Air Journal: Ole Virginie

I returned this week from a trip to Richmond to visit my aunt and uncle. Some highlights:

• Now that American Airlines no longer flies out of Burbank, all my flight options to Richmond involved at least 2 connections, usually in such "how is that on the way" places like Detroit or San Francisco. Or I could fly out of LAX. I grudgingly chose the latter.
• The TSA checkpoint at the AA terminal at LAX was (badly) retrofitted on a design that harkens back to the days when you could just get on any old plane and *then* buy your ticket. Kind of like trying to retrofit smartphone technology on a rotary phone.
• When I left LAX, it was 72F outside. When I landed at Richmond, it was snowing.
  
• I was surprised by how many birds were still hanging out in Virginia even in the winter, like this downy woodpecker:
  
• Saturday we drove out to a yarn store in Powhatan which my aunt swears said was open on the website. We got there at 2:30 or so. They had closed at 2, after being open all of 3 hours. Why bother to get out of bed at that point?
• Sunday we drove out to a Thai restaurant for lunch. It was closed. The camera store where my aunt was trying to pick up prints was also closed. Do you see a recurring theme? Everything in Richmond and its environs is probably closed when you want to go there.
• This is the type of show that makes me avoid watching Animal Planet anymore. My uncle showed me a picture from one of his and his hunter pal's motion-activated prey cams. They thought it looked squatchy because there was a lot of blurry stuff that looked like hair. I made out a hand and what looked like a jacket cuff. Also, I remembered seeing this:
  
• We drove out to my grandmother's farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
  
  And speaking of rotary phones:
  
  However, even though we saw deer tracks and slightly larger tracks from what may have been a bear, no 'squatch tracks.
• It was below freezing when I left Richmond, but warm when I got back to LAX. On the airport shuttle home, I was getting 1 bar on my cell phone at a dropoff a few blocks from USC. I had been getting 3+ bars in the middle of Blue Ridge. Go figure.
• And the kitties were snuggly and happy to see me!

Air Journal: Duct Tape and Glitter Glue

I finally got a replacement for the carry-on size suitcase I'd had for the better part of two decades. I just didn't feel safe putting my stuff in something being held together by duct tape and glitter glue:



The glitter glue has mostly rubbed off, but it used to be much brighter. I will always smile when I think of the first time I flew out to visit my parents after I applied it. My mother was appalled. “Mom, you’ve never tried to find a black suitcase in LAX baggage claim. Deal with it.”

Good times.

Buh-bye, old suitcase!

Air Journal: Bird- and Creeper-Watching

I went to Virginia for several days this past week to visit my aunt and uncle before the oppressive summer heat and humidity kicked in. Trip highlights:

• Because I refuse to pay money to check a bag unless absolutely necessary, I didn't check a bag. No one blinked at the metal knitting needles in my suitcase.
• Because no one wants to pay $25 to check a friggin' bag, the overhead bins fill beyond capacity on most flights these days. While we were boarding, they were again announcing the bit about putting your smaller carry-on item under the seat in front of you, etc., but certain rows didn't have that option, so they would have to put it in the overheads. The guy walking in front of me put both his suitcase and his backpack in the overhead bin. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, like maybe he was seated in one of the mentioned rows, but no, he was just a dick who is Special and Above the Rules. Asshole. Good thing I'm not a flight attendant or I would have taken the thing out of the bin and shoved it under his seat with a very brutal smile.
• I almost didn't recognize my aunt Mary at the airport. Her hair had turned completely white. She was still short, though.
• I was her enabler for visiting yarn shops. On Cary St. in the artsy-fartsy area, we were walking from a yarn shop to a Thai restaurant (she had never had Thai food before), when I saw this chalk drawing on one of the ubiquitous brick walls in Richmond:
  
• We drove out to my grandmother's farm near Charlottesville, where everyone and their Beltway brother is now building their ugly "farm-house style" McMansion where there used to be real, working farmhouses. Outside, I dodged a dragonfly trying to divebomb me. Geez, I hate those things! I forgot how many, well, insects there are there. Here's a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from the farm:
  
