Going Home For the Holidays
I absolutely abhor airports, airplanes, and every other horrible aspect of traveling across the country in the air. I suppose I’m “due” as it were, given that I’ve had two or three relatively uneventful flights. However, unfortunately, in my current quest to get from New York to Texas for Winter Break ranks up there with some of my worst experiences in air travel. It never ceases to dismay me how so often in a business that is founded on preciseness and expediency, every aspect of air travel can be so inefficient, so sluggish, and so incompetent.
Well in my taxi to the airport, my cab driver not only had a pile of Arabic newspapers in his trunk, but he was actually singing songs in Arabic on the drive to LaGuardia. Let me tell you, that’s exactly what a Jew in New York City wants to hear on the seventh night of Chanukah. I told Alison I. that if I ended up caught in the middle of some sort of jihad, I would need her to avenge me. I ended up feeling a bit of motion sickness in the car, which doesn’t usually happen to me. I suspect it may have been due to the fact that the cabby was blasting the heat. What fun.
Well when I made it to the airport I didn’t really have any problems checking in. In fact, by the time I made it to the gate, I had about an hour to kill. Unfortunately, this was not a harbinger for a smooth trip. The first sign of trouble was that I had to change gates three times. Oh joy of joys. Isn’t it swell when the airline is so inept that they can’t even tell you where to expect your plane to be at any given time? Grand. Well, when we finally did board the plane (it was a United Airlines flight for the curious among you) it has to have been the rinkiest of the dinkiest planes I’ve flown on since I was about twelve years old. I fear that if Star Jones had been forced to fly on this plane, they would have had to invent some manner of special human sized shoe-horn to cram her into one of the seats. Of course, I’m only being facetious. No plane would be able to take off with Star Jones on board.
When we finally became airborne, we were running about forty minutes late, which was just stellar because I had about a forty minute window for my layover in Indianapolis. There was another man on the plane transferring to Dallas, and we both expressed concern about arriving on time. The flight attendant assured us that we would arrive in “plenty of time.” I managed to sleep for about an hour of the trip, which, as oft happens when I manage to catch a few Z’s mid-flight, I woke up with a horrible pain in my neck. That was the icing on the cake. The sky above Indy was insanely foggy; looking out my window I couldn’t tell you whether we were a mile above the ground or a few hundred feet. I could barely tell you the color of the plane’s wings. We hit a fair bit of turbulence in the middle of the descent, which let me tell you was just great for my sore neck. After we landed in Indiana, it seemed like we transversed the length of the state to reach the gate. The plane finally reached the terminal and I rushed to get out. The people in front of me, however, we a pair of abhorrent boobs who continually managed to get their carry-on luggage caught on this and that, only to giggle about it instead of trying to avoid it happening again fifteen seconds later. I swear that it’s little things like this that cause people to snap.
The airline was kind enough not to give me any information as to what gate my connected flight was departing from. It turns out that not only did I have to sprint to make my flight on time (I stepped off the plane around seven o’clock while my flight was scheduled to take off at 7:10), but I had to sprint halfway across the airport to get from the U.S. Airways section to American Airlines. Not only that, but I had to go through another security checkpoint! Oh lucky me! Well, as Murphy’s law would dictate, they decided that I needed additional screening and that they needed to pat me down. They confiscated the pocket knife that my dad gave me. Believe me, they will be hearing about that. I told them that this was ridiculous and that I had a flight to catch, but they were entirely unsympathetic. I figured at this point I was screwed no matter what, but in vain, I raced through the terminal, not even knowing which gate I was looking for. What’s more, I didn’t have time to put together my stuff at the security checkpoint, so I was darting from gate to gate carrying an thrown together mish-mash of my laptop, the laptop case, my carryon bag, my leather jacket, and the lunch I packed.
Well I dashed up to the right gate, finding it by pure luck, and handed the attendant my ticket just as they were announcing that it was final boarding call to an empty waiting area. I was about thirty seconds away from spending the evening in the Indianapolis airport. You’d think that after managing, albeit barely, to get onto the plane, my troubles would be over, but oh no. I am currently sitting in the very back of the airplane, where what I can only presume is the engine, is humming so loudly that I have the volume on the laptop turned up to the max, and I can still barely hear my music, let alone hear myself think. Too add insult to injury, as I opened up my laptop and started typing this entry, the jerkass in front of me was kind enough to lean his seat back all the way. People are just so considerate, aren’t they?
