It became real to me as I watched the power lines swoop from pole to pole. No amount of packing or planning had managed to do so; the days after PHE had flown by in a fever haze that made the date of the trip slip up on me sooner than I could have possibly expected. The week of the trip was spent getting well, not performing my usual pre-trip obsession over what I must remember to pack.Every time I drive east, past the large hills that flank Huntsville's eastern side, I look at their gentle slopes and curves and imagine them to be nothing more than giants who had stopped for a nap and slept so long that, eventually, leaves and grass and trees covered them. I slipped between the hills, a fast-moving silver mechanical streak emitting music, and realized that in just a few days it would be a different set of mountains.

"It's just you and me, little travel penguin," I said to Pandora, who guarded the front passenger seat. She couldn't hear me over the music.

I wasn't entirely ready to make the drive to Atlanta. I know this now. I was mostly through my course of antibiotics, and I figured that with caffeine and sugar and a little bit of thumping funk and soul, I could manage to keep my concentration up for the four hours necessary to get from my house to Brian and Suzan's. I hugged my husband goodbye in the parking lot of an Italian restaurant and aimed my car east, counting on my stubbornness to get me there.

When I reached Brian and Suzan's, they fed me spaghetti. I slept. I left my car at Aaron and Joyce's the next day, then Patrick picked me up and took me back to his place. Dinner with Asai. Sopranos episodes. I was kept so busy that I didn't even have time to think about getting nervous about my Monday afternoon flight.

By Sunday night, time started slipping away from me. Take me out of my regular routine and I quickly lose track of hours and days; by Monday morning I was fully disoriented, asking what time it was every couple of hours.

Eventually, the answer was "time to go."

Monday afternoon found me going through security lines, bag checked and travel penguin clutched in my left hand. I found a spare chair in D terminal and finished an entire book, then picked up my book and my ticket and boarded the plane.

Seat 13F put me over the right wing. Pandora snuggled in the crook of my right arm, my copy of American Gods was tucked between my knees, and I flicked my eyes back and forth between the driving rain outside and the sight of the flight attendant demonstrating seat belts.

"In case of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, an oxygen mask will drop down in front of you. Please stop screaming. It won't help."

I closed my eyes. When they reopened, the flight maps showed us over Kansas. The ground flew past us at over four hundred miles an hour. Pandora was a fast-moving little travel penguin, I realized, as I mentally calculated how many seconds it took for us to fly a mile.

I watched the horizon, waiting for the mountains to appear. In the last two minutes of flight, they did. We banked in from the north, putting the mountains on my right. I squinted in the fading sunlight, and smiled quietly to myself when the painfully orange orb dipped below the Rockies just a few seconds after I landed.

"Welcome to Denver," I said to myself.