• My aunt and uncle keep bird feeders in their backyard. While the hummingbirds have been absent this year, perhaps victims of the severe winter, there were still more birds than I see here in artificially-green desert. While the red-headed woodpecker we saw last time didn't show (its tree died and was taken out), we did see:
  • House finches -- by far the most common
  • Cowbirds
  • At least two pairs of cardinals
  • Grackles, with their striking light-colored eyes and brilliant iridescence
  • English (house) sparrows
  • A male red-bellied woodpecker, which actually has no red on its belly, but does have a striking neon-orange stripe on its head, which makes it look like a punk rocker
  • I think the other woodpecker was the downy woodpecker, but we only saw a female and only once or twice.
  • Starlings
  • Doves
  • The ubiquitous robin, which I miss out here. They also love splashing around in the birdbath.
• I somehow managed to avoid smacking my head getting into my seat until the last connecting flight home. I have a nice lump on my forehead.
• I was sitting next to a young woman who could not be not touching her MacBook, and what appeared to be her grandfather. As we were landing, she turned to the elderly man and told him she didn't think it would be a problem at the car rental place, but she just remembered both of them have expired drivers licenses. "But we're still licensed drivers." Um, no, you're not. Hence the "expired" bit. I was sorely tempted to follow them to the car rental place and laugh, but instead...
• I went to catch the Flyaway bus to Union Station (I flew out of BUR but flew into LAX for price and scheduling reasons). $7. Free (well, included in my monthly pass) bus ride from Union Station home. Ok, it took about 2 hours, but it would have taken a little less if I hadn't been waiting at the wrong corner for the connecting bus. And it has often taken that long with a shuttle, because you wait 20 minutes for them to come around, then you wait another 30 minutes while they keep circling the damn airport, then you're inevitably the last one off and all the people getting dropped off first all live 15 miles from the freeway, so it takes at least 2 hours to get home anyway. So I feel smug now :P
• Kitties were happy to see me! Yay! They quickly got over the smell of my aunt's two dogs. Or they're plotting their revenge for later, when it is a dish best served cold...

Air Journal: Heather'n'Dave'n'Noelle-a-thon

A month ago, I took a very long weekend to visit Heather'n'Dave in the Seattle area. Here's a rundown of the visit:

• I took the bus to the airport. I cut the schedule a little close, and then my first bus was a little late, so I missed the connecting bus. I got there with plenty of time to check in, but apparently my bag didn't. When I got to SeaTac, my bag didn't. Plus, there was additional confusion because there were big snowstorms throughout the Midwest, down into Texas. It was the day American canceled something like 600 flights, and while I wasn't flying American, the delays were affecting all the airlines. So, they didn't know exactly where my bag was or when it would get to the dreary Pacific Northwest.
• I took a bus to Bellevue. Whee! (Some people may be thinking it was about time I ended up in Bellevue, but that's the wrong one.)
• I warned Heather I was really braindead. Because work is perennially crazy these days, and, well, I was braindead.
• I had not quite managed to finish my baby shower gift for H'n'D before getting there, but I managed to finish about an hour after sitting down on their couch:
  
• I officially presented it to them the next day (like they didn't know what was coming), along with a gift for their first-grader, Noelle:
  
  Later I had to impersonate a jellyfish, because apparently that's what sea turtles eat.
• Noelle really liked watching me play Minecraft. She especially liked watching sheep get dyed various colors.
• The second evening, we went to the International District. Heather and Dave and found a promising Chinese restaurant on-line called the Red Lantern. We parked a few blocks away and when we got to the street it was on, Dave said, "There are red lanterns in that restaurant. That must be the place." Then I pointed out that there were also red lanterns in the place two doors down from that one. Turns out that neither one was The Red Lantern, which was on the next block.
• Afterwards, we went to Daiso, which is kind of a Japanese dollar store. I had heard of them before, but there aren't any near LA, so I'd never been. It was awesome. They had yarn, plus cool pill boxes which are great notions carriers, and these adorable little 3"-long pound cake tins.
  
