Trip Commentary

First, a general comment: all 4 flights were booked to capacity. Not one empty seat on any flight. Sardines-in-a-Can syndrome is the new business model, accompanied by news articles in the on-board magazines about how expensive it is to operate an airline. And, as a matter of fact, the day of my return flight is the same day that my airline company announced that it was filing for bankruptcy protection.

Commenting on arrivals/departures: arriving early at a gate means that your plane filled with anxious flyers who want to deplane sits on the tarmac because all the gates are already filled with other anxious flyers who want to push back from the same gate your plane is trying to occupy. The joy at hearing the captain announce that we're 20 minutes early evaporates instantly.

Commenting on baggage fees: the way to avoid the $25 bag fee charged by American Airlines appears to be to stack up as much luggage as you can, breeze confidently through all the alleged screening lines, including the little stand that informs the traveler that all carry-on bags have to fit between the metal bars, then go to the head of the line of passengers wanting to board and feign ignorance when told that you cannot possibly carry all that luggage on board -- and must gate check it. See, using this little trick, you get to check your baggage BUT you don't have to pay the checked baggage fee!! Voila: not only does the savvy traveler get to fly the bags free, but they get to carry on several huge, bulky items, including over-sized duffel bags stuffed with all their worldly possessions.

How did I learn this little trick? Because I cannot lift my bag (which legally fits inside an overhead compartment, by the way) into said overhead compartment, I checked it when I checked in and was shocked to find I had to pay the $25 fee to check my one lonely, legal-sized carry-on bag. When I questioned the "free bag" idea, the clerk smiled and charged my credit card. After talking to seasoned flyers and paying attention to what all the scofflaws were doing, I followed suit and carried my bag to the gate on the trip home. Being in Group 4 for boarding, it is obvious that there will be no overhead bin space left for me upon my boarding, so I went brazenly to the gate and requested a gate check for my bag. Mission accomplished with no fee -- and my bag made it off the plane quicker than I at my destination.

Commenting on boarding: why on earth does first class board first? So we peasants in the cheaper seats can file past the elite, bumping their elbows, staring at them to see if we recognize "anyone" worth recognizing? Has no one thought about boarding from the back to the front? Or from the window seats to the middle seats, and then to the aisle seats? I was the middle on the way to, so moved the arm rests up and out of the way so I could get out when the other row sharers arrived. It amused me to see how quickly the arms came back down after they had claimed their spaces; I usually leave the arms up so we all have more elbow room. On the way coming back, I was the aisle, so I was the person bumped by every single person who walked down the aisle and back, as well as that damned beverage cart that also blocks in 8 rows of passengers at a time and will NOT be moved to accommodate anyone who has to go to the bathroom or deal with a child's dirty diaper.

Commenting on passengers: I recently read about the parents who are complaining about the "kiddie ghettoes" created at the back of planes when young children and their parents are forced to sit in the last rows to minimize the disruption to other passengers. On the flight to my destination, there were a few children; on the two legs returning home, the first leg surrounded me with a total of 5 lively, squirming, babbling, kicking children who threw snacks on the floor, screamed when they dropped their toys, leaned over the top of the seat where they were being held by a parent and reached out for the hapless traveler seated behind them. One child, noticing that I had "nothing" to do, handed me his storybook and demanded that I read him a story. When I politely refused, he complained to his mother, who was absorbed in her own book and ignored him. When he again handed me his book and told me to read to him, I told him to tell his mother to read as she seems to enjoy reading.

But my favorite mom was seated behind me on the way home, the selfish bitch mom who is used to the world accommodating her needs. After being interrupted by her very young female child (probably 4 years of age) who had to go potty, the mother told her to wait until she was done with her conversation, assuring the child that it's rude to interrupt mommy when she's talking on the phone (we had not yet departed). Of course, the child had to go potty, so the war began between taking care of a child's needs and making mommie happy. It escalated when the child wanted to play with mommie's I-Pad, but mommie screamed at her, loudly and quite suddenly, "No! No! No! That's NOT the way MOMMIE plays that game! Give me MY I-Pad. If you can't play the game the right way, you can't play it at all!"

Now, let's not get into the discussion about the appropriateness of entertaining a child with an I-Pad and focus on the lesson mommie teaches the daughter, a lesson that came back to mommie not too much later when the child changed the language on the I-Pad and mommie goes beserk. After mommie's tantrum, she demands of the child to explain why she changed the language. The child's answer was simple: because that's the way she likes HER I-Pad, so DON'T TOUCH IT!! "Leave it alone, mommie," the daughter told her when mommie tried to grab it from her.

Commenting on common courtesy: at the beginning of the last flight, the woman seated across from me, a woman who obviously does not have children (or maybe she had children but abused them viciously), threw her I-Phone onto the floor in a rage because the "damned thing" wouldn't keep its charge, then it dropped her call, and then it connected, but she couldn't hear the party on the receiving end of the call. She retrieved it in a profanity-laced rant, then started making derogatory comments about parents who bring children onto a plane before she realized the little ones were watching her actions and listening to her very, very closely.

At the end of the flight, she jumped up before the seat belt sign was turned off and started retrieving her personal items from a bin stuffed with her belongings (is there not one single airline employee anywhere who enforces the size and quantity requirements for carry-ons?). Swinging her first bag down from the bin, she hit me with it. When I spoke up and told her to be more careful, she turned toward me and told me to "watch it" because she had to get her luggage out of the bin and she had to get off the plane because she was at her limit with the crap she had to put up with on this plane.

