EU2 How about that flight in?

Y’all know how most people enjoy doing things that they are good at?

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Yeah not me.

Here is my most recent colorful example.

I call it "trial and error traveling with Brooke".

I’m open to TV specials.

Let’s get this thing going.

The day is May 3rd. My past couple of days included final exams, packing my Clinton house and the backpack that I was going to live out of for the next month, and graduation. I quite literally walked across the graduation stage, got in good ole TYF baby, and drove back down south towards the Houston airport. I slept a plentiful 9 hours throughout those three days and likely drank something around 200m^2 of a rainforest’s worth of coffee beans. That’s were coffee beans are grown right? A rainforest? Sidebar- did any of y’all do that project in grade school where you had to decorate your assigned biome in a shoebox? …I’m pretty sure I even had rainforest as my assigned biome. EVENTHOUGH I thought the tundra was always the coolest. <<<I have no reason for that preference so don’t ask.>>>

Honestly though, judge me about biome knowledge. I don’t claim to have any outside knowledge from biology, we all know this. As someone once (many times) told me, “common sense is a flower that is not grown in everyone’s garden”.

So, yeah, I only recommend doing the extreme lack of sleep in three days if the fourth day is going to be spent perusing around Venice, Italy. <<Totes ma-goats worth it.>>

Here is a picture of me on the plane, wherein I was harshly contemplating how to find IV sedatives to get my robot body to finally chill out and sleep on this dang plane. Spoiler alert. It didn’t work and I arrive In Venice around 10am still having not slept and with a full day of adventure ahead of me. Anyone surprised?

Before I could arrive in Venice, though, young Brooke had a couple of hoops (security bars) to jump through (over). Naïve flight purchasing Brooke thought a 36 minutes layover in a major Germany airport hub would be sufficient. I can only laugh at myself now bc it is In the past but like..what was I thinking-- honestly. That 36 minutes time quickly turned into 20 minutes after I de-boarded and ya girl had to go through customs, cuz ya know, I landed in a separate country and all that. Ticket said my assigned gate, Gate K, was in another building so I had to take a shuttle. Got to the gate and was greeted by a very long que of people. I asked the airport man if I was in the right place and he looked at my ticket, then looked at me, and basically made the face you make when you watch a drunk person who is about to try a backflip. Ya know that, “you can tryyyyyy but it really isn’t looking good for your future.” I believe his exact words were, “yes. you are. Um. Yes. well, I mean. **shoulder shrugs. there’s nothing I can do. sorry.” And get this, y’all shoudlve seen how he said this to me. It was as if he was inconvenienced and really disappointed in me for being there. Like, I’m sorry, are you the one about to miss your cross country flight sir?

Oh, lol, forgot to mention this was my connection. I had a connecting flight from Germany to Italy. Homegirl can’t afford direct flights ya’erd.

Okay, that probably helps a lot. Back to this.

So once I got in line. Sweating from running to the queu and then sweating from anxiety trying to will the line to go by more quickly that it had intended while nervously checking my watch every 4.57 seconds. I arrived at the little man in the glass cage looking super chill, I’m sure.

Guy checked my passport, gave me a quick stamp, looked me dead in the eye and said, “run.”

He was so serious that it kinda scared me but I was also like. Dude, I trained my whole life for this #barbeccforlyfe

Sprinted with a backpack, so you know it was graceful, all the way to Gate K. Arrived at Gate K to a lady who informed me that my gate had changed to Gate G. Do I even need to say where this other gate was? Yeah, in the first building. I got lucky though bc the flight was delayed 20 minutes. As she said, “there is still a chance if you are a fast runner”. Challenge accepted. Italy, I’m not failing you now. Literally tightened my backpack waist strap in slow motion like I was about to sumo wrestle an opponent and then ran like that kid in the elementary school hallway memes all the way back to the first building. I legitimately used the made up thought that people could have thought I was part of the Amazing Race to keep me motivated in order to keep the necessary speed. I arrived at the correct gate, no lie, dripping in sweat. It wasn’t cute, promise. The girl looked at me filled with concern and what I hope was a bit of proud-momma airplane worker. The metal bars were already down but she said I could just hop over them. Because of this, I wish bountiful blessings upon her future and loved ones.

My seat was next to some poor man reading a book about the Pope. Thank God, bc he needs prayer to have to sit next my disheveled self for the next 1.5 hours. Bless his heart.

Just to give you some visual aids. My tank top and sweatpants were at least 5 shades darker than the usual color I’m used to seeing them in. I had quite literally sweated through my clothes. Smelt like an ABSOTUTE DREAM, I’m sure. I clocked my health app and I had covered 1.6 miles with this backpack. That includes two shuttle trips and a lot of f***ing stairs and wrong turns. I remember thinking that if this was how all my connecting flights went, then maybe I wasn’t going to gain to the previously thought thirty pounds during my stay.

Y’all already know the worst part was getting up to deboard, after those 1.5 hours were up, and having a pool of sweat left in my chair. The whole trying to sneakily exit the plane feeling really sorry for everyone involved sh*t-uation.

Flying is supposed to be a leisure activity.

True Life: I’ll never not check a Gate board again