Travel is Really Really Fun! Yay!

It is never a happy day when I have to leave the best fiance in the world and head back to the midwest. The most recent return trip:

Sunday, October 22nd. Boarded aircraft, 12:25 p.m.

The flight was scheduled to leave at 12:55. When I stepped onto the plane, it creaked like an old ship. An old rotting ship. And old rotting ship that is longing to crumble into a pile of very fine sawdust. As we unsuspecting passengers gingerly walked to our seats, the ancient plane took on the persona of the Tin Man, moaning woefully as though each step we took was tearing it a new aero-butthole. This aircraft, my friends, had seen too much action. If it had been a horse, its name would have been Methusela and they'd have shot it a decade ago as it gummed at a stale old sugarcube.

There were slipcovers over the seats that were worn and dirty, and those were covering the original seats, which were old enough to have held the still-perky derriere of Phyllis Diller as she flew to her first appearance in the Catskills.

The night before my flight home, I had dreamed that my plane went down. We were in a steep, horrible nosedive, the G-force pushing us all out the top of our seat belts. Then we abruptly landed, safely, and the pilot walked back into the cabin and said "Now. If you'll each give me 200 dollars, I won't have to do that to any other people." I was so infuriated at him that I held his face down in gravel and ground his flesh into the rocks like I was grating cheese. He tried to explain to me that he only needed the money to go see his mother, but I said "See how your mother likes your new face, you dumb bastard." It never occurred to me to ask him why he didn't just fly to go see his idiot mother.

Back in reality again. When we'd all been sitting in the plane so long that it was hot and stuffy and beginning to smell rank, the pilot came on the speaker and told us there was an instrument malfunction, and that "we're gonna do our best to fix it, fokes." The bad dream was going to come true. I started to sweat.

25 minutes later. "We're still trying to fix it and get you on your way to Dallas. But nothing we've done so far seems to be working. Heh heh." My sweat turned to the little beads above the upper lip that accompany such things as a zealous strip search, or the approach of a hypodermic needle the size of a javelin. I had to get my mind off of my imminent death in this crippled aircraft. I decided to grade papers. I reached up and turned the little knob that lowers the tray table. The tray table fell off into my lap. I shit you not. The whole thing.

30 minutes after that. "We're not going to be able to use this plane today, fokes. We're going to have to park it. You'll need to gather your belongings and make other arrangements inside the terminal."

There was much cursing and gnashing of teeth.

I can't even go on with the rest of this. It would take me the better part of the wee hours to finish writing it. And there is no alcohol in the house. And I would have to fully lubricate my inhibitions in order to admit to you the things I yelled when, after originally purchasing 2 $3.00 bottles of "secure" airport water, the security hacks made me throw it away, unopened, as I came back into their holy, sanctified secure area after booking another flight. But I will tell you that there is a very fine line between shouting things that insult the airline and all who are employed by it and their morally ambiguous mothers and the horses they rode in on, and being detained by the airport police. Tread carefully.

But really, the strip search wasn't that bad. They never even found my I-pod.