• I now can't walk over a zebra-striped crossing without going, "White line! White line!"
• We reminisced about Pandora, who had delivered herself to H'n'D all those years ago in Glendora so she could then take over my life. I miss that cat.
• They have a big tuxedo cat named Marmaduke. He's about the same temperament as Spoon and about the same weight, but somehow he looks bigger. I think it's because Duke has a big paunch which makes him look like he swallowed a cantelope whole, whereas Spoon's avoir dupois is more evenly distributed along his body.
• It rained a lot.
• Dave showed me their backyard, which is on a hill, so they're having it terraced. Right now, it's mostly a big pile of dirt. Basically, they're playing Minecraft in their backyard.
• I got to hear all about Bellevue infrastructure politics. It sounds dirtier than Dave's backyard.
• Monday morning, I took the bus back to SeaTac.
• At the security checkpoint, the person in front of me and the person behind me were sent through the pornoscanner, but I got waved through the regular X-ray machine. Score!
• When I got to BUR, my bag was once again not at the claim. Ugh. Apparently several people from my flight had the same issue. Lucky for me, my bag had actually beaten me this time and was waiting for me. The others were not so lucky.
• Dipity was insanely happy to see me. Spoon was confused because Dipity was insanely happy to see me and that's usually his job.

All in all, I had an excellent time. It may not have been exciting, but I didn't need excitement. I needed Minecraft spectators and Japanese dollar stores and the like.

And congratulations to Heather and Dave, who welcomed their daughter Lily on Monday.

News: Holiday Funnies

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And how many people will react to their Christmas presents:

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News: 'N'Stuff

Tranportation:

• An infographic of pedestrian deaths in cities around the world. Atlanta of all places is #1 at nearly 11 deaths per 100,000 residents. LA is only #3. (It's not clear if this is an absolute list of all cities or just a random sampling.)
• Amtrak and Greyhound are both actively adding wi-fi to their buses and train cars.
• Interesting take on the inconsistency and poor training of TSA agents (probably not their fault -- regulations seem to change every 5 minutes and who can keep up?) by someone with large amounts of titanium in his body.
• Some people are pushing for child-free flight options, but I'd be satisfied if parents just had to pass a simple common-sense child control test first.
• And an extremely catchy song about the TSA:
  

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I firmly believe that cats possess a genetic knowledge, and this is one of the items. The call of the can opener (not as used now that most cans of cat food and tuna have those pull-tabs) and fear of the vacuum cleaner (something Pandora refused to have) are two others. This one is in the same vein:

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The Stupid:

• In this article about America's obsession with smartphones, this guy Doug seriously has issues, proving once again that modern technology is affecting the course of natural selection, because I don't see how he would have survived this long without the thing. I fear for his offspring if the battery ever dies.
• And today's stupid criminal, courtesy of Ohio... Also unlikely candidate for prolonging her gene pool.

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Not having a hard time imaging Spoon if I actually baked a turkey...

Why Don't They Just...?

As part of a new, intermittently-recurring series, I bring you...

Why Don't They Just....?

Because "common sense" is an oxymoron!

Yet again this week, airline passengers had to restrain a nut job using seatbelts and plastic handcuffs, and even then had difficulty keeping him in check. So, what I want to know is...

Why don't airliners just carry a roll of duct tape as a matter of course?

Other: Highlights of My Week

• Two airport security checkpoints, 0 minutes waiting in line.
• A TSA agent wished me a happy one-day-early birthday.
• A job interview wearing my Doc Martens.
• Another job interview wearing my angry shoes, but I managed neither to get lost nor to have to walk to make up for a missed bus, so they managed not to get past being cranky shoes.
• Finished two long-in-the-works sweaters.
• Slept through half my actual birthday, since it was after a very long day of travel.
• Got on a Glendale Beeline bus so new, the instructions were still taped to the wheelchair belts.
• Got my W-2 and e-filed my returns that evening. I want my money back from the gummint, dammit!
• Made another costume for my Costume Ball.

Other: How That Laptop Can Kill You

Those two Northwest pilots who, um, missed the city of Minneapolis now say they were using their laptops in the cockpit, against airline regulation, to check out the scheduling software of Northwest's new owner, Delta. Considering this isn't the first story they told investigators, I think we need to draw the obvious conclusion.

They were playing World of Warcraft.

Speaking of laptops on airplanes, those lithium-ion batteries used in laptops pose a greater fire risk than most people understand, and the number of fires they cause in airline cabins is starting to rise rapidly.

Ok, seriously, and they're trying to tell us it's not safe to bring our own water on the damned plane????

Air Journal: Dec 22 Take 2

I learned my lesson yesterday: Always Check In On-Line The Night Before. Check!

I also got to the airport earlier than the day before, but I decided to park in the same place I had parked just because maybe doing it twice would impress it on my memory. Lot A, Section 6. Check!