Yeah, I stood up and intimidated her with my size, but after staring her down, I offered to help her retrieve her belongings so we all could get off the plane in a safe and orderly manner. Then, when I had her blocked behind me, hemmed in with her half-dozen bags, I directed the family with the 3 kids to gather all their belongings and go out ahead of us, including the fuming volcano behind me. They almost argued with me, but they had heard the constant string of comments about their children, so took advantage of my kindness to round up the troops and deplane.

Commenting on the travel experience, sometimes, you don't get what you want, but other times you get what you deserve.

P-New-Moan-Ya

Nothing like flying a coupla thousand miles to spend 10 vaca days sick. I thought the worst of the cold I’d hosted for the previous 10 days was over, so climbed aboard the planes and took off for T’giving. Man plans; God laughs. Evidently, somewhere along the line I introduced either bacteria or virus into my already compromised immune system and my cold became community acquired pneumonia, which seems to be pretty common in older folks especially.

Rather than touristing hither and yon, I’ve sat on a couch, feeling awful and then much worse, and watched the Hallmark Movie Channel. My dotter admits that should have been a clue, but we missed it. Sunday, I felt like death warmed over, so dotter convinced me to go to a walk-in clinic at WalMart, citing my ashen hue as an unflattering complexion color. One look by the receptionist led to the nurse on duty coming out; she said I needed the next level up and sent me to urgent care.

They were both nice and efficient, traits not often seen in CA clinics. The doc came in, assessed the situation, diagnosed the CAP, prescribed several lines of defense against it, told me it’s okay to fly back home BUT, if I am not over it by Friday, directed me to return to an urgent care for chest x-rays and blood work.

Do I feel better? Yes. Do I feel ready to return home? No. I’m tired, really, really tired – and still am plagued with “cold” symptoms that aren’t a cold. I’ll make it home and I’ll make it to work Wednesday, then I’ll sleep until I go to work Thursday. Friday, if I’m not at least 90%, I’ll go to urgent care to find out why and go from there to well again.

Another Age-Related Tragedy?

The pilot, 82-year-old former Oklahoma State Sen. Olin Branstetter, and his 79-year-old wife, Paula, also died when the plane spiraled out of control and nosedived into the forest.

There were no survivors.

I blogged about this danger previously, noting that older pilots are engaged in plane crashes far more often than younger pilots. This time, it is an athletic coach and his assistant who are the victims of a very old pilot at the stick in an airplane. I don't want to see an 82-year-old driver behind the wheel of a car, especially on a freeway: today's auto goes far too fast far too quickly for an aged driver to react appropriately in case of emergency. Put that same old-timer behind the stick in a plane that travels in excess of 100 mph and expect the worst because statistically, that's what you're going to get!

J. Edgar: Lights, Camera, but not much Action

J. Edgar is not a bad film, but it’s also not a good film. It’s disconcerting to sit and watch a film, rather than become involved in it, but that is the J. Edgar experience for me this afternoon. I anticipated a better, more engaging movie when I saw the previews, as well as the list of actors, but the totality of the characters, the acting, and the script does not live up to my expectations.

Leonardo DeCaprio is an outstanding actor and he does a credible job in the role of J. Edgar Hoover, but the script doesn’t support his acting ability. In scenes with his film mother (Judith Dench), I had flashbacks to Psycho as the relationship is creepy in a really creepy way. When it appears she is dead (hard to tell life from death due to the make-up) and her son puts on her beads and her dress, I expected him to turn away from the mirror and be in the scene in the basement with dear old mummy in the rocking chair!

And, although I’m sure the director, Clint Eastwood, intends the sexuality to be inferred through the viewer’s point of view, the film ends up as a vehicle for “outing” J. Edgar Hoover without anyone coming out and saying “he’s so gay.” Dear old Mom hints at her own disdain for Daffodils, but it doesn’t seem as if Edgar takes her words to heart. The viewer is left to believe that Edgar and his assistant, Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), enjoy a platonic love affair for darned near 50 years, and that strains both gay and straight credulity.

The shift from past to present is distracting, along with using writing a memoir as a tool to make the shifts. I like a story told chronologically so I can develop the "this is what happened, this is why it happened, and this is what resulted from the happening" understanding of the sequence of events. The emphasis on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping is made to become the turning point for the FBI, but it falls flat and feels unemotional and unimportant. The loyalty of his life-long secretary (Helen Gandy) and the secret secret Hoover files purportedly used to blackmail people in high places ends at a shredder; fade to black screen. Not only do I not believe that all those files were shredded, but I also don’t believe that a young, good-looking woman, Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts), would work for almost 50 years for a man who, first, asks her to marry him on date 3 and then turns his back on her to be with his more than loyal male “assistant,” Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), who comes across as so totally gay that even those of us who don't have any sense of gaydar know that he's gay!

I was excited when I recognized the actor who plays Michael Weston (Burn Notice), but thought he was playing one of his TV role characters, rather than Robert Kennedy, when he used a phony Boston accent and brushed his hair to the side. He's much more believable on Burn Notice than he is as Robert Kennedy.

See? Even trying to hit the high points reveals that there aren’t many and they aren’t very high. Best scene in the movie? Toss-up between Edgar’s reaction to his mother’s death and/or Tolson's reactions to Edgar’s death – and someone has to die to make the scenes work. Yeah.

Updating the Lucky Rooster

Nope, I didn't win the big one, but a couple down the highway hit the lottery for $20 million!! On the other hand, I didn't lose either: I hit 2 of my 5 quick picks for 3 numbers each, a fete I've never done before, much less twice. I don't get millions, but I do get $22.00!

Yeah, I know: don't spend it all in one place.