First-class traveler.

Feb. 6, Harlingen, Texas.

I'd forgotten about that - the fun of the drive late at night, driving the truck, pulling the trailer, "with all my belongings," as Fridman would say, on the mostly empty highway. I'd briefly worried about the new logistics, with now-toddler Dylan in tow, but he was what is commonly referred to as a trooper this side of the Atlantic; he fell asleep in my arms around ten as we were waiting for Fridman to come back from taking the props down, woke up when I took him out to the truck around midnight, fell asleep again on the short trip to Harlingen from Brownsville, some twenty miles, woke up again as I put him to sleep in the trailer upon arriving, close to one o'clock in the morning, and then woke up briefly once more by Fridman unhitching the trailer later on in the night. At eight this morning he was up as if nothing was out of the ordinary, his old smiling self.
But then again this is a kid who never even seemed to register an eight-hour jet lag, who took the complete and rather abrupt change of scenery he went through when I took him from his wandering Circus Chimera life in a travel trailer directly to France and an apartment for the first time in his -admittedly - short life, without showing any sign of it. We went from Colorado to Paris, then a few hours after landing took a train down to the Alps, where my mother lives, and in less than a week were in the south of France, on the Riviera, where I grew up and had accepted a job as a visiting lecturer in photojournalism for the fall semester. Travels (in planes, trains and cars, only a boat was missing, or a hot-air balloon) and upheavals, total change of scenery, food, climate and language, all new faces and habits: I can't think of many people, much less small babies, who could go through the same with such brio.
Not to mention we packed up and went through the same odyssey in reverse less than four months later.
I had dreaded the flights with Dylan like the plague, and at some point considered turning down the job on account of the prospect of going through a two-part, more than 16-hour-long plane trip alone with a 10-month-old. He slept most of the way, and was a darling the rest, the trip went so smoothly it was hard to believe. On the way back it was less restful; Dylan was walking by then and a one year old, so I had to entertain him for most of the way.
Still, he's my first-class traveler.