I’m going to let you in on a little travel secret of mine: I love people watching in the airport. I’ve talked to friends who say they like people watching in general, and usually I agree with them that it’s one of my favorite sports. I only discovered this in the last half a decade or so, and don’t do it all that often, but I’ve picked up on at least this much – where you are makes all the difference, and my hands down favorite location is in an airport generally, and the arrivals gate specifically.
First off, there’s just such a vast cross section of humanity at an airport, and many of them you can get a feel for by their luggage. There are people with backpacks; people with wheely nothing-but-business little carry on sized suitcases; people with shoulder slung duffel bags; people with pink dog print cart-like deal and a matching sweater (she just walked past me); people wearing far too little for the current climate and carrying even less – you cringe at the surprise they’re in for when they exit the airport; people pushing strollers next to people pushing wheelchairs; people carrying nothing; people carrying too much. You start categorizing them, noticing the details that place them in certain jobs or social positions – pilots talking amongst themselves of their next stretch. Vacationers with their out of season tans. Businessmen in suits. Retired hippies still wandering, bald on top but long and grey on the back and sides. Soldiers in uniform. Counter culture revolutionaries with home made clothing and dreads to their waist. Soccer moms shepherding a flock of teenagers. Shell shocked fathers with mickey mouse eared children in tow. Grandpas and Grandmas holding hands as they stroll past. It’s an endless list of every type of people you can think of.
And here’s the part that I love the most – the moment when a greeter spots a passenger coming through the gate. One of the most genuine smiles a person can wear is worn at the moment of seeing a loved one at the arrivals gate, and it’s a contagious one because it’s a feeling we can all relate to. It always reminds me of a very important fact about humanity that we sometimes forget.
A few weeks ago Canada won the gold medal in men’s hockey at the olympics on home ice in Vancouver. I have enough American readers that I feel the need to explain what that was like, as they may not understand the scope of it. I am not usually a hockey fan. Generally speaking, I’m just not a sports fan, but I’m especially not a hockey fan. I often state that I hope our local team would hurry up and lose so I can hear less about hockey for a few sweet months between when they are out of the running for the Stanley Cup and when the season starts again. I am often ostracized by my fellow countrymen as a result and accused of not being truly Canadian. From what I gather, it’s even worse than being from Texas and loathing football. So understand what level of national pride is involved when I say that, come olympic time, I become a raving hockey fan that will scream myself hoarse in jubilation when team Canada wins so much as a preliminary round, and believe them capable of winning no matter how bad it looks. This is the kind of fandom that Olympic Hockey produces in even as drastic a critic of the sport as I, so try, if you can, to fathom what the rest of 
my country might look like – we love this as much or more than you guys love your football. Some 27 or 28 million people in Canada watched the gold medal game this year. To those of you south of the border, that might not sound like a lot – unless you know we only have 36 million people in our country. 80% of us were watching that game. 4 out of every 5 people. Nearly every one of them, at the very least, as frothing at the mouth nuts as me, and most of them far more so. And coast to coast, we screamed and jumped and hugged when the winning goal slipped past the US goalie. We poured into the streets with waving flags, honking horns, screaming voices, and arms thrust high with a single digit extended to the sky. My friends and I spray painted my car with red maple leafs and the ‘We Believe’ Olympic slogan we were so excited. For hours straight you couldn’t get anywhere, which didn’t matter to most of us because we were the ones clogging the streets with our flag bearing cars anyway. Cops just blocked other streets off so there would be no cross traffic to the procession of celebrating people, and coast to coast it was like this – an entire nation completely united for a few blissful hours. The only thing I’ve ever heard of that compares is my grandparents’ stories of the celebrations when World War II was declared over.
