See The World They Said...

I travel.  I travel a lot.  What is a lot?  For some context, these past 4 months I have flown over 150,000 miles.  All domestically. 

There is a big difference between what I do, and what my friends and family think I do, especially when it comes to this travel. 

• Them: “You are so lucky.  You get to see the world and visit new and exciting places”
• Me: “Damn it, I think I am in a middle seat”

So, to set the record straight, let’s examine my travel day.  

Lines, Lines and More Lines

• Let's pretend you already have your ticket.  Upon arriving at the security checkpoint , the first big choice is knowing which line to go on.  The best advice I can give here is find the one I am going on, and pick the opposite.   Invariably I get stuck behind either
• The person who hasn’t travelled since 1973 and therefore has decided to bring a big-gulp sized bottle of Shampoo that they are now longer able to carry on.
• The couple with the kid.  Yeah, that kid.  The one who doesn’t listen, climbs on the conveyor belt and lingers in the X-Ray with a spider thinking he is going to be the next Spiderman.

Break on Through to the Other Side (of Security)

• If you are going through the security process and if by accident you forget to take that tube of Chap Stick out of your bag, be prepared to get searched like you tried crossing the Turkish border with 7 kilo’s of drugs.
• Once YOU are through, you need to wait for your bags on the conveyor belt.  The best analogy I can give is that it is like trying to catch the Ice-Cream man when you were a kid.  Running after the little bus yelling STOP Ice Cream Man, Stop!  Only this time, you are running after your shoes, your belt and your bags – all while the 19 year old TSA guy who was turned down from the “Fry job” at McDonalds continues to run the conveyor belt as your bags pile up.  So you shuttle along the length of the belt trying to grab your things, while avoiding other passengers like Mario avoiding the barrels from Donkey Kong until finally all the stuff crashes into each other and creates more of a mess than Lindsay Lohan’s acting career. 

Now Boarding...Zone Crazy People 

• Ok you got through security, now you need to find your gate.  Simple right?  Well, not so fast.
• A typical gate announcement goes like this “*gum chewing*, uh, yeah, for those of you on flight 3628-niner…your flight has been delayed.  Your new gate is…” – at that point every passenger looks for their flight number (did she say niner?) as it is the one piece of information that nobody knows or cares about.  When you finally locate the number you look up and hear…”*gum chewing*…thank you”
• When they finally line people up to board – they are very clear in saying that they will board by group number.  “Ok, now boarding Group 1”  As soon as this is said, every single passenger in the waiting area tries to board like this is the last flight out and a horde of Zombies is marching down towards the gate.
• Now, given that you actually are group 1, you almost get to the front of the line…that is until some guy in a business suit pushes aside a nun, steps on a 5 year old kid on crutches and then tries to pass you saying HE is in group 1.

• The main driver behind the mad dash for the plane is, like the Titanic and lifeboats, there is only limited overhead space for 5 carry-on bags for 237 passengers.  
• As you walk on, feeling that stress, you see an open space…DAMN, someone else took it.  Oh wait there is another.  You go to put your bag up and there is a sport coat laying down in the overhead space.  Seriously, some guy took off his sport coat and lay it down in the space?  You do the polite thing and push your bag up and scrunch up the coat and sit down.
• Great, you are finally seated…in the aisle no less.  Things are good.  Uh oh, someone sits in the window seat.  Now with seats filling up quick you know that someone will be in the middle seat.  Now you start evaluating and judging your fellow passengers.  Here comes a skinny girl…yes, yes, please yes…damn it, she walked by.  Here comes someone who looks like they talk a lot.  No, no, no…whew, they walked by.  Uh oh, here comes a fairly large person…no god please no, please nooooo

 In-Flight

• You sit down, get ready to “relax and enjoy your flight”…until the person in front of you reclines right into your lap.  Now you can’t get your laptop or book open and you’re sitting there starring at the top of their head like you are about to give them a haircut.  What do you do? The only thing a civilized person should do.  Talk to them? No…
• …You knee them in the back.  Rather than sitting up, they instead put all their weight into reclining back as far as they can.  Ok, you will deal with it…until the kid behind you starts kicking your seat.  At least the parents of the kid will reprimand them right…parent?  Hello Parents????
• Oh well, you will just get up, stretch your legs and use the rest room.  You enter and immediately discover that anyone over the height of 3’7” is in trouble.  You have to bend at the knees just to avoid the curved ceiling, lift up the seat of the toilet with your foot (because eww) try to keep it from dropping while you do your business.  You then hit the flight attendant call button because you thought that was the button for flushing and now you have drawn attention to yourself.  You hit the water to wash your hands but it only runs for about .00007 seconds before turning off.  You leave, head down in shame.

• You return to your seat and then the turbulence starts.  You immediately recall all your childhood prayers and say the “Our Father” about 17 times, you promise that you will call your parents every day, you will always say (and mean) I love you to people, you will never be mean to anyone ever again and you will…..oh wait, turbulence is over.  Now I can be mean to that ass reclining in front of me.
• You finally land and as you get ready to deplane, the other customers appear to have forgotten that there is etiquette for leaving the plane.  Row by row people like we learned in the 1^st grade.  Nope, evidently Ricky-Bobby from row 18 decides that he needs to get ahead of everyone as he pushes his way up the 18 inch aisle to try to get off the plane first like it is an Olympic sport.
• If you checked your luggage, at the gate or ticketing, you now enter into your own version of Russian roulette.  Click…bag didn’t come out….click…damn it, where is it…click…crap it’s only me and this other guy….crap he got his bag…. 

