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Published: September 5th 2006
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Johnny*s American + Canadian Trip
John Bones The first thing I hear about my flight to San Francisco is about something broken down. What a great start! My first time overseas and the plane hasn’t left yet, and something has gone wrong. The announcement is about a video screen that hasn’t retracted and people in row 50 and beyond are going to be inconvenienced. I really couldn’t care less myself, I’m in row 34, by the window and the only mechanical fault that I would care about was if the wings of the plane fell off.
I have a feeling that I am on death row. I’ve farewelled my family hours ago, and my friends only a few days ago. Thanks to modern day events, there’s no way anyone could see me off at the departure gate. I had to go through customs, an X-ray machine, a bag search, a frisk, a shoe search, and then I had to show my passport again before I got on the plane.
It wasn’t too long before I got out of Sydney though - the plane wasn’t held up too much by that dodgy video screen. Each time I fly, I whisper three words - “Here we go”
- before the plane speeds up for take off. This time was no different, but as I peered out of my window, I bid farewell not just to Sydney but also Australia.
Immediately, I changed my clocks to San Francisco time to get used to the Pacific Time Zone straight away. United Airways try their best to help you adjust to the time changes as we had dinner at 4pm Sydney time - I couldn’t help but sneak a peek back - followed by lights out at 7pm (2am San Francisco time).
Lights out usually means its time to bed down - but I had to be sitting next to a compulsive fidgeter. There wasn’t a full minute that I’d shut my eye and get bumped by this lady that just couldn’t sit still. At least she would get up for the toilet every now and again which made it easy for the whole row just to go at the same time.
Also, in front of me sat some jerk that thought it was really intelligent to slam his seat back during important times - during meal times, sleeping and work. Ok, I admit that I am
on holidays and I brought some unfinished assignments to do before emailing them back home when I get to a computer somewhere in the states. I’m entitled to do my work without having the fidgeter bumping me every now and again and some jerk off bludgeoning my knees with his seat. I figured I might as well make the most use of my knees before they would get amputated so I decided to give a little back to him.
It wasn’t too long before I had a major victory - Mr Jerk went off and found another seat somewhere else! Mrs Fidgets then moved into the seat in front of me and made friends with the lady that sat next to her as well. Poor lady.
I had slept for about two hours before Miss Fidgets came back to her own seat. The poor lady in front probably told her to scram and once again, she would start fidgeting. She’d look in her bag, scratch her arms, rub her elbow on the armrest, wipe dust off her pants, and adjust her back into the seat and if she had found the comfortable position, she’d readjust in no longer
than 30 seconds. I can assure you she’d probably be very comfortable if it was legal for me to haul her out and strap her to the wing. She’d have all the room she could afford.
The sun was rising in the far east and I peered out of the window, scanning the horizon. No sight of land as of yet! We had about four hours left to fly before landing in San Francisco, and according to my calculations, that was at least 480 times I would get irritated by Miss Fidgets. She overstepped my tolerance zone only 3 minutes after making this calculation, so I lifted up the armrest and slammed it back down. That was the end of that. It’s fair to say that the 476 other irritations probably did occur, but I was too tired to care. I was in dreamland.
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Mezza Applehands
non-member comment
My rusty 2 cents
Yeah reminds me of the time when my flight from Toronto to Vancouver got cancelled 'coz it was discovered (after we all got seated) that a wing was weaker than it should be and that it could've fallen off midflight or somethin'. So we all got BOOTED out! Worst part was ya had to pay for the shitty plane-food!