Blogging In Plain Site

I love air travel

I never recline my seat as I appreciate how little space other passengers have to exist in without the back of my seat hitting them in the chin.

Today, the flight attendant announced that as we taxi to the gate, please remain seated so our service men returning from Iraq can be more quickly reunited with their families. A warm, loud, long applause erupted. When the plane stopped and the lights came on, every single person in the plane stood up and filled the aisles. Seriously, I am up with people.

I advocate that you cannot fly without a professional flight status - a license if you will. This will keep professional travelers happier, weeding out the old, weak, grotesquely obese and stupid travelers. They can all fly on Southwest Air.

Three Trip Options: San Antonio, Atlanta, San Diego. Hmmm....

I used to groan when I had to fly to the ATL. No reason other than a 4 hour flight,  stressful meetings, a somewhat less than great W Hotel and I never got to leave the Perimeter area.

Then the calls started coming to fly to SA (San Antonio) and I quickly started to groan when going there but this time with better reason. There are redeeming factors to SA: The river walk is pretty cool and I do enjoy jogging on it in the early mornings. Man do you work up a sweat in that muggy heat. An nothing tastes better than ice cold Dos Equis Laggers on a 90 degree night with Texas Q. The downside: connecting flights through Dallas or Houston (see previous post) and a seven hour plus door to door. Not to mention that aside from the almost subterranean river walk, the city is kind of a pit. And the Spurs play there. And one time at 5:00 a.m. (coming home from the bars) I thought I saw the ghost of Jim Bowie in front of the Alamo.

Now I'm going back to the ATL again and it doesn't seem quite as bad in comparison. And, I'm going to try to make it out of the Perimeter Mall circle into the little 5 points with some folks from the office.

However, my eyes are on the prize; we're taking a long week and weekend and flying down to SD (San Diego) for a MUCH MUCH MUCH needed R&R with the fam. It will be our first beach vacation together featuring the obligatory Sea World, time on the beach, pool side, spa's etc and of course lots and lots of drinking on the patio while Liam sleeps it off.

We originally tried to coerce our nanny into coming with us so we could have a part family/part adult vacation but that didn't work out. Actually it will work out better that we set our expectations on a new kind of vacation that will be new for all of us. It may not be the throw down that Jen and I would have wanted in the past, but it will be fun to see joy and excitement on Liam's face. We're already getting him hyped up on the concept of "vacation" and even though he doesn't know what it is, he thinks its going to be a blast and that is the point.

BTW the place we're staying in is tits.

I literally cannot wait.

Not for ATL, certainly not for SA but for SD.

A Salute To Amateur Air Travelers: A Voyage Into the Rip Snorting Fuckwad Backwater Culture of America

Ding! You are Now Free To SCRAMBLE TO FIND AN AISLE SEAT!!!

Fuck.

I am sitting at LAX at 3:15 on my third day of what was supposed to be a 1 day trip.

Luis the alpha dog customer service agent at the Alaska Air Counter, Gate 32 had just informed me that due to a SNAFU from their partner airlines, American, I would not be able to be accommodated with a connecting flight to Seattle until the next day - turning my one day sortie to Texas into four days of unmitigated  hell. Hours of thunderstorm delay and canceled flights in Dallas, barely making it into the Athenian-like metropolis of San Antonio only to be rebuked by a closed Dallas airport on my way back forcing me to stay another night in the River City.

"Give me my ticket." I snapped and headed off to an anonymous bucket seat to sulk, reflect on my life, ponder if the breast of fortune had run dry and say the word 'Fuck' about 15 times. There are times when you can't play it cool and disguise the mood  you're in. This was one of those times. I had to escape the riff-raff surrounding me so I made a b-line for the Alaska Board Room club.

That's where I called my assistant extraordinaire, Heidi, who is one of my favorite people on Earth. Heidi starts working over our corporate travel agent to get me the hell out of dodge. As I was waiting for a call back I saw the wingtipped ugly porpoise of an aged jet festooned in purple and orange from Southwest Airlines hump by on taxi. I look at a SWA jet with the same passive disdain as a cattle car on the way to a slaughterhouse on a fly over state freeway. Those poor bastards, I thought, what if I had to fly out on THAT??!

Then the call came:

"Hey, Ted, we got you on a flight out tonight! It's on Southwest but you gotta connect through Sacramento." I looked again at the gruesome friends fly free spectacle, swallowed hard and thought 'fuck it.' "Great!" I said, "let's light this candle. Tell Governor Schwarzenegger I'll be arriving about 8:45, will you?"

Admittedly, I have never flown SWA before. But I had seen so many TV commercials. It sounds like such a friendly, clean way to fly. Turns out, I could not be more wrong. You don't get a seat you get a branded Cattle chute. You get in line and wait and they turn you lose onto the plane to scrap for the seat you want. I took one look around at other flights and saw the desperate queues stretching down the terminal and thought: "Screw this nonsense" and got in line in chute A.

I was third in line in the first chute to board. "Hello exit row," I though. How could i possibly get a bad seat. As the passengers from the arriving jet filed by I was struck by how frumpy this particular brand of clientèle were. No pride in appearance, looking exhausted, ill fitting clothing, mostly overweight. This is where I recalled the line from Seinfeld that only "5% of the world is datable." If so, SWA must market exclusively to the remaining 95%.

The plane was deboarded and quickly cleaned. Then the male highlight tipped (but not gay) flight attendant, wearing shorts, btw, literally opens the door of my cattle chute and the throng of 75 frumpy, cost conscious air travelers pressed in behind me in a crush of B.O. and squeaky luggage. I get on board to find it already half full! The damn flight started in Hartford CT, then went to Nashville then to Houston, etc. etc picking up frumpy fuckwads along the way and these were the vestiges of their original numbers - all occupying, as  you can imagine, the choice seats.

On they came. A hoard of wide-hipped, wide-eyed bedraggled extras from a David Lee Roth Video. Suddenly, i was caught up in an 80's flashback as I couldn't help but think about the Yankee Rose Video in which Diamond Dave, dressed like a witch doctor - "Give me a bottle of anything and a glazed donut...to go!"

On they came. Rank after rank of frumpy, humpy, waddly amateur travelers. Summer family travel was i full swing. "HURRY UP AND GRAB THOSE MIDDLE SEATS, Y'ALL!" said the 60 year old flight attendant over the klaxon to a scurry of activity. Why are there so many fat Americans??? What a horrible way to fly.

BTW, the fat ass business man directly behind me in Chute A chose to sit RIGHT NEXT TO ME in a middle seat, no less. He bled into my seat the entire flight.

 

But, at least, I got home.