I always end up checking a bag, mostly because I want to be able to carry my knitting without worrying about it. The TSA guidelines say that knitting needles are in theory allowed in carry-on, but, as always, the agent at the checkpoint has final discretion. Let me just say that I squirm thinking of the rather large number of knitter on Ravelry who have freely posted on the forums that they have gotten into arguments with security over their knitting needles. That never ends well. Or others who print out the TSA guidelines and plan to shove them in the agent's face should they try to confiscate their needles. Um, people, it is so trivial to forge a website printout. If I ever saw an agent change their mind over some decision because someone was waving a printout in their face, I would immediately call their supervisor. I am totally not joking. (I could also go on about people asking whether it's ok to bring their needles without even mentioning where they're flying from. Different countries have totally different rules about things like this. Honestly, sometimes the utter lack of common sense among knitters in cases like this embarrasses me.)

Anyway... I usually carry a small crochet project on with me. No one gives a rat's ass about crochet hooks because no one seems to know what they are.

At any rate, I checked my bag and went to the security line. Except, there was no line!!!! I ♥ the Bob Hope Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport!

I have never flown first-class before, and frankly, I wasn't too impressed with the amount of extra space, but, eh. My impression from always having walked through first-class to coach was that the women seated there were generally, um, plastic, and the men often looked like slobs. On the flight to DFW, I was seated next to a piece of plastic who was reading a book by Donald Trump. Ewwww.

When I got to Florida, we were apparently on the second-to-last of the airline's incoming flights for the night. Instead of bringing our bags to the claim in a timely manner and then going back for the flight landing 15 minutes later, they decided to do them both at once. So we waited half an hour. We're not talking about an enormous airport, either in volume or geographic size, here. sigh

Air Journal: Dec 21 Oops

Between being a little off-kilter and then waiting over 20 minutes for a shuttle from the long-term parking lot, I got to the terminal 3 minutes too late to check-in for my flight to Florida, so they had already given away my seat. Um, suck. So, I sat down and talked to the very nice lady from the airline for half an hour and because all the flights were overbooked, it looked like I would have to wait 2 days for the next one out. Just as we were about to book that, one for Monday opened up. I was going to have to pay the difference in ticket prices, which was steep, but was made a little less painful by the fact that I was being forced to fly first-class. Really, that's all that was open anymore. Well, at least I also get the frequent-flyer mile bonus.

So, I went back to wait for the parking lot shuttle. I got on the one for Lot C, but when we pulled into Lot C, I realized that wasn't right at all. Then I remembered I had meant to park in Lot C but had missed the turn, so I had just gone straight into Lot A. Ok, back to the terminal. The driver said that happened all the time, people forgetting where they had parked. I neglected to tell him that I had parked an hour ago, not a week ago.

Red Eye: Emergency Exit Row Blues

I flew back from Florida a week after I got there. I left at 7AM, the first flight out, not because I was that keen to escape or that enamored of early morning flights, but because it would have cost me about $150 for the privilege of getting another 90 minutes sleep.

There was no drama at the airport this time, although I wasn't flying the same airline I had in June, which, I might add, has still not sent any response to my complaint letter. (I'm talking about you, United Airlines.) Of course, I don't actually remember all that much because, hello, it was 6AM on a Sunday.

When I checked in, it let me pick my seats, and there wasn't much to choose from. However, for the long flight from Charlotte to Los Angeles, I noticed there was an aisle seat in an emergency exit row, but it was situated in the graphical display with a crapload of legroom. Boom! There I was.

Turns out the graphic was right. There were about 5' of legroom, and there was actually a seat in front under which to put my backpack, although I did have to get out of my seat to get to it. But at least that meant no dealing with the overhead bins.

The two seats next to me on my side of the aisle ended up being occupied by a pair of lovebirds. The woman looked.... high maintenance. Of course, I am rock-bottom-low maintenance, but even without comparing her to me, she was high maintenance. She was carrying a large, metallic silver leather handbag. As the flight attendant came to give us the "you are sitting in an emergency exit row" spiel, she told the woman she would have to put her bag under the seat (five feet) in front of her during take-off. She didn't take too kindly to that.

Flight attendant: It's just going to right there. No one can get to it.
Passenger: The person in the seat can touch it!

Finally, she gave in, saying it was "stupid."

