Outward Flight

July 1, 2010

On June 11, 2010, I began a very extended and voluntary "leave of absence" from my incredibly satisfying job as a lawyer in Los Angeles. I intended to use this unusual amount of free time to, among other things, travel to a number of locations in and around Europe, including those where I have friends, family and acquaintances. At this time, I have not committed to a return flight, and only have an itinerary planned as to mid-August. As you may know, this trip begins in London, England, where in the fall of 2000 I spent 3 months as a study abroad student at University College London, and an additional 4 or so days in September 2005 on my previous extended trip after taking the California bar exam and before beginning my illustrious attorney job. On that extended trip, I kept a similar daily record of my activities on this website, and I found it to be a good way of communicating with those at home or elsewhere interested in what I was up to (and avoided duplicative (fyi, for those who regularly use this word at work, the blogspot spell check does not recognize it) emails), and more importantly gave me something to read while I was daydreaming during my first year or two in the office. The first few weeks of this leave of absence were spent moving out of my apartment and saying goodbye to my friends -- the trip began on July 1.

Even though everybody keeps telling me how excited I must be, I was not so much while Mom and Dad Lowenthal drove me to the airport Thursday afternoon for my 7:50 p.m. flight. If anything, I was (and still somewhat am) nervous about all the things that might possibly go wrong, losing important items, or catching a cold. Security was remarkably painless, the highlight being the exchange with the David Cross-semi-lookalike with vitiligo operating the metal detector at LAX -- after letting a woman ahead of me in line when we walked up to the detector at the same time, he pulled me aside and said "you sir, are proof that chivalry still exists. Sir Walter Raleigh would be proud!" If you know me well, this is funny not only because of the historical reference but because it is ironic.

I spent about an hour at Chili's before the flight where I engaged in the following activities: 1) read Zachary Mason's The Lost Books of the Odyssey, 2) talked on the phone, 3) drank a Presidente Margarita and 4) briefly discussed with my neighbors whether our Czech waitress looked like Joanne Woodward.

I hardly slept on the flight, no more than 4 hours. I took an ambien, which seemed to do nothing, spoke to no one, read a bit, and ate some bad rice and chicken, a stale roll, a cold and dry brownie, a soggy salad, a crumbly cracker and some pretty delicious cheese.

* Kukl - "Outward Flight (Psalm 323)"