of leaving lest they suffer a fate worse than invisibility, namely extinction.
Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone)
Consider the case of SeaTac, a suburb of Seattle that increased its minimum wage for certain service industry employees to fifteen dollars per hour starting January 1, 2014. The Seattle Times reported in February 2014: “At the Clarion Hotel off International Boulevard, a sit-down restaurant has been shuttered, though it might be replaced by a less-labor-intensive café. . . . Other businesses have adjusted in ways that run the gamut from putting more work in the hands of managers, to instituting a small ‘living-wage surcharge’ for a daily parking space near the airport.” Some businesses in SeaTac have cut benefits to their employees. When asked whether they appreciated the increase in the minimum wage, a hotel employee replied, “I lost my 401k, health insurance, paid holiday and vacation.” The hotel reportedly offered meals to its employees. Now the employees must bring their own food. The hotel has also cut overtime and the opportunity to earn overtime pay. A part-time waitress stated, “I’ve got $15 an hour, but all my tips are now much less.”41
Mark R. Levin (Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future)
airport exit onto NW 120th Street, Jack slowed and parked near the International Shipping Service cargo facility. A warehouse butted up against a large hanger, its front wall sporting a large sign that read ISS AIR CARGO. The rumble of distant
Richard Phillips (Dead Shift (The Rho Agenda Inception #3))
Shara met me at the airport in London, dressed in her old familiar blue woolen overcoat that I loved so much. She was bouncing like a little girl with excitement. Everest was nothing compared to seeing her. I was skinny, long-haired, and wearing some very suspect flowery Nepalese trousers. I short, I looked a mess, but I was so happy. I had been warned by Henry at base camp not to rush into anything “silly” when I saw Shara again. He had told me it was a classic mountaineers’ error to propose as soon as you get home. High altitude apparently clouds people’s good judgment, he had said. In the end, I waited twelve months. But during this time I knew that this was the girl I wanted to marry. We had so much fun together that year. I persuaded Shara, almost daily, to skip off work early from her publishing job (she needed little persuading, mind), and we would go on endless, fun adventures. I remember taking her roller-skating through a park in central London and going too fast down a hill. I ended up headfirst in the lake, fully clothed. She thought it funny. Another time, I lost a wheel while roller-skating down a steep busy London street. (Cursed skates!) I found myself screeching along at breakneck speed on only one skate. She thought that one scary. We drank tea, had afternoon snoozes, and drove around in “Dolly,” my old London black cab that I had bought for a song. Shara was the only girl I knew who would be willing to sit with me for hours on the motorway--broken down--waiting for roadside recovery to tow me to yet another garage to fix Dolly. Again. We were (are!) in love. I put a wooden board and mattress in the backseat so I could sleep in the taxi, and Charlie Mackesy painted funny cartoons inside. (Ironically, these are now the most valuable part of Dolly, which sits majestically outside our home.) Our boys love playing in Dolly nowadays. Shara says I should get rid of her, as the taxi is rusting away, but Dolly was the car that I will forever associate with our early days together. How could I send her to the scrapyard? In fact, this spring, we are going to paint Dolly in the colors of the rainbow, put decent seat belts in the backseat, and go on a road trip as a family. Heaven. We must never stop doing these sorts of things. They are what brought us together, and what will keep us having fun. Spontaneity has to be exercised every day, or we lose it. Shara, lovingly, rolls her eyes.
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
Slightly further afield, you will find Baroque palaces such as Nymphenberg and Schlossheim, with wonderful parks and art galleries. On a slightly darker note, Dachau Concentration Camp is around 10 miles from town. Trains go there from Munich’s main train station every ten minutes and the journey takes less than 15 minutes. Transport in Munich is well organised with a network of trains – S‐Bahn is the suburban rail; U‐Bahn is underground and there are trams and buses. The S‐Bahn connects Munich Airport with the city at frequent intervals depending on the time of day or night. Munich is especially busy during Oktoberfest, a beer festival that began in the 19th century to celebrate a royal wedding, and also in the Christmas market season, which runs from late November to Christmas Eve. Expect wooden toys and ornaments, cakes and Gluwien. The hot mulled wine stands require a deposit for each mug. This means that locals stand chatting at the stalls while drinking. As a result, the solo traveller is never alone. The downside of Munich is that it is a commercial city, one that works hard and sometimes has little patience for tourists. Natives of Munich also have a reputation for being a little snobbish and very brand conscious. To read: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Narrated by death himself, this novel tells of a little girl sent to a foster family in 1939. She reads The Grave Diggers Handbook each evening with her foster father and, as her love of reading grows, she steals a book from a Nazi book burning. From this, her renegade life begins.
Dee Maldon (The Solo Travel Guide: Just Do It)
Here we are, sir,’ Blake said as we rolled onto the bumpy track that constituted the airport car park. It all felt oddly familiar, the chauffeur-driven car, the dark-haired brooding male, the name check of sir. And as the aeroplane came into view, I suddenly understood why it all felt so familiar. Oh, fuck. Drew was Christian Grey…but far less controlling. This felt surreal. I was expecting to hear the first bars of ‘Love Me Like You Do’ blaring out at any second. ‘Trust me?’ Drew asked as he opened my door. ‘Are you taking me to your playroom?’ I asked biting my lip for good measure. He raised his eyebrow in question. ‘Drew, you couldn’t be more Christian Grey!’ ‘I’m pretty sure he had a helicopter,’ he replied smiling. ‘He does, but we’ll let that slip.’ ‘Absolutely not,’ he replied. ‘Real romance heroes fly fucking planes.
Lynsey M. Stewart (A Novel Christmas: A Friends to Lovers / Christmas Themed Contemporary Romance)
Everywhere we went, Deb and I saw the imprint of the great national undertakings of the past. An astonishing amount of the public architecture of twenty-first-century America was laid down in a few Depression years in the 1930s, bu the millions of people employed by the Works Progress Administration. The small airports we landed at were the result of midcentury defense-and-transportation bulding projects, as were the interstates we flew above. The libraries we found almost everywhere were the result of both public and private investment. The grid-pattern fields of the farmland Midwest had been laid out by the rules of settlement from the earliest days of the republic. The practices that made them the most productive farmland in the world were crucially spurred by land grant universities and agricultural-research schools. The wildlands and ecosystems that have escaped development did so because of their protection as national parks or monuments.
James Fallows