Before it begins

At Zurich Airport, I am waiting with hundreds of other travelers for the flight operations to resume after a severe thunderstorm that has delayed the departure of forty planes for an hour. Although I have been planning this long-awaited bike trip through the Andes for over a year, in the past few days I couldn't shake the feeling of traveling head over heels and completely unprepared. It's not until I checked in a 20.6 kg heavy cardboard box with my bike and a 19.8 kg heavy jute sack with the rest of my luggage and passed through passport control, that this liberating lethargy fills me, allowing me to accept with surprising calmness that I will miss the connecting flight to Lima in Paris, thus beginning the complicated story of someone who has fallen out of the planned system. I have done my part for the success of this journey, now it's about dealing with what is. Today, I have an enormous supply of time. I surrender to the noise of the airport.