Editor’s Note: This entry is Part 2 of a series detailing my recent trip to Phoenix on Halloween weekend, as well as the unexpected travel woes and poignant life experiences that followed.

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — I finally made it home, but not in the sense you’d expect.

Last I checked in with you, I was leaving “The Moxy” boutique hotel in Tempe, Ariz., and bound for Sky Harbor Airport.

Woes with American Airlines involving labor shortages and union strikes ejected me out of PHX the afternoon prior. They gave me a reservation slip for a local airport, paid the cabs, and told me to get my ass back here the next day. The soonest they could get me home, I was informed, was 36 hours later — involving a 7-hour layover in LAX and a red-eye back to IND about 3 hours before I was set to teach class that day.

What other choice did I have? I signed up for another Roman Holiday and prepared to come, see, and conquer.

The Moxy checked me out just before noon, and I requested an AA-compensated pickup from the Indigo TaxiCab Company. A driver named Neal picked me up 41 minutes later, and apologized for the delay.

“We’re always so busy at the first of the month, I’m glad you were here and ready,” he said. “Or else we probably wouldn’t have had time to get back here today.

Neal said his real background is tractor engineering and that he works for John Deere, but times are a little tough right now. Specifically, he performs maintenance on the fine tractor blades meant for putting greens and their angel-hair fineness.

“If you’re just as much as 1/64 of an inch off, you can end up killing the entire green, and that’s gonna cost you,” he said.

The cabbie thing, Neal said, was just part-time. Unless you worked for an internet-based video co-working company, COVID forced us all to switch up our work routines. For Neal, that means piloting his cab around Tempe and Arizona State University.

It was the first week of the month, so Neal’s schedule was already booked for the day with errand-based cab rides: The unemployment and social security checks had just come out, and folks were ready to spend their money once again in the spirit of surviving this distinct economic era. That means lots of trips to the grocery store and back, as well as elderly folks getting to the hospital. Before scooping me up at The Moxy, Neal had wrapped up a $230 tab for a gentleman running favors all over the greater Phoenix area.

Neal says he hates picking up college kids when they’re in groups. “They’re all loud, drunk, and stupid. They’ve gotta get the aux cord plugged in. They’ve all gotta hear this new song.

…sometimes, I’ll look back, and they’ll all have their bras off.”

I nodded my head and kept my eyes forward to avoid going down that road.

Neal started in the business of doomsaying as I mentally wandered in and out of his panic-inducing ways: He said one couple he recently chauffeured gave up on their airline tickets altogether and rented a car for the 27-hour, 1,767-mile drive home.

In fact, with consumer rental cars facing such a shortage, Neal told me that some desperate, stranded travelers in the Sky Harbor area had started renting box trucks — the kind used for residential moving — as they were ultimately cheaper than easy-driving economy sedans during this time of scarcity.

Neal got me to PHX and wished me luck on the rest of my journey. I grabbed my backpack and suitcase, whisked through TSA PreCheck, and set off on for Take 2 in Terminal B.

The suspense was over early on this go-around: A small flight crew (two female attendants, one male pilot) were having lunch in the immediate boarding zone of gate B6 and telling whoever was nearby with a smile that they were going to get us on our way today. Los Angeles, they said was their base hub, and that “we want to get home just as badly as you do.”

All things considered, in such a woebegone week, that was surprisingly pleasant to hear.

***

The flight to L.A. was unremarkable: a 53-minute jaunt across a row of clay-red mountains. My row was empty, and I used this time to prepare the lesson I would need to give in just a few hours, albeit in a classroom 2,000 miles away.

My plane got in safely, and the realization began to set in: Congrats Moose, you’ve finally made it to California.

Your very first time on a West Coast state.

This was a lifelong, if not extremely mild, dream of a country boy who more or less hated living away from the pomp and pageantry of city living. From our 10-acre plot of weeds and dog poop, I thought Indianapolis in the late-1990s was as big as life could ever get.

So imagine the way that lens has historically opened up for me as I started making my way to actual world cities during my freshman year of college and beyond: Chicago. Atlanta. London. Paris. Places that mattered in the books I read promising me a more exciting world than the one I was stuck with.

And now, Los Angeles — perhaps the antithesis of my background — was getting crossed off my list by mere accident.

