I'm Baaaaaack............

Than-kew US Airways for cancelling my Monday morning flight from Dee Cee to Charlotte at the last minute! ("Maintenance" indeed. Why don't you just come out and say "mechanical difficulties"?) Because of the extremely limited number of connector flights to my final destination, I wound up missing the one that would have put me there comfortably at mid-day and instead had to wait around for the Last Flight Out.

Actual air time between Dee Cee and my port of call? Two hours and change. Amount of time that passed between my check-in at Reagan National and my picking up the rental car at the destinational airport? About twelve hours.

I'd brought along both Flashman in the Great Game and Dave Barry Turns 50, thinking they'd last me through all of my travel time. Nope - finished 'em both before I'd left North Carolina.

Here are a few other thoughts that occured to me during travel time this week:

*** Sooper Sekret Message to the guy with the cell phone arguing with his bank about some charge or other in the boarding lounge: Dude, don't blurt out your bank account numbers in a terminal full of strangers. You never know who might be scribbling them down for nefarious purposes. And double shame on you if you are, as you looked, the sort who has gotten all bent out of shape at the prospect of Verizon turning over your call history information to the NSA. You've got a helluva lot more to fear from petty thieves than you do from Uncle.

*** Sooper Sekret Message to the woman flossing her teeth in the same lounge. Don't. Just....don't.

*** On their larger jets, US Airways uses a videotaped safety presentation at the beginning of the flight. As the plane is taxiing out, the vid screens flip down, stirring music swells forth, and a warm, friendly voice explains the seat belts, oxygen masks, life-preservers and so on. When it's done, a second voice repeats all this in Spanish. The Spanish version is much shorter than the English one. My Spanish isn't quite good enough to keep up, which leads me to wonder why this is. Is the Spanish version much more terse and authoritarian? "Hey! Siddown. Put on your seatbelt. Don't smoke. If the mask drops, use it. If we ditch, grab a seat-cushion and swim for it. Got it?"

***This was my fourth or fifth trip to the same place since the beginning of March. From Charlotte, one has to take one of those little Canadian regional jets (which, although a far cry better than the old turbo-prop, are still pretty small and cramped). Every single damned time, we've landed in a gusty cross-wind, taking about eight months off my life expectancy. This makes me think whoever laid out the runways wasn't paying all that close attention.

*** The other thing about these little jets is that one typically doesn't board via a jetway, but instead walks out on the tarmac and up a set of roller-stairs. This brings one in much more intimate contact with the workings of things, not always to the good. As we were deplaning in Charlotte last evening on my way back, I noticed the co-pilot standing in a circle of about half a dozen mechanics and gesturing earnestly at something on the plane. I pointed this out to my seatmate (another white-knuckle flyer, as it turned out) who shrugged and said, "So what? We're not getting back on."

***If you've never flown into Reagan National from the north, you may not know this but because of the various airspace restrictions around Dee Cee the glide slope does a sort of giant slalom down the Potomac River valley. This culminates in a rather sharp dog-leg right ten to fifteen seconds off the end of the runway at an alarmingly low altitude. As much as I hate it myself, I was grimly amused to see a look of alarm spreading across somebody else's face last evening as we made that last bank. Luftschaudenfreude, indeed.

***Is there any better feeling than that final touch-down? By the time I'm done with a trip, I'm usually an utterly exhausted and completely jangled bundle of nerves, alternately overstressed by too much caffeine and alchohol (I cheerfully admit that I drink on planes specifically to get buzzed.) But the feeling of release, of unclenching and knowing that I'm home and it's all over almost - almost, mind ye - makes the whole thing worth it.