Posting 9: Getting to DC (a long posting folks)

I had a 9.30pm flight out of SLC on Thursday night to DC connecting via Vegas. A short 52 minute flight topped and tailed with about 30 minutes of taxi-ing or so I thought...

You know that feeling you get when you are on a plane and there is a spare seat next to you and you hope beyond all hope that no-one sits there. I had that feeling on the way over from Auckland to LAX, i sat there sweating, just hoping that the TWO spare seats next to me would remain vacant. Luckily for me, no-one sat there and I had ALL THREE of the seats to myself for the way over. Not that it helped cause I still couldn't get any sleep, but at least I could spread out and get a little bit more comfortable. ANYWAY, the flight from SLC to VEGAS was payback for my good fortune on the long international flight..BIGTIME!

I was one of the last to get on the plane and as I wandered apprehensively down the aisle, i hoped that my window seat didn't happen to be the one next to the John Goodman lookalike (in terms of his huge mass at least). Unluckily for me it was. What made it worse was that he had a screaming three year old kid on his lap coughing and spluttering for much of the way. I couldn't sit comfortably at all he was so big that he invaded much of my space. The middle arm rest that should have seperated us, was stuck somewhere in between the rolls of fat in his gut. So I sat twisted, facing the window leaning forward since my shoulders couldn't sit flat across the seat back getting hotter and hotter as we waited for the plane to leave the gate. 15 minutes later we receive an anouncement from the pilot explaining that they have a sensor with a false reading that they need to get a tech to check out. 5 or so minutes later the tech turns up and reboots the whatever and sure enough the problem is resolved. It just goes to show that most problems with aircraft are fixed with a reboot too - Windows based PCs are not unique in this regard. another 10 - 15 minutes passes with us still stuck at the gate and the problem fixed, the Captain comes over the PA announcing that they are having difficult faxing the work order through to their head office or some rubbish and that they can't leave until it gets through...oh give me a break. All the while I am pinned to the side wall of a Canadair jet. Finally the door closes and we push back and taxi for what seems like an eternity. The pilot announes that there are a few planes ahead of him and that we are 10th in line to take off. Airports in the US are more like busy Sydney taxi ranks in terms of the amount of traffic coming in and out. Finally we get off the ground and once we reach cruising altitude the huge man with the baby, who has now acknowledged my extreme discomfort, asks the hostess if there is another seat for him and his daughter (who I believe they shouldn't have let on the plane unless she had a ticket for herself). There isn't a spare pair of seats that would be suitable, but there were a few singles. I then ask if I can move somewhere else instead and the hostess agrees. By now the screaming child has fallen asleep in her big daddy's arms. He tries to get up for 2-3 minutes but to no avail. So I tell him to forget about it - he would have woken his daughter - so I just put up with it for the duration. The moral of the story is that cheap air tickets are obviously cheap for a reason - fat man, broken plane and screaming kid. Oh and for info, CanadAir jets are very small...

Arrived in Vegas a 30 mins or so behind schedule and the relief to get out of that tiny plane was enormous. I knew for a fact that if we had crashed anywhere, I was a gonna since there was no way I would have been able to pry him from his chair, nor climb over or around him. I'll insist on aisle seats from now on.

For the short time I was there, I didn't play any of the umpteen pokies in the departure lounged, instead I SMS'ed KC who called me back on a payphone and chatted for 30 mins or so until closer to when my flight to DC was boarding. The Vegas to DC flight was uneventful - I again had an aisle seat, but the plane was MUCH bigger and the seat next to me held a little boy who got moved with his father to first class so I had some space to breathe at least! Sadly no sleep....at least only a couple of mins here and there.. :-(