Please Proceed to Concourse One

Pressurised aluminium tubes convey passengers from place to place. Engines roar in the sky. Smiling, well presented men and women offer refreshments to seated passengers. Newspapers crinkle. The collective value of the shreds of fabric wrapped around each and every one of their bodies is perfumed with a mixture of fragrance, pheromones, and body odor. It's a human crowd, helpless in the sky.

She's trying to stop me from leaving.

In my mind, I have many phrases that often repeat themselves. One such phrase is "love to travel, hate to commute". When travel becomes a regular commute, and the airport terminal is just as familiar as your neighbourhood's side streets, that's where it becomes a chore.

I'm travelling more often for work than what I have before; and while face to face meetings with colleagues, lunches, breakfasts, taxi rides and the street signs of a foreign city can be effective; I often find these ventures to be disruptive.

Especially when it comes to productivity. I work remotely, with the majority of my colleagues based in another state; and have recently been playing what seems to be an increasingly indispensable role within the framework of the broader team and business.

That doesn't stop me from selecting the seat right at the very back of the plane, or parking within reasonable, yet just on the border of uncomfortable walking distance from the airport's terminal.

It doesn't exempt me, either from rigorous security screening, even though I tend to see the same officer at the metal detector each time I'm queued among excited and anxious travelers alike.

I can't seem to remember the last time I was genuinely excited to set foot within a mechanical bird to be conveyed to another place. There's always a sense of relief, however; when you haven't tumbled out of the sky to find you've become involved in a haggard, twisted wreck of metal strewn about a radius approximately the size of an International rescue effort.

The one grace of air-travel is that it does give me time to read. I've been saving a special title for this next occasion, too. I've got the Rama Omnibus by Arthur C Clarke ready to go, and I am keen to consume its pages with a complete lack of decorum. It is only a short, ninety minute flight, but I'll have plenty of downtime at either end of those pressurised metal doors; which will continue to safely ensconce those that have gathered.