As I sat in the airport awaiting my flight back home I began to become nervous. Why, you may ask? Well to answer that i'm going to need to give you a little bit of background. Let's start with my name. I'm Hiccup H. Haddock III, and I currently live in Denver, Colorado. I wasn't born here however, I was born in a small suburb of Philadelphia called Berk, located in the Pine barrens of Southern New Jersey. I grew up in there, met my friends there, found my first love there, had my family there both immediate and extended. Everything I had ever known was right there. Alas, I knew from a very young age it wasn't for me. There was this pull inside me, something i still just can't explain. An overwhelming urge to go somewhere new, a place which could satisfy this urge to get away. I tried to shake it, I tried to reason with myself, but I just couldn't. For whatever reason, every time I tried, the pull got stronger. So I gave in, I left behind everything I had ever known after I graduated highschool, and bought a one way ticket to Denver, hoping to start a new life somewhere totally new.
2 years have since passed and I'm halfway through a bachelor's degree in metallurgical engineering from the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. I haven't talked to anyone Berk since I left, apart, of course, from my parents, whom I only talked to briefly on holidays or birthdays. It's june now, and I'm on break until august, so I made perhaps the craziest decision of my life, I bought a one way ticket to Philadelphia, told no one I was coming, and took off for the airport.
So here I am, sitting at gate C38 in Denver International Airport, no clue how I'm going to get to Berk, let alone where to stay once I do.
"All passengers for flight 1187 with non stop service to Philadelphia, we are going to begin boarding, we will start with…" A voice said over the loudspeaker.
I tuned out after that, looking at my boarding pass. Boarding group C, Seat 17A it read.
"Great," I said to myself, "A window seat. Looks like no bathrooms for me"
I stood up, grabbed my backpack and headed to the gate, not totally mentally prepared for what the very near future held.