Casually walking through an airport

Alexey Strelkov
2 min readMar 18, 2018

Punctuality has never been among my strongest traits. I tend to underestimate the travel time to the meeting or can just forget to get my outfit ready and end up being 10–15 minutes late with messed-up hair and non-matching clothes.

Strangely enough, I’ve always show up at the airport early for the flights.

I usually don’t book a fast lane, I just arrive three-four hours before the flight. I drop off my luggage, go through security checkpoint and border control without having to stand in any lines (most of the time that is — I usually tend to choose morning or nighttime flights). I casually walk through these checkpoints, without any hurry. I stroll to the cafe near the gate zone and sip tea with thyme watching the sun slowly rise above the skyline (if I am lucky enough), reading a book or reviewing pull-requests.

Sometimes I just nap.

Ten minutes prior the boarding the line starts forming near the gate. I casually ignore it. What’s the point in standing in it? It’s not like it’s free seating or anything — you know exactly where you gonna sit, why stand in the line and then slowly move with the crowd? The plane won’t take off earlier anyway.

I usually enter the aircraft when most of the people already cleared the hall and took their seats.

And then I just find my place, put on my flight playlist, fasten the belt and relax, enjoying the view from the window while the plane rapidly ascends.

Well, it seems that I just hate standing lines.

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