Adrift among wings

I was about to board a flight from Milwaukee to Baltimore last week when the words "BREAKING NEWS" flashed across many of the television screens in the terminal. According to reports, two potential car bombs had been discovered in London, and the British government was treating the situation as a foiled terrorist attack.

Of course, I was in the one place where I couldn't say the B-O-M-B word; hand gestures didn't seem all that appropriate either, considering the setting. A few hours later I boarded a boat with no newspaper delivery (obviously) and a 13-inch television that broad casted one news station: CNN--in Spanish.

I was, for the first time, isolated.

Now I wouldn't call myself an average news viewer. I am, after all, a journalism and political science student that watches MSNBC in the morning, reads a handful of newspapers at lunch, and settles in for more political discussion in the evening. To call myself a news junkie is something of an understatement.

A potential terrorist attack in London, followed by a second attempt in Scotland a few days later, and I don't know anything about it--madness! It took me three days to find land, a copy of the New York Times, and a park bench. By then, a sweeping investigation had been launched, and I was 72 hours behind the curve.

How can anybody live like this?

Oh yeah, I heard something about the president commuting "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence, too.

What a bad week to vacation.