It was a long series of flights to South Africa last week, for a three-day visit. We were upgraded to first class on the Denver-to-Frankfurt segment, and got a day room at a Frankfurt airport hotel for a rest and a shower. In total, it took 43 hours to get there.

If we don’t fly business class, we almost always take an exit row, the better to accommodate Bob’s long legs. A number of qualifications must be met in order to sit in the exit rows. You must be over 15, understand English, be physically fit, be willing and able to help in an emergency. We were surprised to see then, on the Vegas-to-Denver segment, a nonagenarian couple in the exit row. When the plane landed, we greeted the couple in the airport and audaciously asked their ages. “75, both,” they claimed, instantly ready with their lies.

Another couple boarded early from wheelchairs on the Frankfurt-to-Cape Town segment. Upon landing, they pushed their way off the plane quickly and rushed to be first in line at immigration—suddenly able-bodied.

On the trip, I listened to the whole four and a half hours of Laurie Anderson’s United States Live. The two-night concert was recorded live in Brooklyn in 1984.

… you know, to be really safe you should always carry a bomb on an airplane. Because the chances of there being one bomb on a plane are pretty small. But the chances of two bombs are almost minuscule. So by carrying a bomb on a plane, the odds of your becoming a hostage or of getting blown up are astronomically reduced.

That was from “New Jersey Turnpike.” “The Night Flight From Houston” is on another Laurie Anderson album I listened to:

It was the night flight from Houston. Almost perfect visibility. You could see the lights from all the little Texas towns far below. And I was sitting next to a fifty-year old woman who had never been on a plane before. And her son had sent her a ticket and said:
“Mom, you’ve raised ten kids; it’s time you got on a plane.”
And she was sitting in a window seat staring out and she kept talking about the Big Dipper and that Little Dipper and pointing; and suddenly I realized that she thought we were in outer space looking down at the stars. And I said:
“You know, I think those lights down there are the lights from little towns.”

The trip home from South Africa was over 33 hours.