It’s been a long, strange, and trying week. Trying to catch up with work which piled up during my last trip has been a struggle, and tensions at work have been high due to the difficult financial position in which the company has put itself. Tensions have also been high at home, and that has kept my mood somewhere just north of complete resignation. The weekend held a bit of a bright spot, things improved to a certain extent and buoyed my spirits, but they then collapsed again, just in time for me to leave on bad terms. I’m trying to concentrate on work and keep busy.
New York is crowded this week. Booking a room was a real eye-opener. Almost every hotel in Manhattan is booked solid this week, and those that still have rooms are definitely obeying the law of supply and demand … a room at the Comfort Inn (for those who don’t know, that’s a low-cost chain MOTEL) was available for a paltry $1037 per night. Luckily, my customer was able to get their travel department to bend the rules a bit and find a room for me in the neighborhood, at a reasonable rate.
I should have recognized the tell-tale signs of a horrible experience on the horizon when I arrived at the gate and heard that the plane was a little late. We boarded a half hour late. As we filed onto the 757, people for some reason were taking an extraordinarily long time to get seated. I hereby propose the following rules for airline passengers worldwide, effective immediately:
1. Learn how to count and do your ABC’s, or at least learn to READ. We don’t have time to wait while you slowly figure out that 27F is 27 rows down on the starboard (right) side, by the window.
2. When you reach your seat, GET OUT OF THE F***ING AISLE. You had plenty of time in the terminal to take off your coat, rummage around in your bag, etc., and YOU are delaying everyone behind you!
3. Once you are seated, STAY THERE. This is no time to discover you need something ELSE from your bag, or to go to the rest room (also something you could’ve done in the terminal), or to ask the flight attendant for a pillow or blanket (which you can do in the air, once the aisles are clear!)
Violators of these rules should be bodily thrown from the plane, without benefit of the inflatable escape slides. I say this because the excessive time these bozos took to board the plane (that’s not my opinion, the captain announced as much), we missed our assigned wheels-up time and therefore lost our takeoff slot. We sat at the gate from 3:30 PM until 5:30 PM waiting for a new slot, and when we were finally assigned one, we taxied out. Then at 6:00 PM, it was announced that our departure had been held by ATC due to enroute weather. We finally took off at 7:30 PM. I stepped off the plane at 9:15 PM, having sat on a plane for nearly 6 hours during the course of a flight that should have taken just under 2 hours.
New York was drizzly and a bit chilly last night, but everything else went smoothly … I had a late, light dinner and went to sleep early, and hit the ground early this morning. Again, staying busy.
As I usually say but I really mean it this time, I will get better about blogging more regularly. Maybe. 🙂