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Roadburn 2015 Trip Pt. 1: Walkin’ on the Sidewalks

Posted in Features on April 7th, 2015 by JJ Koczan

at the gate

04.07.15 — 6:29PM Eastern — Tuesday evening — Logan Airport Terminal E, Boston

I have never enjoyed air travel. Nor, I think, would any sane person who gave even the remotest conscious thought to the processes involved. If ever you doubt the void that exists where a just and loving god should be, use a commercial airline. That said, both traffic en route to the airport and traffic within it were minimal given the rush hour. The Patient Mrs. dropped me off freshly returned from a day of work and she stopped short of saying “have fun with the weirdos and get your head on straight,” but the point lingered in the air anyway. She knows I need this more than I do. Poor thing has to live with me.

Terminal E is the ass-end of Boston Logan International Airport. The “International” part. Lufthansa, SwissAir, IcelandAir, Aer Lingus (which is the dirtiest sounding airline and also the one I happen to be on — flight 138 which I remembered because of the Misfits), and a handful of others operate out of here. A year ago I sat on the other side of this giant rectangle of a room and waited to board a flight. I was absurdly early then too. They tell you an hour and a half, two hours. I got here at six and my flight is at nine. I’d rather sit, listen to music, watch people going here and there, boarding silly out-of-date airplanes with fresh paintjobs and tighter seats. Imagine an industry where the central technology around which it’s based remains basically unchanged for the last half-century. What’s that you say? Auto, banking, oil, airlines? Amazing coincidence that these people make a ton of money and run our lives. There’s no need for conspiracy, the shit’s right out there in the open. flight screenThe chemtrails people are looking in the wrong direction. They should be throwing molotov cocktails for cross-ocean high-speed railways and MTA teleporter transit systems, or at very least more legroom.

At the airport, even the CNN is geared toward selling you shit. Not that it’s not anyway, but there’s something to be said for a level of subtlety. Here’s a Christiane Amanpour news story about the perfect app for traveling, and it’s on at the airport! That’s incredible. Keep it light. Nothing about bombs dropping, drones flying, fucking Rand Paul or anything else that might hint at imminent destruction. A helicopter plunks into the marshland outside, a fireball seen for miles. I’d rather look at duty-free candy or the self-help paperbacks at the Hudson News. Could use some of that shit anyway. A fire alarm was going off when I was walking up to get here. It’s stopped now.

I am about to embark on an adventure the familiarity of which only heightens my sense of awe at the thought. My seventh Roadburn. In a couple hours, I’ll get on that Aer Lingus flight and “scoot” over to Dublin, connect there and then on to Amsterdam, from which a car — all of this pre-arranged; I hear I may or may not be sharing transport with a couple of the dudes from Bongripper — will cart my no-doubt sleepless ass to Tilburg in time, one hopes, to crash for a few hours before the Hard Rock Hideout. That will be Wednesday night, a day from now, but somehow it will still bleed into today. I’m so fucking lucky. I’m so fucking lucky. To be here, to be going there. The next few days, priority will be given to updates from the Roadburn fest, reviews, photos and the like, and other whatnot that happens along the way. I may have some other updates, but this is time out of time for me, and I intend to make the most of it. Less sleep, more rock.

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