So I recently traveled to the U.S., specifically Oklahoma, to visit family for the first time in nearly a decade. I had originally planned to visit in 2020, but, well, pandemic, etc.
The airport express was packed; Chenbl met me at Beimen Station and we set out for Taoyuan…it had been so long since I’d traveled, especially by myself, that it was rather surreal. We had a dinner of rice at a ramen place downstairs. I wasn’t in the most talkative of moods, but I was glad Chenbl was there as I was filled with anxiety with the prospect of this trip, so unlike past ones, and the feeling only increased after I left Chenbl at the security check (he doesn’t go to the U.S. on principle, which I respect). I had checked my rolling suitcase and just had a large backpack. Fortunately, my new passport (My fifth! Time flies) maintained e-gate functionality. Chenbl had said there was a free lounge on the second floor, but that turned out to be false, so I sat on a couch for an hour or so before heading to my gate.
There, a huge crowd of people in wheelchairs was spread out in a large array before the entrance, some kind of travel group, and it took quite a while to get them through when the time came. I had chosen a window seat towards the rear of the plane: safer, better view from a window seat, and closer to the bathrooms and galley, though lots more wiggling motion as tends to be the case in the tail of the plane. The two meals Eva Air provided were ok, as were the movies. I managed to get some sleep by stretching my feet under the seat in front of me and resting my head on the side of the large window, the eerie scene purple daylight outside resulting from the polarized windows as they wanted it to feel like night on board. I was thankful for the 787’s higher humidity and lower pressure; my ears barely felt a thing and I wasn’t as dried out as I usually am after trips on other planes.
The view of the sun setting under the gold swath of clouds as we flew into Seattle was sublime. After retrieving my bag (which took forever), immigration went surprisingly smoothly; a pleasantly curious but understanding officer got me through quickly and efficiently, which is basically why I chose Seattle for transit over someplace like LA.
Outside the airport, however, I discovered that the hotel I’d reserved, the Red Roof Inn, was somehow the only one not contactable from the courtesy phones at the bus stop, and my phone wouldn’t work with local numbers. The hotel was technically walkable from the airport, though online reviews advised against it, and it was cold and rainy. I managed to borrow the phone of a sympathetic security station manager to get in touch with the hotel so they could send a van over. The hotel itself was basic, an older place with no toothbrushes, razors or breakfast…just a basic room with a shower and towels.
I might as well have stayed at the terminal as I barely slept at the hotel, getting up well before my 4:30 a.m. wakeup call to get the crowded 5 a.m. shuttle back to the airport to catch my 737 Max flight to Oklahoma City, though I was picking all the worst lines throughout the made-up farce that is U.S. airport “security” these days. It’s such a waste of time and money, and I noticed that nobody was wearing a mask despite the crowded conditions. I just had time for a 12-dollar turkey sandwich before we boarded, which was fortunate as only drinks and cookies were available on the domestic flight, a far cry from days of yore when a meal would have been de rigueur. The Max is suspect these days, especially those flown by Alaska Airlines, but I figure it’s the best time to fly those shunned planes as everyone’s hyper-aware of its issues, or at least that’s what I told myself. I honestly didn’t know it was the plane we were flying until I boarded.
The older man sitting next to me had a Chihuahua with him in a bag; he let the little dog, who had never flown before, out to sit on his lap during most of the flight as it was scared, though that is against regulations. Fields of gigantic windmills spread across the plains appeared as we approached Oklahoma City.
The weather was brilliant. My big sister Leslie was waiting for me in the airport lounge, and we drove to her very nice house in Norman, a suburb of Oklahoma City; later we went to some of her friends’ house to watch Resident Alien, which they really liked but was nearly incomprehensible to me as I was not only passing out due to jet lag and just a lot of food, but also because they were already on a later season whereas I’d never even watched a single episode. That night I slept on Leslie’s sofa, which wasn’t too bad. Her dog Emmie is a lovely corgi-beagle mix, very friendly and bouncy. Leslie, always the cool older sister, is a lifelong animal lover as well as the only member of my family to have visited me in Taiwan.
We drove south the next day to the town of Ardmore, where our parents live and where our father grew up. My older brother Kevin had arrived the day before; it was the first time we’d all been together since the last time I was in Ardmore nine years ago. We all drove out to a restaurant in one car, just like old times except I wasn’t sitting the way back of an old station wagon as I usually did when I was little. On the way, our parents pointed out various places that were different now, what they had been, etc. Leslie went back to Norman that night as there were only two spare bedrooms in the house, but she came down for a lunch the next day.
