Nothing LAX About Airport Trip

We’re leaving on a jet plane out of LAX soon, and my husband is already clenching and unclenching certain minor muscles in his jaw, steeling himself for the frantic drive into the maw of the airport parking lot.

Yesterday at the dinette table, he set his chin, then turned to me with what could only be described as flinty eyes.

At that very moment, certain minor muscles in my stomach began to clench in sync with his minor jaw muscles. I hadn’t been the beneficiary of that flinty-eyed look since he discovered a truly trivial, mysterious dent in the door of our almost-brand-new Jeep Cherokee.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” he pronounced yesterday at the dinette set, his eyes on, well, me.

I assumed my standard deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” he repeated. “Once we get moving on the freeway, I’m not making any stops. We’re not getting off for anything, not bathroom stops, not anything.”

I waited for what would come next. But apparently, that was the complete text of the speech.

I looked around the room. There was pretty much no way to avoid the impression that he was speaking to me, the one with the tiny bladder. The dog was there, but she was asleep.

Now, all I can think about is that big, 12-ounce friendly go-cup of fine Colombian coffee, which, this time, I will not be taking along when we head out.

Does any other cup of coffee taste as good as that convivial cup shared with other commuters, just as the sun is coming up?

*

Not this time, though. Maybe I said, one too many times on the Ventura Freeway, “Honey, I’m not desperate or anything, but I’ll probably need a restroom stop in the next, oh, eight minutes.”

That’s when honey rolls his eyes, of course, for we’ve just streaked past the exit that promised gas, food, lodging, free air, double happiness and clean restrooms.

Actually, I think it’s those signs that trigger little synapses in my brain that tell me, approximately 50 yards beyond the sign, that I need to make a restroom stop.

There was a time, in another decade--millennium?--when neither of us “steeled” ourselves for a trip to Los Angeles, even to LAX. We used to drive to Westwood from Ojai on a Friday night for, get this, fun. For fun.

Such fancy-free outings are in the past now. What with all the logistics, the jaw-clenching and the near-misses with other frenzied drivers--those trips have begun to provide a few too many “senior moments.”

Even before my husband’s “no stopping on the freeway” dictum, we had spent the previous week thrashing around the various ways to get into, then out of, LAX.

Should we take one of those airport vans or buses that make round trips to LAX from points around the county? And on the way home, bedraggled from traveling, stand around on a traffic island in front of the airport, sucking in exhaust fumes from 500 airport buses per minute, waiting for ours?

Or do we drive ourselves and pay for long-term parking in a Ted Turner Montana ranch-size parking lot labeled A, B, C, D, E through QQ, Zip Code 93023, 4 and 5?

I always forget to write down our parking slot and lot. Or I look at it, memorize “B-17/999-13/cba” and actually think I’ll remember it eight days later. Once, I wrote a note to myself on the back of a Vons receipt: “Parking lot QXZ-637/B, space 5,762--don’t forget!” I then locked the receipt safely inside the glove compartment.

*

Or, Plan C, do we try to con a loved one into taking us to LAX?

Remember the olden days, when loved ones would do that for you?

Actually, it may be the quality of our loved ones, but we don’t have any who are willing to give us a late 20th century ride to LAX and back during rush hour.

Oh, sure, our loved ones might sit in an emergency room all night long for us; they might donate an organ if they had a spare. They might even co-sign an iffy mortgage.

But LAX?

Uh-uh.

Now that I think of it, we still might have a 1978 Toyota Corolla parked in one of those long-term LAX lots that we left there in 1991, then never could find again.

I’m almost positive that its exact location is in the glove compartment.