Fly me to the Moon

(Just don’t make me go in coach)

As and when I win the lottery ($340 million this week) one of the things I’d like to do with my new found leisure time is learn to fly. Soaring above the clouds, free as a bird, with the Rocky Mountains way beneath me and the wild blue up above. Yeah, I can see myself doing that. I’m an aviator at heart.

But when it comes to commercial flying; well, you can keep it. Oh, it has its practicalities, I know. America’s a big place and there’s rarely enough time to travel across country in any other manner; whether for business or pleasure. It’s just the process itself I don’t like. The claustrophobic seating, the harassed staff, the recycled air and the hours of waiting around all depress my spirit. Invariably, I’m just glad when I reach my final destination.

I don’t have many good things to say about our time in Phoenix but one thing I did like was that we lived about twenty minutes from the airport. Now we’re well over an hour away; nearer to two in traffic and I had plenty of time to reflect on this as I inched my way through the I-70 morning snarl. The fact that my flight to San Diego was connecting through Phoenix was simply another cause for irritation.

If you’ve flown at all recently you’ll know that in an effort to "serve you better" (Read: "Bump up the CEO’s salary by operating with less staff.") the airlines have installed self-check in monitors where by pressing segments of a TV screen, one can handle the process oneself. Except of course, it doesn’t work like that.

If, like most of us, you have a bag to check, you still need assistance from the one remaining, harassed and cranky check-in clerk. And of course, by the time you’ve established this, you’re already out of the line and milling about in bovine fashion along with the other two dozen passengers who like you, are stalled in limbo. It’s chaos and slows down the process no end. I’ll bet a chunk of those potential lottery winnings that America’s airline CEO’s have never once attempted to check themselves in under this system.

I personally have a further reason for resenting this cost-cutting measure. Following the creation of that abomination known as The Department of Homeland Security (sic) my name found its way onto a special list requiring the check-in clerk to disappear into the back, presumably to call Donald Rumsfeld who looks to see what web-sites I’ve visited recently before consenting to let me travel. That’s irritating enough but it also renders me incapable of using the auto check-in and adds a good twenty minutes to the process every time I attempt to travel.

Showing remarkable dexterity, the clerk switched from insincerely cheerful to openly hostile as soon as the red flag came up on the computer, but after making the requisite call, grudgingly consented to let me board his airplane. Which took me down to security; usually another source of vexation. Except this time, it was all plain sailing and I was out the far end almost as fast as if I’d walked through unimpeded. Obviously, that doesn’t make for an interesting story so instead I’ll tell you about the time my mother came to visit us and attempted to take a needle into the departure lounge.

In these paranoid times, transatlantic flights require travelers to be at the airport ridiculously early so to pass the time, she took along her needlepoint. Now she was savvy enough to realize that she wouldn’t be allowed to take the needle onto the plane, but mistakenly thought there would be no problem taking it through security but dumping it before boarding. To nobody’s surprise but hers the officials thought otherwise. She argued the point but being a white haired, 72-year old Scots woman, she obviously fit the terrorist profile and they were unmoved.

Hours later, she was indignantly recounting the tale while unpacking her case at our house. Pulling out her needlepoint to illustrate the story she unzipped the bag to reveal the biggest, baddest, looking pair of scissors you’ve ever set eyes on. Everybody was so intent on the damage this 5’4” woman could do with a sewing needle; that nobody had looked in her carry-on bag to notice she was carrying a set of shears capable of severing a flight-attendant’s jugular faster than you could say “These pretzels taste stale.”

So anyway, back to me.

The flights themselves were remarkably uneventful. Oh sure, the airplanes were possibly the smallest on which I’ve ever flown. The screaming babies were all sat right behind me, although as screaming babies go, these ones weren’t particularly bad. And the flight attendants weren’t even unpleasant. We took off on time, landed on time and other than a challenge with the endless lines at the food vendors in Phoenix causing me to settle for a bag of cashew nuts and an orange juice for lunch, the trip was comparatively pain free.

Certainly not as bad as some of the previous flights I’ve made. Such as the time when the turbulence from a thunderstorm near Cleveland caused the lady in the seat behind to go into a full on hysteria attack, complete with screaming, arm waving and later, projectile vomiting. Or the occasion when we spent 45 minutes in a holding pattern above Geneva and a hitherto unnoticed toothache kept my head pinned to the back of the seat. Or when I flew Air Pakistan out of Singapore and realized as we taxied down the runway, that I was the only person on board observing the “No Smoking” sign. This included the flight attendants and, as I could see through a curtain at the front, the pilot.

The only real negative aspect of this trip was when we finally landed in San Diego and were greeted with torrential rain; the result of a tropical depression which has been sitting over the city for the last few days. It never rains in Southern California, according to the song and I was crushed. Until the next day when I overheard my colleague Jon, staring gloomily out at the beach and complaining.

“Here’s me with my white Speedos™, my wife beater and my cowboy boots and I’m not going to get a chance to wear them.”

As Jon weighs in at a little over 300lbs, I think we should all be grateful for small mercies.