All packed up last night. Since I'd be leaving work early, I woke up at 4:30, and was at the office at 6:15. Surprise! No Internet. I spent all morning categorizing my MP3 files and diddling my Apache configuration, hoping that whatever was broken would be fixed so I could do some work before I left. No luck. I left the office at 10AM, thinking that I could have slept plenty more than three hours.

The airport is on the Blue Line. My office is on the Red Line. These are the only two subway lines in Boston that do not intersect. I did the MBTA fandango, South Station to State to Airport to the shuttle to the terminal. I was a little early for my flight and, my interest piqued, tried the “public-access” (anyone can use it, if they pay) Internet terminal. It worked better than the office network, but the only way I could get a terminal window was by instructing the Web browser to launch the built-in Windows telnet client, and not ever switching applications. Poor.

On the plane, I drifted in and out of sleep. The fidgety Asian guy to my right (no stereotypes here — the guy sitting on my right was both fidgety and Asian) had me a bit worried. This proved warranted. In one of my waking moments, during which the stewardess provided drinks to passengers, I enjoyed my traditional airplane tomato juice, and the fidgety guy got a Sprite. He didn't get to drink very much of it, though, because within a few minutes he had brusquely knocked his cup onto large swaths of my khaki pants. I hate to say I'd predicted it, because if I had, then why was I still sitting at the ineluctable epicenter? But I had predicted it, and this was no comfort whatsoever when the miscreant then began to press paper towels to my moistened leg and apologize profusely. Had he not been quite so contrite, I would have gladly informed him of my preference that he move as few of his dangerously ratchety bodily molecules as possible. Instead, I iterated and reiterated my assurances that I was fine, thank you, and please at least liberate my leg.

When I exited the plane at Milwaukee, Kelzie was not yet there. Not eager to immediately sit some more, I walked away from the gate just until the path became ambiguous, and waited there briefly before watching her arrive and turn the wrong way (it would have been the wrong way had I stayed at the gate, too). By the time I decided the airport floor plan couldn't be very complex and that I should try to catch up to her, she was out of sight. So I took a lap through the baggage claim area and went back to where I'd been waiting, and she miraculously showed up there after a few more minutes.

We stopped at a Piggly Wiggly on the way for some nourishment (including the “Official Wisconsin State Product That Everyone Can Make Fun Of People From Wisconsin For, Despite Its Widespread Popularity”, cheese). But not for long, because as we traveled north, familiar sights became increasingly urgent reminders that the town holding Kelzie's family's cabin was also the town holding the summer camp where I spent five glorious youthful summers. Upon entering Waupaca, my judgment became cloudy, and I enthusiastically suggested that we go directly to Camp Young Judaea, just because we could. Kelzie was gracious enough to go along with this, and as we turned onto Stratton Lake Road, my head started swiveling like a tank, taking everything in. Then the car stopped at the cusp of the camp's gravel driveway; I got out; I smiled at the number on the mailbox; I thought of the letters my parents had sent every few days, of what they might have said, of how I might have felt, of all the places I'd sat or stood or walked while reading them, and of all the things I did in the interstices. I donned my CYJ staff t-shirt that Dan Vogel had given me and, on the path from the road that had been forbidden to campers and guarded every night by counselors, we simply walked in.

We stopped short, however, because we could see that everyone was at the evening flagpole ceremony, dressed up for Shabbat, and I was concerned that someone would see us and disrupt the ceremony. We stood aligned behind a row of trees, next to the Ga-Ga court I helped build, across the fence from the tennis court where I barely defeated Jeff Meyrowitz, three years my junior, for the camp tennis championship. Presently, the ceremony was over, and as the group ambled toward the Keshet for the Friday evening service, we made our move toward them. There were few recognizable faces, but my eyes caught those of an astounded Katy Burstein, who then proceeded to astound me by revealing that she, who had once been a rather enlightened counselor of mine, was now the camp's Assistant Director! And Julie Ruskin, an old friend, the Kitchen Manager! Kelzie patiently sat and stood and sat through the service, following the lead of everyone else, and I surprised myself by remembering most of the tunes. At the end of the service, I think because of my staff t-shirt, several campers handed me their prayer books. This made me laugh. I didn't know where to put the books either.

As quickly as we came, we left. I had difficulty reacquainting myself — after revisiting so many pleasures of my past — to the pleasure of the present. With so little time, I wanted to lose none. I forced my way out of nostalgia on the grounds that I'd have plenty of time for it later.

Kelzie led me on a short walking tour of the cabin and surrounding area. (A long tour would have been impossible.) I introduced myself to her grandfather, who stays at the cabin in the summers, and then she and I went to the grocery store to obtain omelet ingredients for the morning, and to the nearby Scoopers for ice cream, where the girl behind the counter asked me if I was a counselor at Camp Young Judaea, again because of my t-shirt. Aha! So this was where all my counselors used to go at night to get ice cream! Finally, though I was too tired to keep up with it, we watched American Pie, and I managed to stay awake for the whole thing and even laugh a bit. But as soon as the light of the TV extinguished, so did the light in my brain. Three hours of sleep plus the bits and pieces on the plane didn't cut it for me. Crash.