Kevin was driving back to Fort Worth on Easter Sunday to see his daughter Avery, who is now a student at Texas Christian University, before catching his flight back to Kentucky. I decided to go down with him so I could at least see Avery if not his older daughter Katie or her husband Derek, who also live in the area but were going to be busy with Easter-related activities, so I booked a $20 train ticket online back to Ardmore from Forth Worth later that afternoon. The TCU campus is quite nice, and Avery is as enthusiastic about her studies as a college student can be. Kevin’s younger son Jack is going to be studying there as well soon. The three of us went to a nearby restaurant for drinks, and Kevin and Avery worked on one of her projects. It was heartwarming to see my brother so engaged and interested in helping his daughter succeed.
After an extremely filling lunch, we dropped Avery back at her dorm, and Kevin took me to the Kimbell Art Museum, which was frankly amazing. So many lovely, fascinating works on display in such a well-designed space, and so accessible! I actually got a warning from one of the guards when I gestured a little too closely while gushing about the use of reflected light in one of the paintings.
Kevin then drove me to the train station downtown, where I got on an Amtrak train back to Ardmore, the horn blasting out before each and every crossing; surely the people working on the train must either hate that or have become deaf, I thought as the staff talked loudly among themselves at the front of the car. The route was lined with rather depressing new developments, endless rows of cheapish identical houses, and I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of lives would be lived there. My parents picked me up at the station in Ardmore, noting with surprise that the train had actually been on time. Either trains are often late, or my parents don’t really mess around with trains that much.
The weather had been pleasant so far, warm and sometimes sunny, but storms were forecast for that night, with the possibility of tornadoes. That afternoon I helped dad fix an arbor in the back yard, and he blew out the shelter they have in the garage floor just in case. When dad and I got back from a trip to the store, we found mom sitting on the dining room floor, unable to get up. I wrenched my back and arm lifting her; dad said he couldn’t have done it on his own. This, combined with an annoying cough I’d picked up somewhere (not exactly a surprise in mask-free territory), didn’t exactly make the rest of my trip as comfortable as it might otherwise have been.
My parents have a cute little white dog named Sophie Jane who doesn’t bark and is very friendly. As my parents are avid Newsmax/Fox News viewers, I would often go back and look at old family photo albums, and Sophie would walk into the room, take note, and just walk out again. The albums were interesting, but unfortunately mainly chronicle my mother’s side of the family, though for some reason many of the photos had been removed or even cut out; my dad’s family is barely covered at all, alas.
One evening Chenbl facetimed me, grinning as he pointed at his office, which was in a state of great disarray. “We just had a huge earthquake!” he said. It was the largest since the 9/21 quake a quarter century ago. Thankfully everyone seemed to be ok, and the damage and casualties, while significant, could have been much worse. I hoped that the Water Curtain Cave wasn’t affected too much; it’s built on bedrock unlike the loess soil of the Taipei Basin so I wasn’t too worried.
My parents drove me back up to Norman on Wednesday morning. I’d told them Leslie could have picked me up in Ardmore but they wanted to see Leslie’s new house for themselves.
I should note that some things happened that I am not at liberty to write about here. The U.S. is such a strange place to me these days; I don’t think the people who live there really see it as much as it’s all they’ve ever known. From the outside it may seem puzzling or even amusing, but being there in the midst of it is far more alarming, for while the things many Americans believe may not be based in reality, the beliefs themselves are frighteningly real. If they were amenable to being persuaded by facts, they would have long ago figured out what was actually going on, but that is simply not the case. What can one do when any discussion runs aground on mountains of misinformation, when manufactured outrage is so easily canned and sold?
I wish I knew. I also felt how difficult it must be to photograph there as most people are isolated, both physically, socially and intellectually, from each other most of the time, not to mention the fact that a significant proportion of the population is armed. Everyone is just so spaced out, in more ways than one. I hardly took any photographs, partly due to not being familiar with how that society works and partly due to not being in the state of mind I can maintain elsewhere.
Unexpectedly, I did manage to try out an Apple Vision Pro at the mall’s Apple Store; Leslie sat nearby during the demo, clearly bemused at this VR folly of mine. The headset screens were amazing, but the field of view and weight were not great. So it’s a pass, not that I could ever afford one. I was tempted to pick up a Quest 3, but I’ve resolved to wait for the Pro 2 or something similar; the Quest 2 is good enough for now.
The next couple of days in Norman, Leslie treated me to some tasty Mexican food, and I treated her and her friend Kelly to an Indian meal, and Kelly gave Leslie money to treat me to breakfast at Ihop on Saturday morning (they offer grits now, or, rather, grits-flavored soup; I knew something was off when the young white waiter suggested putting sugar in them…que horrible). Leslie took me shopping at Walmart, where I stocked up on the usual various treats as well as some new ones.