All I can say is that it was a good thing there wasn't an emergency, because you know no one was going to get past her and out the exit until she had retrieved her handbag!

But at least I did have a crapload of legroom.

Red Eye: The Kindness of Strangers

My mother had called me the morning of Friday the 5th to say she thought my father was probably in his last week or so and that I should come within the next few days. I went to work, applied for family leave, and made plane reservations that would put me out there Monday night.

Sunday around noon my cell phone beeped to tell me the battery was low. When I dug it out, I saw that my mother had called at 8AM that morning. Crap. I had meant to put the phone by my bed. I called her back. My father had started having extreme difficulty breathing in the middle of the night and had basically not been conscious since the previous evening. The hospice nurse gave him 6-12 hours at that point. My mother decided not to call right away because in that time frame, there was no way I could get out there in time. 12 hours later, though, he still had the same labored, steady breath.

I scrambled to find a flight. If I had actually answered the damned phone when it rang, I would have been able to get a flight that would get me there that evening. But at that point I was looking at red eye flights that would put me there first thing in the morning. The problem is that the airport there shuts down for the night. Not for the same reasons the Burbank Airport does, where it has to cut out the noise because of the residential neighborhoods surrounding it. The Podunk, Florida airport is in the middle of podunk-nowhere even by podunk-nowhere standards. The only thing the planes disturb are the mosquitoes.

I booked the flight that would get me there first, at 8:36AM. It left LAX at 11-something. I called my dear friend Steve, who was kind enough to drive me, then threw a bunch of stuff in a suitcase, then killed my back working on assembling my squares blanket while I waited.


I was in such a daze at the sirport that, although I thought it was odd that the woman at the counter stuck what I took to be a baggage claim sticker on the back of my boarding pass, I didn't really think about it. Yeah, that was no baggage claim sticker. I don't know if it was just random selection or because I booked a last-minute one-way ticket or because I had previously used the term "mail bomb" in my blog, but I had been flagged for a search at the security checkpoint.

Fortunately, I was dazed and tired enough not to care all that much.

At least I can assume that I wasn't the victim of standard racial profiling, since I'm a rather generic-looking Northern European female. Also, I've never heard of Fundamentalist Agnostic militants.

I went to the gate to sit and wait. A man was sitting next to me, asking the occasional polite question. I wasn't trying to be rude, but I was just terribly out of it. Finally, I ask where he was going. To Fort Lauderdale, after a business trip. I told him where I was going. He asked if I was visiting someone. At that point, I broke down and told him my father was dying, and I was trying to get there to see him before it was too late. The man next to me looked sadly away, then asked me if it was cancer. "Lung." He said a few kind but not cloying things and it was time to board.

When the woman scanned my ticket, it beeped "search baggage" again. "Um, they already did that at the checkpoint." She said it was normal and shooed me on my way.

The plane was a Boeing 767. It had those personal video things on the backs of the seats. We got on while they were still booting.


I had a window seat, and it turned out that no one was in the aisle seat next to me, so I managed to doze most of the way to Atlanta.

To be continued...

Sunshine State Part 2

I forgot to mention certain little things... Like how I forgot to bring cds to listen to in my rental car. And the only station I can even vaguely tolerate for 3 days/4 nights was the classic rock station... which played the eponymous song "Bad Company" all 3 days while I was in the car. You know what's sad? Singing along to Journey. That's really sad.

Note to self: Don't forget cds. The mp3 player is only helpful on the plane.

My parents' desktop computer is painfully slow. I turned off a bunch of start-up crap, which makes it boot faster, but it gets bogged down and pegs the RAM quickly. When I go there next time, I will have a new 1Gb DIMM to stick in memory slot, thereby increasing the RAM by 150%.

Note to self: Don't forget the RAM. (I ordered more for my sluggish computer while I was at it.)

My mother had set up a hospital bed in the family room for my father. His cat, Bandit, would spend the nights sleeping between my father's legs, after taking a leisurely bath. We had to take my father back to the ER the morning after I got there. My mother spent the night at the hospital with him, but I went back to the house. Bandit was still getting up at the foot of the hospital bed, even though my father wasn't in it. I can't tell who misses the other more.

Note to self: Don't forgot to stop and pet your own kitties, who comfort you when you need it, too.

