I’ve said it many times before—I hate flying. It fucking terrifies me and not in a distant, abstract way. Currently, I am aloft at 21,711 feet, somewhere over New York, partially through the initial ascent of a fourty-eight minute flight to Burlington, Vermont. Pure, gut-churning terror. No, I don’t want a bag of airline peanuts, thanks.

I find it ironic that in my life, whenever I take a vacation, usually in a state of just past bug-crazy, fully sick of New York City and all the human vermin that turn it’s wheels (myself included), that in order for to get away, to relax and do the things stupid people do when frolicking with the natives, it requires my ass to be hovering many thousands of feet in the air, traveling at 540 miles per hour as a preamble or perhaps as a penance for being such a horrid little man. Say five Hail Marys and then you can go play—something like that..

At heights and speeds such as these, I question the point of it. Five days ass-out, drunk and stoned out of my gizzard, surrounded by plants and barbecued meats for the price of slightly less than one hour of stomach-twisting terror at high altitudes, spiced with the chance of ending my life screaming incoherantly before being enveloped in a giant flaming ball of death. It kind of makes me want to stay home on the couch, safely fused with my PlayStation.

But no. Here I am, trying not to bleat like a baby goat getting castrated as the turbulence kicks the plane about. What the fuck is wrong with me? Why didn’t I take the train? Smart people who live long lives take trains. Personally, I prefer to live a long time and the closest I’d like to get to death by plunging fireball is watching it happen on television, laughing at the misfortunes of others.

I leave tonight to mingle amongst the natives in the forest. I’m sucking it up, hopping a plane and flying to Vermont to spend the weekend in a tent, likely in an intoxicated stupor with dirty, fiddle playing, hippy longhairs. Daveb keeps it real.

I’m not too psyched to be flying, but since my free time is short, it’s the difference between 11 hours and 48 minutes. Mind you, these are 48 slow, excruciating minutes of sheer intestinal bunching terror, but it gets me there fast. It would be nice if I could do this without the massive hangover I’ve been nursing all day, but I’ll have to make do and hope I don’t blow chunks all over a stewardess.

I haven’t slept in a tent in years. I assume that Vermont, being how it is this time of year, will require me to wear disturbing amounts of bug spray in order to remain sane. Going mosquito crazy is not pretty. I once watched a bunk mate at the stupid-ass Catholic sumer camp my parents used to dump me at go shit fucking nuts, screaming, crying and clawing at himself one night. It was mosquitoes. Being thirty, I’d really rather not end up like he did amongst my hippy peers.