Airport Bars

I just got back from a two-day trip to Tucson to visit University of Arizona law school. I will post more on my experiences their later. For this post I want to focus on airport bars. Airport bars are a great place to meet random, interesting people. I figure this is because people at airport bars are travelers and people who travel are, almost uniformly, interesting. Here is a quick rundown of everybody I met in airport bars on the trip and their stories. Also, the airport where I met them is in parenthesis:


Kyle (Portland): A construction manager who travels all over the west coast for his job.

Nathan (Phoenix): A grad student in physics at the University of Arizona who grew up on an organic dairy farm in Wisconsin. He and his girlfriend both graduate in the spring. She is headed to San Diego and he is going to Europe. He worries that their relationship won't survive the separation.

Mel (Tucson): The lead custodian for a weapons company in Tucson. Her mother recently died and she is on the way to Minnesota to bury her.

Meaghan Smith (Tucson): Washington D.C. press secretary for Congressman John Hall.

John Hall (Tucson): The aforementioned congressman from New York's 19th congressional district. He had been in Tucson surveying the border and was getting ready to head back to New York. He was a pop musician before becoming a congressman. He co-founded the band Orleans. He told me the story of how he met his wife. He supports Hillary Clinton in the democratic primary. Learn more about John here.

Larry and Shawntel (Las Vegas): Two Canadians from Ottawa wrapping up a vacation to Sin City. Shawntel is an accountant for a government office there and Larry is a battery salesman. Larry said "eh" multiple times throughout the conversation while Shawntel explained to me her earnest desire to be an American citizen. She wants to live in the "City of Angels." As I had become quite drunk by this point, I couldn't keep myself from cracking up over their accents and Shawntel's flawed vision of what life is like in America.

Brittany (Las Vegas): A beautiful fashion design major from a school in Orlando, she used to work on a cruise ship and spent two months living on a couch in Hawaii. She shot tequila and drank "White Russians" with me and we lost track of time. We made a mad dash to our gate and just barely made it onto the plane before they closed the doors. We were sitting on opposite ends of the airplane but she convinced the guy sitting next to her to trade his aisle seat for my middle seat several rows back because she "reeeeeeeeealy [wanted] to sit with her boyfriend." We told each other alcohol-fueled stories for the duration of the plane ride. She was awesome.