We made the18 hour trip  from New York to Paris with no problems whatsoever.  This is a statement of fact but a lie nonetheless.  Yeah, all of connections worked out as planned and we never got lost but following is a more honest accounting.  Left Albany mid day in the most humid conditions of the summer so far.  The kind of heat and humidity that causes you glasses to fog over the second you leave the overly air- conditioned grocery store.  Despite having just showered I was a sweaty mess 

before leaving my driveway.  A friend dropped us and our two 2,000 pound suitcases and carry-ons at the bus station.  So many people going to NY and no reserved seats!  In the mayhem of loading the bus the kind door attendant picked us out as different from the other low income travelers and, with empathy, convinced us we should wait for the next bus where we assuredly would get a seat together.  30 minutes later we were zipping towards NYC realizing that, given rush hour traffic, maybe we did not allot ourselves the gigantic margin of error we thought we would have for arriving early to an international flight.  At least the bus was comfortable and the sweat had dried.  Only then did I begin to research how to get from The Port Authority to JFK in the peak of rush hour.  My ample experience of being stuck in traffic on long island was lent credibility by my ever helpful Iphone GPS traffic indicator which showed a mass of red lines in and about NYC (if you could know when you were going to die would you want to?).  My incipient travelers paranoia was fed by the egregiously slow trip through the Lincoln tunnel and into mid-town breathing the fumes of 10,000 buses  Before really deciding if we were going to take the bus to JFK or a cab to Penn Station to the LIRR and then to the air train, we stumbled upon the bus stop, purchased tickets and were in a flash crawling across Manhattan.  We navigated check-in, security and boarding without incident except for the seriously over priced dinner in the airport (seriously 20 bucks for a glass of wine?).  The trip to Paris was also uneventful and Beth had bribed the airline to assign us bulk-head seats which allowed us poor coach passengers more knee room than we deserved.  When I say the flight was uneventful I mean uneventful the way I imagine purgatory to be.  Endlessly uneventful and uncomfortable enough so that there is only an illusion of sleep.  Eight hours of waking up stiff and drooling to see that 7 minutes has passed.  I spent my time well and completely figured out our passage from Orly airport to our apartment in Paris.  Deplaning in Orly we once again met no resistance and were whisked through customs and burped out into the airport where we expertly followed the signs to the tram which would take us to the train which would take us to the subway where after two transfers would take us to within 10 blocks of our new home.  Despite all my preparedness, when confronted with the french guy behind the ticket counter I stumbled.  My cool cat cover was broken for sure when he told me, with total kindness and sincerity, calm down, take your time, you sir are on vacation and I will help vous.  Apparently the French give no credence at all to the Americans with Disability Act because for the next hour we carried our 2,000 pound suit cases up and down at least half a dozen long stairways.  We? Well actually I carried both.  Heroic as Beth really is, carrying her luggage up stairs could seriously injure her so I carried both.  The dried, travel infused grime that crusted my body bloomed with a new out poring of sweat.  Our first truly foreign experience was on the subway when a severely crippled and impoverished old gypsy woman burst into a melancholy beggar's song.  I did what all the other cool French people on board did and ignored her but not without paying a karmic price.  We found the address of our apartment but it was not really apparent which door was ours or how we would exactly get in.  We milled about a bit, standing out to the Parisians I am sure,  when a man appeared introduced us as our host and escorted us up four flights of stairs (yes 4) with our 2,000 pound suitcases.  The apartment was fine, just a shade below our expectations, we showered and realized that if we could stay awake for 5 more hours we could go to bed a 8PM French time and have a chance of getting back on a normal schedule.  We had a nice late lunch, walked around a bit, bought a bottle of wine and some groceries and went home.  By this time sleep deprivation and a day of travel had fried my brain making me exhausted and yet agitated.  What the hell were we doing!  We've been gone one day and I am ready to go home!  Why did I think traveling was going to be fun?  With these cozy thoughts I lay down in bed and realized that that hip bar down on street level really did not get going until after 11PM.  Falling in and out of sleep to the surrealistic sounds of intense drunken French revelry punctuated by the frequent screams of motorcycles revving off, a strange and yet comforting peace washed over me.  I was here now.  I could no longer assign the bipolar swings of my mood to externalities.  I am stripped away of excuses and pretense, naked to myself.  I am back in school and I am excited again.