A Bad Trip

How I got to sunny California...

A lot of people say they “love to travel” and I think those people are pretty much full of shit because what we actually love is “being places” while the traveling part of “getting places” is a titanic pain in the ass.

For instance:

I was one of the people that had a trip cancelled when the Shit Hit the Southwest Airlines Fan so I rescheduled my trip, but stuck with Southwest because switching to another airline was going to cost me hundreds of dollars and I was hoping Southwest would pull it together by the time I traveled.

So…

I’m trying to get to LA to see my son and when I’m about five minutes from the Kansas City airport I get a text from Southwest Airlines saying my flight has been delayed and will now leave 40 minutes later than me and a bunch of other people had planned on.

Travel Tip Number One:

Getting up at the ass-crack of dawn really sucks, but if you travel early in the day there’s less chance your flight will be delayed because if you travel at a more civilized hour your plane might be late getting out of Dallas (mine was) so it will then arrive late in KC (mine did) and you might miss your connecting flight in Denver.

But Southwest assured all of us that we’d make our connecting flights as long as we did our best Usain Bolt imitation once we got to Denver and raced from one end of the airport to the other, which I did, and the gates were so far apart I think I changed time zones twice, but nevertheless arrived in time to board my flight to LA.

BTW: I waited in line with a guy wearing every piece of TCU paraphernalia ever made and he was on his way to LA to watch the National Championship in So-What Stadium and people were wishing him luck. He informed all of us that his Horned Frogs would beat the odds and the Georgia Bulldogs, plus he told me he was from Houston and I wanted to say if things start going badly, go ahead and cheat, just like your Houston Astros did, which I didn’t say out of politeness and a deep desire to avoid a fistfight with an enraged Texan.  

Turns out, his Horned Frogs got their asses handed to them by about 651 to 7 so at least one guy had a shittier trip than I did. (Man, I seem to be using more profanity than usual, but you try flying Southwest without swearing.)

Anyway…

I made it on the plane and got a first-row bulkhead seat and grabbed it even though it was a middle seat because I like the extra legroom and being first off the plane, although I misjudged how (and here let’s go with “overweight” because apparently it’s now politically incorrect to call fat people “fat”) the guy on my left turned out to be and he was invading about 17% of my space with his right arm.

When I sat down, he said:

“I don’t know if these seats are getting smaller or I’m getting larger.”

To which I replied:

“I think it’s a combination.”

Nevertheless, even though I was giving up the Golan Heights of my seat’s territory I figured it was only 2 hours and 45 minutes and I was lucky to be on the plane at all, which didn’t turn out to be the case.

Folks, there’s been a slight delay

I’m under the impression that one of the lessons pilots learn in flight school is to never, ever tell the passengers how long a delay is actually going to be because they might form a mob and demand safe passage to Cuba so even if they have to replace the airplane’s entire left wing you get on the intercom and tell your passengers:

“Folks, there’s been a slight delay, but we’ll be pushing back from the gate in about ten minutes.”

After that, flight school 101 then suggests pilots make the “ten minutes” announcement every half hour.

So 30 minutes later the pilot gets on the intercom and blames the baggage handlers because some of us late-arriving passengers had our late-arriving baggage thrown on top of the on-time baggage and now everything had to be rearranged because as the pilot informed us you need a good “center of gravity” to take off and fly, so if someone had a shitload of Louis Vuitton luggage thrown in at the last second we might veer off to the overweight side and make an unscheduled stop at the nearest Rocky Mountain.

Travel Tip Number Two:

Do not bitch about delays that are caused by making sure the airplane actually stays in the air because if you want to save time, do you really want to save time by skimping on airplane maintenance?

My general attitude is take all the time you need to make sure the airplane flies 100 percent of the way to our destination and maybe also have a supervisor drop by and make sure the mechanic tightened each and every bolt and I’ll be happy to wait while you do that.

Word of warning to whom it may concern:

If you have diabetes and recently flew on Southwest flight 2268 from Denver to LA and had to wait through a long delay, you probably ought to stop reading now because you’re really not going to enjoy the rest of this story.

A highly-inconvenient snack

OK, so now the airplane jolts back because the (and here let’s go with “riding mower” because I actually don’t know what they call those tractors they use to pull airplanes away from gates and right now I can’t get my hotel’s internet to work to find out the right name) and we’re moving backwards when the overweight guy next to me, undoes his seat belt, stands up, starts to crawl over me and says:

“I’m diabetic, I need a snack.”

He gets into the center aisle and opens up an overhead bin and starts pulling bags out, meanwhile a stewardess (or maybe it’s now “flight attendant” – I haven’t received my latest issue of PC Monthly) runs down the aisle saying:

“Sir, you have to get back in your seat.”

The airplane jolts to a halt and I hear a noise that sounds like metal snapping which you really don’t want to hear on an airplane you’re about to fly in and it sounded like metal snapping because it was.

The guy on the riding lawnmower was still hauling the plane toward the runway when the pilot slammed on the airplane brakes which snapped some kind of metal pin that you don’t want snapped, so after that, the plane was pushed back to the gate and then the pilot informs us that the pin needs to be fixed and then needs to inspected and after that they have to do some paperwork and it’s:

“Really important that passengers stay in their seats while the plane is moving to the runway.”

Turns out, that’s a rule so the pilot had to stop the plane when Diabetic Boy got up to get his snack.

A couple thoughts occurred to me at that point: I know diabetes is a serious issue and sometimes diabetics need to eat something right away so they don’t go into a coma which actually would have been pretty convenient for me if he slumped toward his window and not my seat. But knowing that you might need to eat, you’d think a diabetic would keep his snacks with him although I don’t have much room to talk about mental mistakes because the night before I flew I was packing my suitcase while watching a Miami Heat game and at one point wanted to turn the game volume down, but couldn’t find the TV remote.

I figured I set it down somewhere while being distracted and after searching the entire house twice, it dawned on me to check my luggage and – yup – I had packed the TV remote in my suitcase because you never know when you’re going to need one in the Greater Los Angeles area, which also suggests there’s a Lesser Los Angeles area and I know that for sure because I’ve spent time in Hollywood and once you’ve seen a urine-soaked bum passed out on Angela Lansbury’s Star on the Walk of Fame, you’ve pretty much seen everything Hollywood has to offer.

I don’t want to be overly harsh about my Diabetic Seatmate, because he was actually trying to be a nice guy, but was totally clueless that he was the one that delayed the plane leaving for an hour-and-a-half while they rebuilt the landing gear he fucked up and complained several times about the delay he unwittingly caused.

All’s well that ends well…maybe

So I finally made it to LA two hours later than scheduled, but figured my Bad Trip was over which now seems unlikely because I got here just in time for one of the biggest storms to ever hit California and it was raining so hard animals were going two-by-two down Pico Boulevard.

So now I just have to tread water for a week before I fly home, but what could possibly go wrong with that part of the trip?

I’m flying Southwest.