This past weekend, I took a lovely little jaunt to Chicago, and while I was busy doing work on the flight there, I made sure to reserve the return trip for some good old fashioned flight blogging, or flogging as I call it. Anyway, I’ve just concluded a long, arduous day of traveling, and while my celebrity sightings weren’t as good as my friend Jash’s (he took a flight to NY this weekend and sat next to Usher, or something like that), hopefully the addition of an Arkansas layover will spice up the festivities. Okay, it won’t, but like poker, sometimes you gotta play your low card and hope for the best.
The whole sordid affair after the jump…
2:52 PM
Well, here I am on my second flight of the day, pressing onwards from the rural depths of Arkansas to the cosmopolitan glory of Los Angeles. I originally started the day’s journey in Chicago where an uneventful morning was spent trying to finagle myself onto at first a direct flight to LAX and then an earlier flight to Arkansas (my layover). Needless to say, I failed on both counts. However–
2:54 PM
I’m sorry. I must interrupt myself. The guy next to me has JVC headphones on, and they don’t exactly keep the music contained in the ear canal. Hence, I’m able to hear what I think is Michael McDonald blasting away (or some awful, tinny equivalent). It’s making it very difficult for me to write. I must don my own iPod earbuds in an effort to drown out this adult-contemporary cacophony.
2:57 PM
Well, this is unfortunate. My iPod earbuds seem to be all sorts of tattered. I mean, they work fine, but the little rings of plastic/rubber around the speakers are both totally frayed and ruined. What in the what what happened to them? I blame Arkansas. Oh, and in lucky news, after having bashed the guy next to me for blasting adult contemporary, I was kind of afraid that my first iPod song to come up on shuffle would be Phil Collins or Brenda Russell or something equally embarrassing. Thankfully, a super trendy song by Yelle came up instead. PHEW! I’m still cooler.
3:00 PM
Anyway, my morning at O’Hare started —
3:01 PM
Wait, must interrupt again. The captain just told the flight attendants that under no circumstance should they get out of their seats. WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!
3:01 PM
ANYWAY: my morning at O’Hare started extremely early as my host for this Chicago trip needed to jet out of town by 7:30 AM. This meant waking up somewhere in the 5 AM hour (totally unheard of for me) and taking a cab with him to the airport where I then loitered around for the next four hours. Like I said earlier, I tried to get a direct flight to LAX because of all things I was in the mood for today, a scenic detour to Northwest Arkansas Airport was not one of them. Sadly, I failed to procure a seat to Los Angeles; so I reluctantly accepted my layover fate in the Ark, but with only an hour connection between flights, I felt quite uneasy. What if an errant thunderstorm or tornado screwed up flight plans in Chicago? Would I miss my connection? Would I be stuck in Fayetteville for days? I’d seen too many Amazing Race plans go sour to feel comfortable with a mere hour window at XNA. I put myself on standby for an earlier Arkansas flight that would have given me a good two to three hours of safety, but alas, my dreams of a stress free connection were heartlessly crushed by a sudden cavalcade of consultants who descended on the 9:00 AM flight like a pack of khaki-clad hyenas. Yes, while the Chicago-Arkansas route may seem benign, it is in fact littered with business-casual consultants en route to the Walmart world headquarters, which apparently is in the Fayetteville area. Damn you, Walmart. You ruin everything!
And so with little pomp and circumstance, I was sealed out of the early flight aspirations, forced to stick with my previously booked 11:35 AM departure as originally planned. This was a massive letdown, but the good news was that this second flight to Arkansas featured significantly fewer men toting oversized cell phone clips and Bluetooth headsets. Always a good thing. Oh, and before I forget, when I was trying to get onto the first flight, there was this creepy guy sitting next to me on my chair island, and he had this photo of him and his wife as his laptop wallpaper. The image was so unsettling that I tried to snap a picture of the desktop. I hope it comes out properly:
Trust me, it was hella creepy.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. O’Hare. Well, not much else happened at O’Hare that’s really worth talking about. In terms of celebrities, I saw the thug guy from Dumb and Dumber who ate all the hot pepper sauce (I know, really employing a loose definition of “celebrity,” but hey, it’s one of my favorite movies; so anyone who was in it gets a special place in my heart). And in terms of security line follies, the only issue was that the idiot woman in front of me attempted to go through with four different carry-on bags. Seriously? Seriously? She should have been kicked out of the airport right then and there. Later, when she had consolidated her dumb bags, she then walked through the metal detector and ooops! Guess who left her bracelet on? Sometimes I just want to shake these people.
3:20 PM
A baby is crying. Awful.
