Getting Home: Rome → London → Atlanta (The Gauntlet, Reversed)
Everything good must end, usually at an airport. Our trip home was basically the journey over run backward, which meant I knew exactly what fresh hell was waiting and got to dread it in advance. Lovely.
We started with the good plane – Rome to London, roomy, working air, seats designed for actual human beings. I let my guard down. Rookie mistake. Because lurking on the other side of another marathon layover was the big leg back across the Atlantic, and I knew in my bones what that meant: the cinder-block-in-a-sardine-can seats, the air conditioning that works on commission, and my backside going numb somewhere over the ocean. Reader, it delivered. The Valium took one look at the situation and clocked out early, same as last time. My nerves and I white-knuckled the entire flight to Atlanta, again.
But we made it. Cleared customs, grabbed our bags, poured ourselves onto the Groome shuttle for the last stretch back down to Macon, and somewhere around the Jones County line it finally hit – that bone-deep, happy, we-actually-did-that exhaustion. Numb butt, fried nerves, camera full of a million pictures, and zero regrets. Worth every miserable mile. Until next time.