Some dumbass woman in the row across from me on the flight back from Florida to DFW was arguing with the flight attendant about how she didn't need to turn her iPhone off before take-off because it was in "airplane mode." Bitch, what part of "TURN OFF ALL ELECTRONIC DEVICES FOR TAKE-OFF" did you not understand? I was getting ready to climb over 3 people to smack her upside the head. It would have been so worth it. And how stupid is it to be arguing with the flight attendant anyway? I would have confiscated the damned phone for the duration of the flight.

Note to self: Don't get your ass put on the no-fly terrorized-dumbass-passengers-who-need-their-iPhones-shoved-up-their-asses list. It's a long drive to Florida.

The flight from DFW to Burbank was probably only about half full. I had the window seat in the 3-seat side of the aisle. No one had the other two seats. Finally, I could lie down on my side and actually sleep, something I have trouble doing on my back and halfway upright. All in all, it wasn't a horrible flight experience. The planes were pretty much all on time, give or take 5 minutes. My luggage didn't get lost. I only wanted to smack two other passengers.

Note to self: Flying doesn't always have to suck. Sometimes just the reasons for it do.

Sunshine State My Ass

Actually, my family moved to Florida 26 years ago and our area never got a direct hit.

I flew to Florida for the long weekend. The leg from Burbank to Dallas/Fort Worth was rather uneventful, but once in the terminal at DFW, I noticed two things. First, the Arrivals/Departures software they use apparently runs on Windows. How could I tell?

Well, that's not a very clear picture, but I was trying to be vaguely surreptitious with my mediocre camera phone, but trust me, it was a Windows "Uh, sometink iz brokn" box. Oddly, it only appeared in the Arrivals screen, which kept updating beneath, and it was only on one set of screens I saw. Another set further down the same terminal showed no such error message.

At any rate, after ascertaining that my connecting flight left from a completely different terminal, I decided to use the restroom before getting on the tram. I did a double take after seeing the orange sign in this picture:

I stood there wondering exactly why they would build a women's room that experienced severe weather. I've seen some scary ones, to be sure, but I've never actually seen a bathroom with its own tornadoes. I carefully went in, but seeing no people getting carried on cyclones and thrown against the ceiling, I decided to risk it. But I didn't linger.

During the flight to Florida, I sat next to The Most Important Businessman In The World. The one whose elbows stick over the armrests while he's using his laptop. The one who turns on his cell phones, yes, plural, when we haven't even landed yet because he has to check on some important deal. The one who leaps from his seat as soon as the plane lands, like that's going to get him off the plane any faster when we're in, hello, row 23.

Um, if he was so important, why was he sitting in coach?

Anyway, I hate Florida in the summer. It's like walking around in a swamp, and that's when you're actually above the water level. I've avoided summers there for 17 years. Only something of great import could have changed that, and so it was.

My father is dying.

He has lung cancer, which wasn't diagnosed until it had already spread to the brain, twice. The second tumor caused bleeding in the brain, which makes it very difficult for my father to speak, and also robs him of much physical strength and motor control.

There aren't really any options now, except to make him as comfortable as possible. Which means if he wants chocolate pudding for every meal, that's what my mother is going to give him.

I can't say we've been particularly close, not for a very long time, but he is my father. And no one should have to go this way.

I only heard him say about half a dozen complete sentences while I was there. Usually the best he can manage is "yes" or "no," if that. But after one of his physicians left, I leaned over and asked him why his doctors all looked like they were 12 years old. He told me, "You look like you're twelve years old."

That's my father. Of course, I will probably always be 12 years old, or 5, or 3, or a baby to him. Because he's my father.

Air Journal: June 2 Can we seat the assholes on the wings?

Flying back from Florida, I had... a really bad time. This morning I sent the following through the customer service web site of the airline in question, which shall remain nameless unless I don't get some kind of satisfactory response from them in the next few days.

I am writing to relate to you the worst air travel experience I have had in memory.

First of all, there was only one person working the check-in counter for [Insert airline name here] at [Insert airport name here] when I arrived an hour before my flight. There was some confusion over who was in which line. I had immediately gone to one of the electronic check-in kiosks, but some people hadn't and there was no distinction between lines. The employee at the counter was moving very quickly, but it was still very chaotic.