Ah, you are done

You kick off your week in your new destination by changing to the local time zone which basically means that for breakfast you want a bacon cheeseburger.  You get into Taxi’s that smell worse than that pig pen kid from Charlie Brown.  You spill coffee on your shirt and then spend the afternoon trying to cover it up.  You go to the hotel gym only to realize that the only machine they have was last used in 1856 - and it still has a line of 16 people waiting to use it.

At the end of the week, you go to the airport and start the whole process again.  Yes, the same old security buffoonery, plane delaying, Airplane bathroom crouching, child kicking business man reclining overhead bin using stress.  

You are finally back home...”here take the kids!”

Leaving On A Jet Plane

I travel.  I travel a lot.  I have flown over a million miles in my lifetime.  I have woke up in hotels and not known where I was because it is my 3^rd location in 3 days.  I have ridden in rental cars from small cars I couldn't fit in to mini-vans I could swim in.  Many of my friends and family (and strangers) think travel is glamorous.  Well think again…

Going Through Security

These people are not your friends, nor do they have a sense of humor.  If they ask you to take off your shoes, please do it.  Do not engage in a discussion around why you shouldn’t have to.  Do not then walk through with your shoes on and act surprised when they pull you into the holding pen – which by the way is just a glass enclosure where you are on display like a goldfish with people staring and poking the glass at you.  You will not win the argument and you will hold up the rest of us.

Now, I am not on a soapbox about security agents.  They have their faults too.  My biggest issue? Its how they use the conveyor belt for their own personal amusement.  You know what I mean.  Your luggage and laptop and shoes and coat are all going through.  You wait on the other end with the other passengers like your awaiting the birth of a baby – staring into the abyss – yep there it is, my laptop is coming out…And it’s a DELL!  It would be fine if it ended there – but no such luck.  Bags pile up – the belt keeps running, things are crashing into each other and travelers frantically try to get on their shoes, get their 3 oz liquids packed, and answer their ringing cell phone.  All the while your thinking, yeah, the TSA agent can stop the belt and this chaos.  Its is most likely this vicious circle of events.  I bet as a kid, the TSA Conveyor belt guy would chase the ice-cream truck yelling STOP ICE CREAM MAN STOP as the driver looked in the mirror and sped up just a little to get that person to run faster.  I choose to just stand there and wait for this game to stop – while eating an ice cream cone!

Delays at Airports

You rush through security, you get to your gate and you see the dreaded 20 minutes delayed for your flight.  Now, frequent travelers know that airport delay times are like dog years, you have to do a conversion to understand the true impact.  20 minutes delay means that the plane hasn’t even left yet from the airport it is coming from, but the airlines do not want to give you enough notification so you can actually go somewhere for the 2 hours it will take (best case) to get here.  Rather the delay time is updated in 20 minute increments with the announcement saying – even though were telling you there is no way the flight can get here, you have to stay in the boarding area. 

That leaves us stranded travelers searching out the three most valuable commodities during airport delays

1.       An outlet.  People will camp out next to an overflowing dumpster just to be able to plug in their phone or laptop

2.       Decent food.  I don’t know why I do it, but I will look at a sandwhich and even though I know that the 7 other times I have had it, it tasted like cardboard…I still go for #8.  WHY do I think this time will be different?

Using Overhead Space

I am not sure if people understand the proper use of overhead space.  This space is for carry-on luggage.  I could go into how people try to fit these oversized bags into this tiny space when the laws of measurements dictate that it won’t happen.  However, I am going in the other direction.  I come on with my properly sized carry-on bag and go to put it in the overhead space by my seat.  What’s there – another bag? Nope. Rather a hat. Or a suit-jacket.  A Hat? Seriously? You couldn’t wear it or put it on your lap on a full flight?  And your suit jacket? The proper protocol is for you to put your jacket on-top of your bag – not lying down taking up a whole spot for a bag.  And when I ask – it becomes like a desert scene – tumbleweeds blowing across the aisle… no one says a word

Sitting on the Plane

You think that this would be the easiest part of the trip.  Get to your seat, sit down and either hold on with white knuckles, or kick back and relax depending on your point of view.  If it were only that easy!  Once I sit down, here are, in no particular order, the things that will ultimately happen:

·         The person getting into the seat behind me will continuously pull down on the back of my seat when getting up or down – causing me to either spill my drink, drop my phone, or get more dizzy than when I rode space mountain in Disney World

·         The person in front of me will recline their seat all the way back, crushing my knees, snapping my laptop shut on my fingers, all while giving me a birds-eye view of their scalp

·         I will be reading a book, in fact I will have the book right up to my face like I am trying to burrow my way into it, and the person next to me will feel that somehow this is body language that screams, lets engage in a conversation

·         I will sit in the Aisle seat and when “window seat person” either comes in or out of the row, they don’t even wait for me to get up and let them in/out, they just squeeze right by me.  Let me tell you, face first, back first, it doesn’t matter – there is no good way to do this.

Getting off the plane

There is this rule of “turns” that we learned when we are 2 or 3 years old.  You know, as in, there is an orderly fashion for things and we all take our appropriate turn. This rule does not go away just because you are on a plane.  So, when it comes time to de-board the plane, that doesn’t mean that last one out is a rotten egg.  It means that we orderly get up according to row, get your bags and leave the plane.  And while I understand catching a connection, there is such a thing as courtesy where you say excuse me, rather than hip-checking me back into my seat like you are from the old Philadelphia Flyers Hockey Team.

Checking Luggage

The best I say about waiting for your checked baggage is equate it to playing a game of Russian Roulette.  You know that someone (bag) will not make it through, you just hope it’s not yours.

So the next time someone tells you about all the trips they have to take, hold off on those jealous feelings, it’s not as glamorous as it sounds!