3:20 PM
Getting back to my flight to Arkansas: So after all my fears of inclement weather derailing my tight connection, the clouds parted, and the sun began to shine. It looked as if all would be well. Not a delay in sight! To think, I had been all nervous over nothing…
WELL. We all boarded on time, and everyone was in their seats by 11:20 AM. The flight attendant got on the intercom and announced that she just needed to do a baggage count, and we’d be off and running. This was followed by an interminable wait. We just sat there and sat there and sat there. What in the h-e-double-hockey sticks was going on? Why weren’t we leaving? Finally, after what felt like two hours (probably just ten minutes), two passengers got on board. Of course. Stupid latecomers. Unfortunately for them, there was only one free seat left on the plane; so they turned around and left. We waited around for THAT?
Oh, but it gets worse. Something was wrong with the flight manifest. I don’t know what it was or if it had to do with those two passengers, but something was unaccounted for, which meant that a gate agent had to come on board and essentially take attendance. This process took ten minutes, and at the end of it, I felt reasonably confident that all would be fixed, and we’d be on our way.
No.
Ten minutes later (a time period that was punctuated by occasional dozing off by me), the gate agent came BACK on the plane (this time with someone else) and did attendance again. This was getting crazy. Even worse, as he passed by, I glanced at his watch. It was 12:15 PM!!! We were forty-five minutes late, and I only had a one hour connection! That glorious combination of panic, rage, and restlessness soon overwhelmed me. It was all I could do to not leap up and scream, “I HAVE A CONNECTION! STOP TAKING ATTENDANCE! LET’S JUST GO!!!”
Luckily, the gate agents figured out this manifest-cum-Sudoku puzzle, and we were finally on our way, but not before a blaring status update effectively rattled the poor, snoozing woman next to me. I swear, she jumped so high you would have thought a firecracker had gone off in her seatback pocket. I really wanted to laugh, but I didn’t because she was nice. However, I didn’t feel too bad since she had guilted me out of my window seat. Not a big deal because there were only two seats in our row, but when she came upon me sitting at the window, she asked in a harried, Southern belle sort of way, “Wouldn’t you like the aisle seat?” There was something quintessentially obnoxious about the question, but she pulled it off in such an effective, persuasive way that I found myself forking over the window. I had to respect her manipulation. Besides, it’s not like I traded down for a middle-seat. (I would never do that.)
Anyway, new seat be damned, I was still rather concerned about my connection. I informed the flight attendant of my situation, but she just smiled and revealed that this plane, the very one I was flying on, would be the exact same plane that we’d be taking to Los Angeles. Hallelujah! Disaster averted! Heart rate returned to normal!
The rest of the flight was spent contentedly half-napping  although, I did rouse myself long enough to try the American Airlines MENSA quiz. I fared pretty well, but we soon landed, and I couldn’t finish in time; so I looked at the answers (dumb me, I should have realized that since I’d be taking the same flight and sitting in the same seat, I could continue the SAME quiz. Oh well. I guess I’m not cut out for MENSA after all).
Once we touched down in Arkansas, I had to vacate the plane as a “crew swap” was about to take place  an event so shrouded in secrecy that no passengers can be present to see it. This meant that I had to get up and fetch my bag from the “valet” (on American Eagle, since the overhead compartments are so big, you hand your bag to a valet who stows it underneath and then hands it to you again as you deplane). By the time this process was over, I had about two minutes to go to the bathroom and fetch a snack before I was summoned back to the plane for this next part of the journey. I’m all for speediness, but gosh, let me enjoy Arkansas a bit! Sadly, I was only able to really snap one or two photos of the airport / glorified gymnasium in my short time there.
And how!
I was really hoping there’d be a McDonalds or something for me to buy a quick lunch, but sadly, the dining options were limited to a few sagging pretzels and some very suspect sandwiches. I actually considered a slice of carrot cake, but with a line of three people in front of me, I didn’t trust Maude the Concession Lady to take care of my consumer needs before my flight departed. And so, I resigned myself to two bags of M&Ms: regular and peanut butter (just to make things interesting). I already ate the first bag (peanut butter) about thirty minutes ago. The second bag shall be ingested soon as the flight attendants have just informed us that it is — as Sandra Lee says — cocktail time! Hopefully the presence of liquids will cause the toddler two rows in front of me to SHUT THE HELL UP. (Tip to the kid’s mom: how about you say “BE QUIET!” to your devil child?)
Anyway, in the interest of not spilling on my laptop, I must fold this bad boy up and return after beverage service.
Please hold whilst I enjoy my snack and libation.
4:10 PM
Sure enough, the beverage service seems to have silenced the awful child up ahead. We’ll see how long it lasts though. For my part, I enjoyed my M&Ms paired with a glass of fizzy ginger ale. Avid readers know that I like to alternate between ginger ale and tomato juice on planes; however, I’m moving away from the latter on American Airlines, mostly because AA uses Motts brand tomato juice, and the sad truth is that Motts tomato juice simply isn’t very good. I’M NOT AFRAID TO SAY IT.
Clouds.
2:13 PM
Notice something strange with the time stamp? Did I just go back in time? Of course not. I merely switched my laptop clock back to PST (this is what qualifies as entertainment on these movie-less flights).
2:15 PM
BABY.
