Four Tickets to Paradise; or, Home Again, Home Again

Ah, human progress.

It appears that the world has sped on by us in the nine short months that we have been living here in Cuba.

And after spending a rather overwhelming 10 days in the U.S., I'm kinda okay with that. I'm happy to be back where the world seemingly spins a little slower.

Just getting out of here is overwhelming in itself. As one of my co-workers likes to say, GTMO=GeT Me Outta here.

And good luck if you want to leave.

Once a year, we each get a round ticket back to our home of record (Texas), which includes transfers from Jacksonville to Austin and an overnight stay, as a perk that comes with a "hardship tour." I know what some of you are thinking: beaches, daily temps in the 80s, island life, how is that a hardship tour?

It is a hardship tour because we are über-isolated and it's a total pain to get outta here.

Unlike most other world-wide bases, we can't just jump in our cars (or on a train or bus), go to the closest international airport, and take a plane home any day we are on vacation. Travel from GTMO requires a lot of planning (and a little luck). We have a limited number of flights a month, and tickets are expensive. Because we, unfortunately, don't qualify for our free trip Back to the Future until October, we decided on the poor-man's alternative: Space A travel.

I should mention at this point that in the four years of our early marriage that my husband was active duty military, we were never patient/brave/crazy enough to even attempt to Space A anywhere.

It's very cheap---$20-30 each way---and when it works, it's a beautiful thing.

You are given a category according to reason of travel (medical or family emergency trumps vacation travel, naturally), your branch (DoD, civilian, military, etc), and in my case, you have to be on leave to qualify.

So I signed up the minute I went on leave (3:05 pm on the last day of school), got my command sponsorship and leave paperwork in hand, and we took the early ferry to the airport on the Leeward side schlepping mucho luggage in hopes that we would win the lottery.

While dreams of Mexican food, Target, Vietnamese Pho, and the Fox Soccer Channel danced in our heads, we waited. . . and waited. . . and waited for our names to be called.

It was nerve wracking.

There were 42 available seats when we arrived. We watched several people approach the desk to get tickets, mentally subtracted those seats from 42, and waiting turned to worrying. When they called my last name, I screamed out, "I've won the lottery!" Friends cheered. All was well. We sweated bullets, but the gamble paid off.

We were four of the last eight people to get on the plane. We were on our way.

We got to Jacksonville NAS and waited at least an hour for our luggage and the bus to take us to Jacksonville International Airport. We waited at least an hour for our rental car. We finally got to a hotel---only a couple of hours from Jacksonville---almost 11 hours after we left our house.

No worries, as the Jamaicans like to say. We were in the U S of A! And not Cuba-US, but real US!!!

Nevermind the shock of driving faster than 25 mph, or all the 18 wheelers and other big vehicles we haven't had to contend with in so many months----just getting back to the real world was a total trip.

So what happens when you walk into your typical convenience store for the first time in nine months once you've spent time on a small, isolated base such as GTMO?  We walked about, mouths agape, saying things like,

"OH MY GOD there are so many flavors of Snapple!"

"They have new gum! New gum flavors!"

"Magazines from the last month!!" 

It doesn't matter that I don't drink Snapple and my goal for vacation was to avoid junk food and fast food at all costs. We picked up and handled multiple items. We oohed and aahed over displays of Nestle Crunch Girlscout Cookie candy bars, racks of Mexican cokes, and bizarre dill pickle flavored chips. This went on for several minutes and the lady behind the counter thought a) we had lost our minds; b) we were foreigners from a tiny country and had really, really good American English accents; c) we had just been released from a long, extended vacation in the state pen; or d) we were drunk or on drugs. She raised an eyebrow at us with skepticism. In the end, we didn't buy a single thing---it was too overwhelming.

Then we did the unthinkable (for many reasons)---we spent an hour in Walmart. Again, mouths open, screaming at each other across the store: "Smell these fresh peaches!" "There is a craft section! Arts and crafts, arts and crafts!" "Look how many types of _____ there are!"

I was overwhelmed with hundreds of choices of toiletries or cookies or drinks. I couldn't get over the sheer number of cars on the interstate and how fast people drive. I was amazed at how green and lush everything is in the South. I was overwhelmed.

Seriously overwhelmed.

And that was just the first 24 hours back in the country.