The night before I departed the States, Leslie’s friends Kim and Scott threw a party at their house, which was very chill. Kim let me use her waist massager on my sore back, and I stuffed myself on grilled chicken, potatoes, fruit salads (Leslie’s was very good, and introduced me to the practice of “zesting” fruit peels), and two kinds of birthday cake (they were properly celebrating Leslie’s birthday, which had actually been a few days earlier). We got back at nearly midnight, late for everyone concerned. I didn’t sleep particularly well, but Leslie’s shower, bed, food, and dog made my stay there quite comfy. Oklahoma is just so dry; I was using lotion all the time, whereas I normally only use it occasionally in Taiwan.
The check-in people at the OKC airport the next morning didn’t seem to know what was going on, skipping all the boarding groups while verbally threatening anyone who dared to bring rolling luggage onto the crowded flight. For some reason, active service military personnel always board first; is that new? The plane itself, another 737 Max alas, was ratty and well-used. I’d been assigned a window seat, but the window was so dirty I might as well have had an aisle seat.
We made it to Seattle in one piece, and I settled in for the long, nine-hour wait between flights, charging up all my devices while looking down at the planes coming and going out on the tarmac as night fell. I had considered taking the light rail into town to have a look around the city, but as it was cold and rainy, and my back was still sore, I decided to just hang out at the airport instead. I did notice that U.S. restroom stall walls are all rather high off the ground…is there a reason for that? I don’t really see that anywhere else.
Dinner, when the time came, was a cheeseburger and fries that weighed on me. I still had four hours to go before my flight, so I tried the upstairs lounge called “The Club” that costs like US$50; not cheap, but, oh well. Turned out that I hadn’t needed to eat dinner as they had food inside, and they also had showers, which was nice. The atmosphere was dominated by the sounds of loud children and louder parents from all over the globe.
The flight back to Taipei, again on a 787, was again very full; a Filipino family across the aisle was constantly dropping things that rolled all around the cabin floor, resulting in them crawling around looking for things for a significant portion of the flight. This stretch was significantly longer than the 10-hour trip out, at 13 hours. I’d chosen an aisle seat so I could move more freely around, but I just couldn’t get comfortable as there was nothing to lean on except for the occasional roaming Filipino, while passengers and crew kept bumping me as they walked up and down the narrow aisle space. I also missed the view of flying over Tokyo at night, which I would have liked to have seen. My ears were giving me a lot more trouble on the trip back than had been the case going over, possibly due to the nagging cough I’d picked up, necessitating holding my nose and blowing violently to regain pressure equilibrium, and my ears still aren’t quite right even now, days later. Breakfast on the plane was slow; if it had taken any longer, we would have all been eating on our way out the door.
It was raining when we arrived at Taoyuan Airport just after 5 a.m. For some reason we parked way, way out, meaning a long walk to the arrivals made longer by my aching back, but at least my luggage was being unloaded just as I made it out of immigration. An ABC couple was having trouble communicating with the metro operator while buying easy cards, but despite the delay I managed to hop the airport express into town, unsure of exactly what music would suit my muted mood as I watched the ghostly buildings of Linkou slip through the mist outside the oddly silent train.
Back in Taipei, grateful for the temperate, humid weather of the muddy basin, I had another breakfast with coffee at a cafe near my office before going into the office, despite feeling like I’d been on the losing side of a brawl…I felt I might as well get those hours in, and I needed to stay awake during the day so I could sleep at night. It made the trip last until the afternoon when I finally returned to the mostly unmolested Water Curtain Cave, though I was and remain exhausted and wonky from the trip. Coffee keeps me up as I go through the few photos I took, until it’s finally time to sleep.
So that was my trip, the first in a long time, and by no means typical for me. I’d been so anxious about it for so long, and now that it’s over, I’m not sure how I feel. In addition to a handful of photos, I did take some video with my phone, but I’m not sure if there’s enough there for a real travel video, a la my old travel videos. In any case, I’ll let you know. And as always, thanks for reading.
I recently came across the photobook “In Guns We Trust” by Canadian “lens-based visual artist” Jean-Francois Bouchard, published in 2019 by the Magenta Foundation, “a trailblazing charitable arts-publishing house that consistently showcases the work of talented artists on a global scale, drawing attention to under-represented and emerging artists with powerful exhibitions and a roster of impressive international publications.” The book is mainly composed of photos of white Americans, men for the most part in heroic poses holding oversized guns in front of majestic desert landscapes, interspersed with the various bullet-ridden objects, mostly foreign cars and woman-shaped mannequins, that they target at a large shooting range in Arizona.