My biggest problem occurred when I was told I had already checked in a bag. I had selected one bag to check, I had one bag to check, and that was it. Because the employee at the counter was trying to handle the people coming up to check-in, he could not take the time to sort out my problem.

I try to be a patient person. I really do. I know that glitches happen. However, it's very unclear to me how in this day and age, with security issues such as they are, that a bag can get checked under the name of a person who has not even shown up at the airport to check-in. To make matters worse, I had had to fly to [Insert crappy Florida city name here] on a dire family emergency which has been very draining, and I had a head cold, which I wasn't looking forward to flying with. The whole thing was making me feel somewhat light-headed, but there was no place to sit and wait. I just did not have the werewithal at that point to deal with that kind of frustration. I am not embarrassed to say that I just started to cry, something I try to avoid doing in public.

I was there half an hour waiting before the issue was resolved. I know that the employee at the counter was trying to be as helpful as he could given the number of people he was forced to juggle on his own.

I was feeling better by the time I got on the plane. Until a child who was about 4 years old a couple rows behind me had to scream his excitement at every single thing, from the fact that he could fasten his own seatbelt to being able to see other planes outside his window. His parents were making no attempt to try to limit his volume. About 20 minutes into the flight, I asked a flight attendant if she could somehow ask them to try to control their child's volume. I'm not sure she ever got around to that, because she kept having long, flirtatious conversations with the men in the seats across from me one row behind. Men who, when she was not around, were having rather offensive conversations about how "fat chicks" should be forced to fly in the cargo hold.

Meanwhile, the child in question was still shouting on a regular basis, and when he did so, other people around me would turn around to look in annoyance, too. Note that this child was clearly not shouting in distress. He simply had to narrate every single thing that was happening.

I realize there is only so much that can be done to control passengers' behaviors, but as far as I can tell nothing was done to try to quiet the excessively loud child, and the flight attendant was spending so much time with the two men who discredit their sex that she was simply encouraging them.

I had a connecting flight, ####, from Dulles to LAX which went perfectly smoothly, but that does not erase the absolutely unacceptable situation I had checking in and on the first flight.

Sincerely, Karen X

(No, I'm not related to Malcolm.)

I really tried to write a straightforward note, but the whole situation was just so absurdly stupid that I fell into excessively-politely-sarcastic mode.

Standing in the check-in area, I ended up staring at the large window at the end of the building. Fortunately there was no other counters past the one I was at and this was the most... private... direction to face. There was a small bird flying next to the glass, trying to get out. I seem to remember the same thing had happened the last time I was here.

The ticket agent kept trying to reassure me that I wouldn't miss my plane, but I was just too upset to explain all the crap that had built up to this moment, so I would just smile and nod.

The assholes on the plane, well, when they started talking about how fat people should have to ride in cargo, all I could think was that the first thing the airlines should change would be to make assholes ride out on the wing. The more obnoxious of the two said at one point that he had been married and divorced twice. Big surprise. When Miss Flirty Stewardess (I simply don't have enough respect for her to call her a flight attendant) told them she was going on to Albany, after she walked away, the bigger asshole said he really wished he could go on with her. I think he thought he had "a chance." I'm not saying he didn't, because clearly this woman had absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Anyway, by the time we were starting to descend for landing in LAX, I thought my eardrums were going to explode, the pressure from my head cold and the change in altitude were so bad. Blowing my nose not only didn't help them pop, it caused excruciating pain. Of course, since my sinuses were (and are) completely congested, I didn't have much choice if I wanted to breathe through the night. My ears didn't even really "pop" until sometime after I went to bed last night.

P.S. I came home with no fewer than 6 mosquito bites.


ETA: No one ever responded to my complaint. United Airlines, if you webcrawl looking for mentions of your name, this means you.

Air Journal: May 29 Welcome to Florida

Well, I said I wasn't going to do any entries, but I figured planes are sort of public, since it's not like I'm letting strangers in my car, so here goes. And also because I've gotten so used to narrating my travels in my head, it was kind of hard to stop.

I usually try to fly out of Burbank airport because it is closer, but mainly because it is infinitely less painful than LAX. But because I was making reservations with 24 hours notice, the cheapest flight I could get out of Burbank required me to pay $100 more than LAX for the privilege of changing planes twice each way instead of once. Forget it.

