Still Rolling Around: Postcards, Terminal F, and the Worst Airline Travelers

Welcome to Still Rolling Around — the new home for all the things that never quite fit anywhere else but refuse to be forgotten.

Like the back cupholder in your car, this series is where the dog treats, busted pens, loose change, and crumpled reminders of real life collect. Not important enough to organize, but way too real to toss.

These stories don’t belong in a travelogue or a shop tale. They’re the random moments, small observations, and everyday chaos that make everything else make sense.

They may not follow a theme, but they hold the glue — the in-between parts of a life lived wide open.

So here they are, finally, where they belong.
Still rolling around.

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Postcards to Baby Pretzel

Back in Rhode Island, I started sending postcards to a baby who hadn’t even decided to arrive yet. I figured, why not? Maybe someday, she’d be old enough to peek into our world before she was born, see the tiny details that made us tick, and laugh.

I imagined her as an adult, holding one of these little cards and thinking: “Wait, you guys drove cars like this? With your hands and feet?” She’d laugh, because time moves forward and suddenly what was normal looks absurd. Like reading an old postcard about riding a horse into town and wondering how anyone survived without Google Maps.

The cards are my little time machine—moments frozen on cheap cardboard, ink fading slowly, snapshots of a life before she arrived. I write about smells, sounds, chaos, little fights, and bigger joys. I tell her about the cats, the dogs, the people, and the strange little rituals we called family.

Maybe the world will be so different when she reads them that the cards will feel magical, like a secret window into a past she never lived—but that still shaped her, through us. Maybe she’ll roll her eyes. Maybe she’ll giggle. Maybe she’ll take away the love and excitement of travel, even if she rides some weird autonomous hoverbuggy to get there. Either way, she’ll see that we were here, and that love—even messy, loud, flawed love—was always rolling around, waiting for her.

And really, that’s all a grandparent—or a grampith—can hope for: to send a little chaos through the mail and trust it lands in the right hands, decades later, and makes someone laugh.

Government Shutdown Layover: Philly Edition

The government shutdown made my flight home… unforgettable. Honestly, it’s impossible to tell if anything gets better or worse when the government is shut down—they’re so gloriously dysfunctional, it’s like watching a slow-motion train wreck while arguing over which tracks are even real.

My layover in Terminal F in Philly isn’t an airport. It’s an outpost. A satellite colony of bad decisions. You take a shuttle, cross a time zone, and suddenly you’re in what looks like a Cold War bus depot that happens to sell $14 shitty cheesesteaks. I’ve been in body shops with better ventilation. The smell? Equal parts grease, despair, and regret.

It was close to 80 degrees in the terminal. I could see beads of sweat forming on a bald man’s head two rows ahead, and I was silently waiting for the perimenopausal woman a few seats over to snap at someone—anyone—purely on principle. The air hung heavy, sticky, and vaguely apologetic, like the government itself.

TSA didn’t show up this morning, so now we’re all living in the real-life version of that Tom Hanks movie where you can’t leave. Everyone slowly realizing they’ve been trapped by bureaucracy and bad lighting, questioning life choices, debating how long until someone dies of boredom.

And the roof? Oh, the roof. It leaks around exposed wiring straight into a big, corrosive drum like some post-apocalyptic art installation. Somehow, that just… ties the gates together. Perfectly. Beautifully. Disaster officially sanctioned by the government, commercial aviation, and maybe cosmic irony itself.

By the time my flight finally boards, I’ll be wiser, angrier, slightly greasy, and $14 poorer—but also somehow ready to forgive humanity… at least until the next layover.

An Open Letter to My Fellow Airline Travelers

Dear fellow humans,

Gate etiquette is a thing. Look it up. Most of us are laughing at you when you stand up at the gate, acting like your life depends on being first to board. Newsflash: you’re in Group 8. You’re not skipping anyone. Sitting down won’t kill you. Standing up won’t get you on faster. Trust me, the gate agent sees everything.

And let’s talk carry-ons. Yes, I know your backpack can technically “fit” in the overhead. Yes, I know you have another bag that you insist also needs to go overhead. But here’s reality: the overhead bins are not magical. Your suitcase goes there. Your backpack goes under your seat. The reason there’s never room? Because some of you are trying to play Tetris with luggage that clearly doesn’t belong in the overhead. And yes, I have to fight the urge to scream or roll my eyes every single time. You’re being super inconsiderate. 

Your suitcase goes up. Your backpack goes down. That’s it. End of story. You are not clever, you are not special, you are inconsiderate. Stop.

Now, on a more personal note: somehow, I ended up in a window seat with no window. No exaggeration. There’s a window slightly ahead of me, a window slightly behind me, but not one at my seat. And there I am, watching one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen—except, thanks, American Airlines, I got sold a “window seat” without a window.

Finally, let’s talk about lights. Once the sun goes down, I get it—window seats are still nice. But if you’re going to turn on your reading light and blast it directly onto your neighbor, maybe read the room first. You’re not alone. The rest of us are trying to sleep, meditate, or quietly curse under our breath.

In short: sit down, pack smart, and check the seat before you buy it. Everyone will thank you.