As much as an airport layover can mark that checkbox, at least.

I was welcomed off the plane by a digital billboard for Rock & Brews, LAX’s version of a Hard Rock Cafe or something. KISS frontman Paul Stanley was trying to get me to buy a $12 beer, maybe order a “Backstage Brioche” burger, now that I had finally made it home to the Golden State.

Alas, they were closed due to a labor shortage.

Just like I was seeing in Phoenix. Just like I was seeing in Bloomington.

***

I chose to use my 6-hour layover just milling around the world-famous airport — one of the filming locations for Airplane! (1980) — to see what Los Angeles (via the lens of LAX) is like.

Of course, no airport is ever a true representation of what the land outside it is like. But the kiosks and store chains in Los Angeles sure as shit don’t look like the ones in Indiana.

One might say I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

There was the Gucci boutique. The Hermes shop. Cobb salads on sale for $19.75. People walking around in shoes designed by Kanye West, browsing $200 bottles of liquor in the duty-free shop. An entire FAO Schwartz toy shop. How about two Hugo Boss locations?

These are the kinds of things I read about as a guy who spent 15 years surrounded by cornfields and assume is just a big stereotype. An in-joke, perhaps, since so much TV and film comes from California.

Alas, this is what it looks like when a rural geek finally makes it to the second biggest city in the United States: Sure, things are expensive. They’re busy and they’re fast, and people are trying to move through you before they even see you. It scary, and ugly, and maybe even a bit traumatic, to a guy like me.

But this is what I craved: Finally getting to that place I heard about with a reputation for horrid traffic. Finally getting to that place I’ve seen celebrities on Twitter describe as a “hellhole.” Finally getting to a place so elegant and premium that I actually have to consider if $20 for a small order of Chinese food is worth my time. Finally walking into a place so modern and chic that I feel like the absolute scum-fuckiest piece of stinky, pimply trash that’s showed up in all of the past five years. The hideous, uneducated outsider discovering Shangri-La and politely asking to wreck the bathroom before carrying on my way.

There’s a whole ‘nother life out there, goddamnit. One that you’ll find ever-so-briefly if you know where to look for it, and one you’ll might actually understand if the universe feels you’ve worked enough on your brain to deserve it.

And I love it — it’s all I’ve ever wanted and hoped for.

***

I ended up catching the final game of the World Series outside a closed pizza restaurant in Terminal 4. The manager left the TV sports coverage rolling as he finished his cash wrap activities, so I stared through the windows and watched Atlanta cruise past Houston, 7-0.

I stood there for a few minutes on my own before a few wayfaring colleagues noticed what I had my eyes on. A man in a leather jacket quietly leaned behind me to follow suit, and a family of Dodgers fans with a small child parked their baby-buggy in front of me. An elderly woman walked over to join the gathering, and we formed a de-facto mob of gawkers as the Astros — known enemy of the Dodger faithful — fell on baseball’s highest stage.

The two parents clapped once or twice to themselves as Atlanta seized the winning moment.

Their son, bedecked in Dodger blue, stood up in his stroller. “GO DOBBERS!”

***

After spending the length of “Gone With the Wind” wandering around the high-profile airport of lore, I finally got on my plane home. Suffice to say, you might not be surprised to hear that an 11:59 p.m. midweek flight from Los Angeles to Indianapolis is underbooked, but a majority of us used our empty rows to lay flat and aim for a few hours of sleep in total darkness. I sneaked back to the very last row, to minimize the victims of my occasional snoring habits, and claimed the empty seats for my slumber.

When I left Phoenix, the temperature was 79 degrees Fahrenheit. Leaving Los Angeles, it was 57.

When I arrived in Indianapolis, it was 29.

I caught my 8:40 a.m. shuttle from the Indianapolis International Airport and stared out the window in silence as all the In-N’-Outs and palm trees were replaced by potholes and Hunt Brothers Pizza billboards.

For a minute there, I started to feel a little desperate — wondering if it would be more prudent to just abandon my Hoosier belongings and commit to the desert — because I had little faith in getting home, be it a day, week, or month.

But by the time I got home (and then to class) on an hour’s sleep, I wondered why I was in such a rush to begin with.

###

-moose