My friend Steve was nice enough to drive me to LAX. I didn't want to make him too late for work, so I got there with more than 2 hours notice. I'll omit specific airline names, but apparently the airline whose website I booked on have a partnership with another airline. My flight home would be on the airline I booked with, but the one out there was with the "partner" airline. I thought that meant I should go to the partner airline terminal, and since it wasn't the same terminal as the original airline, I hoped I was right because trying to change terminals from the outside would probably have either resulted in my getting hopelessly lost, getting stuck on a plane to Singapore, or getting run over by a jet. I walked up to the e-ticket check-in computer, but it wasn't taking my reservation code. So I got in line for the "I'm either a moron or I don't have an e-ticket, which also qualifies me for being a moron" line to talk to a person. I guess either there was a computer problem between the two airlines' reservation computers or I had made the reservation so recently that it hadn't gotten transferred, but it worked out.

Part of the reason LAX is stupid is that they make you carry your checked bags to the X-ray machine, even though they don't make you wait.

(My mother keeps talking to me even though I'm clearly busy. She's impeding freedom of the press as far as I am concerned.)

I sat around and waited for awhile. I was kind of spacy, but I think I managed to read.

One of the things that annoys me, and I consider it akin to the "let's crowd around the door of the bus even though someone is trying to get off" problem, is when they get ready to start boarding the plane, and everyone has to get up and crowd around the gate, even though they're probably in zone 9,361 and are clearly not going to board anytime in the near future. Morons.

I ended up sitting in the very last row, but then again, people who make reservations less than 24 hours ahead can't really be choosers. I did actually get a window seat, though, and I like window seats. Some woman came up and I guess her seats with her two children were not contiguous, so she asked if I would move. I'm usually willing to consider it, but I was just kind of a borderline wreck and I wanted to cower in my corner, so I apologized and declined. They did their standard "the plane is fully booked so stop acting like an asshole and just put your oversized carry-on bag overhead or shove it under your seat already" announcement. As it ended up, there was an empty seat and it was the one next to me.

One of the flight attendants kept stopping and telling corny jokes to the kids sitting in front of me. "A man has a carrot in his ear. A policeman walks up and asks him why he has a carrot in his. 'Sorry, officer, I can't hear you because I have a carrot in my ear.'"

The flight was pretty uneventful, until I get up to deplane (and I never stand up until it's clear that I will actually start to move soon. Plus I was in the very last row. I was apparently the only person who realized that they weren't going to move faster than everyone else in front of them. Morons.) Then I realized that my pants were stuck to a piece of used chewing gum on the edge of my seat. I was pretty sure the gum wasn't there when I got up to use the lavatory, so I strongly suspect that the children who were sitting in front of me were the culprits, but whatever.

When I stepped off the plane at the airport in Charlotte, North Caroline, the first thing I smell is fried chicken. Welcome to The South. There's a Bojangles Chicken and Biscuits right next to the gate. It made me a little sick to my already malfunctioning stomach. I walked up and down the terminal and almost everything was deep-fried or otherwise greasy looking. Except the gelato, but I didn't think that would be a good idea. I settled for some weird bagel sandwich.

After I ate that, I went to sit outside the gate to wait. The man sitting next to me has a gym back which says, "The 17th Annual Greater Horseballs Invitational Golf Tournament." I just didn't want to know. Someone else can google it. Some other redneck waiting at the gate had a Lynyrd Skynyrd Freebird t-shirt on. Don't even ask me about the "Freebird Syndrome."

The plane from Charlotte to Florida was only about 2/3 full, so I got another window seat next to an empty seat. It was a really short flight and we got in early. As I stepedp from the plane to the Jetway, I got a blast of hot, humid air. Ugh.

It was around 9:30 and the airport had pretty much shut down for the night. Not for the same reason Burbank's airport does, which is because it's too close to residential areas, but just because no one really wants to go to this Buttfuck Nowhere part of Florida. Part of the floor in the walkway from the central area to the exits was cordoned off with industrial fans blowing on it. The area smelled like someone had spilled a giant barrel of Vicks Menthol Vap-O-Rub. By the time I hit the restroom and got to the baggage claim, our bags were already coming off. Trust me, for this airport that was an anomaly.

I grabbed my bag and stepped out into the warm, humid, 10PM air. I was outside less than 3 minutes when I got bitten by my first mosquito of the visit. (It will not be the last.)

Welcome to Florida.