2:17 PM
Albuquerque is apparently on the left. I wouldn’t know. I’m on the right. Since when do people on the left ever get something? It’s always the right side with the views. That’s so not cool. Meanwhile, out my window all I have is a dried out, meandering river bed. Booooo.
2:31 PM
Toddler is preoccupied now because she wants to touch buttons; so, naturally she’s reaching for the call button overhead. It just so happens that when that button is pressed, it makes a crazy, crazy loud noise, and I’m fairly certain the speaker is right over my head. Plus, I’m sort of dozing; so if this kid wakes me up with a false call button alert, I’ll be beyond peeved. I may be possessed to go to the bathroom at the front of the plane JUST so I can walk back and give the mother a passive aggressive glare.
2:43 PM
Hahaha — I missed Albuquerque but I totally got the giant crater in Arizona, which is way better. SUCKERS!!! The pilot even tilted the plane a little to make it more visible. Right side rules! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!!!
Is that the moon?
No, it’s just Arizona. And that in the middle is the famous Meteor Crater (which only we on the right can see)
I’m sure Albuquerque looked just as cool…
Best airplane side EVER.
The colors didn’t look like this, but I had some issues with Photoshop. So just pretend it’s artsy and/or Mars.
2:59 PM
The toddler is standing on her seat and looking back at us. I must admit that she is really cute. Too bad she’s the product of AWFUL parenting.
3:00 PM
Plane foul. The guy next to me just totally invaded my space with his leg. He’s majorly spread out into my zone. I should document this if I can…
3:03 PM
The good news is that he moved his leg. The bad news is that I didn’t get a photo. Oh well. I took more pictures of the arid desert below instead.
Ooooh…
It’s like I’m looking into space! (But it’s actually just frost on the window)
Thanks to Auto-Levels in Photoshop, I again look like I’m in space. But I’m only in the stratosphere.
3:11 PM
How smooth am I? The guy totally crossed the line again; so I quietly lifted up my tray (so as not to block the view) and then I took out my camera, which I pretended to fiddle with, perhaps scrolling through some pictures and testing some functions  you know, normal stuff to throw off the scent. I then tested the focus to make sure the little orange metering light didn’t come out and give me away. It wasn’t on. Perfect. Finally, it was time to strike. I pressed down, focused on this guy’s leg coming over into my section, and snapped the picture. And what should happen? FLASH! I could have sworn it was off, but I guess not. I could not have been more obvious if I had tried. I mean, my camera FLASHED, and it was clearly pointed at his leg. I might as well have stood up, blown a whistle, and yelled to the cabin “SHHHH! I’M GONNA TAKE A PICTURE OF THIS GUY’S LEG NOW!” I was mortified. Luckily, he didn’t seem to even notice, which is fairly strange. Makes me question his mental acuity. Had he reacted, I totally would have made it seem like it were an accident. Still, I’m on my best behavior now.
I may not have been very stealthy, but I still got the shot, and you can CLEARLY see he violated the invisible line of separation. And this wasn’t even his most flagrant invasion. The first one was even worse!
Epilogue
Well, after my great photo debacle, we were told to turn off our electronics and prepare for landing. The rest of the journey went without incident. I was most displeased to learn we’d be parking at a remote terminal, which of course meant we’d have to take a bus to the main terminal. Oh well, those are the breaks. There was a minor incident on the shuttle, now that I think of it. In an effort to transport as many people as possible, the driver kept taking on more and more passengers, which was fine because there was plenty of room for everyone. However, the dumb people did what all dumb people do in subways and buses: they huddled near the door. Yes, people seem to have this ridiculous inability to move in on public transportation, which creates impenetrable crowds near the doors. I felt bad for the driver, who must deal with this all day. He implored the passengers repeatedly to step towards the back of the bus as there was plenty of room to stand there. But I guess that only translated into “Move back half an inch. Then slowly come forward again and crowd around.” Nevertheless, he kept bringing new people on because obviously he saw there was room for everyone (assuming everyone adapted a logical standing pattern). Not down with this plan AT ALL was the idiot woman behind me who suddenly piped up with a whiny protest, “Sir, there’s no more room! You shouldn’t be bringing more people on board.” What the hell was she talking about? If she were smart, she would have turned around and seen that the back half of the bus aisle was occupied by literally three people, as opposed to the twenty who had crammed into the front. I was thiiiis close to tersely responding, “No, there’s enough room.” It would have been so severe, a diret attack on her faulty logic. But I wasn’t in the mood for confrontation, and besides, if the driver could ignore her blissfully, so could I. The girl’s concerns went unaddressed and more people were brought on board, much to my delight. Suck it, LADY. I think this was the only time ever when I was happier to see a bus take on more passengers rather than close its doors and leave.
Random plane on the tarmac. Taken from inside the satellite terminal shuttle.
It went right over us. Closest plane EVA! (Get it?)
So that’s about it. Fun times in the skies. Now I think it’s time to get some much needed rest. Back to regular blogging tomorrow…