Let this be a lesson to the lot of you to go into any instance of air travel expecting and preparing for the worst. Now that I have all that off my chest, let me tell you about the positives. Karol was kind enough to give me a book for Chanukah entitled “The World According to the Simpsons.” It was a very thoughtful gift and it’s a marvelous book. During this whole baffling ordeal, I managed to blow through about one hundred and fifty pages of it. A fair portion of it consists of ideas I’ve heard before, but the way the author analyzes The Simpsons, the show’s social commentary, and the show’s social impact is very compelling. Also, on this second flight the flight attendants have been very nice and considerate. So there you go. Let’s hope this trend of ineptitude does not continue, and my luggage makes it to DFW no problem.
Editor’s Note: So temporally, as I write this one paragraph (just this paragraph, not the one after it) I’m already home. Not only did I have to wait on the airplane once we’d landed because our gate wasn’t clear, but the airline proceeded to lose my luggage. That was just super, let me tell you. This was truly the trip from hell. Now back to your regularly scheduled entry.
Well, I haven’t posted any entries lately, mostly because they would be incredibly boring. The vast majority of the entries would read something like, “Well today I spent the vast majority of my day studying…and didn’t do much else. Let’s cover a couple highlights over the past few days. I went down to Chinatown with Karol and did some Chanukah shopping. Nick managed to get his hands on the Wii, so we’ve played some Wii Sports. It’s good fun. Honestly, the rest of time was pretty much studying. I just went into lockdown mode and tried to make sure I was going to do well on my finals. How did I do you ask? Well I had a take home final for Election Process, and I spent a lot of time on it. I’m already set in that class more or less, so it’s not like it was a big deal, but I felt good about what I turned in. I studied with Alison I. before my Central Problems in Philosophy final, and I hope I helped her out some. Again, I felt good about the final, and I felt like I had a solid enough grip on the material. For Ethics, I was a bit concerned going in, even though I’d studied like a maniac for the test. However, when I asked James D. to reassure me, he pointed out that in the half an hour prior to the test, I’d basically reviewed all the material for everyone sitting out in the hallway. I realized he was right, and I think (hopefully) that I knocked the test out of the park, but we’ll see. The only one I’m not sure about is Civil Liberties. It was another legal hypothetical, and I spent a whopping four hours on it. It was as grueling as it sounds. In the time I wrote a nine page legal opinion. I didn’t think I had it in me. Again, we’ll see how it goes.
And that’s pretty much where I am at the moment. There’s a lot that I’d like to get done over the break, not the least of which is taking some time to relax, de-stress, and enjoy the holiday. I hope everyone out there has a wonderful break and gets to spend some quality time with the people they care about. Here’s looking at you, kids.
Well in my taxi to the airport, my cab driver not only had a pile of Arabic newspapers in his trunk, but he was actually singing songs in Arabic on the drive to LaGuardia. Let me tell you, that’s exactly what a Jew in New York City wants to hear on the seventh night of Chanukah. I told Alison I. that if I ended up caught in the middle of some sort of jihad, I would need her to avenge me. I ended up feeling a bit of motion sickness in the car, which doesn’t usually happen to me. I suspect it may have been due to the fact that the cabby was blasting the heat. What fun.
Well when I made it to the airport I didn’t really have any problems checking in. In fact, by the time I made it to the gate, I had about an hour to kill. Unfortunately, this was not a harbinger for a smooth trip. The first sign of trouble was that I had to change gates three times. Oh joy of joys. Isn’t it swell when the airline is so inept that they can’t even tell you where to expect your plane to be at any given time? Grand. Well, when we finally did board the plane (it was a United Airlines flight for the curious among you) it has to have been the rinkiest of the dinkiest planes I’ve flown on since I was about twelve years old. I fear that if Star Jones had been forced to fly on this plane, they would have had to invent some manner of special human sized shoe-horn to cram her into one of the seats. Of course, I’m only being facetious. No plane would be able to take off with Star Jones on board.
When we finally became airborne, we were running about forty minutes late, which was just stellar because I had about a forty minute window for my layover in Indianapolis. There was another man on the plane transferring to Dallas, and we both expressed concern about arriving on time. The flight attendant assured us that we would arrive in “plenty of time.” I managed to sleep for about an hour of the trip, which, as oft happens when I manage to catch a few Z’s mid-flight, I woke up with a horrible pain in my neck. That was the icing on the cake. The sky above Indy was insanely foggy; looking out my window I couldn’t tell you whether we were a mile above the ground or a few hundred feet. I could barely tell you the color of the plane’s wings. We hit a fair bit of turbulence in the middle of the descent, which let me tell you was just great for my sore neck. After we landed in Indiana, it seemed like we transversed the length of the state to reach the gate. The plane finally reached the terminal and I rushed to get out. The people in front of me, however, we a pair of abhorrent boobs who continually managed to get their carry-on luggage caught on this and that, only to giggle about it instead of trying to avoid it happening again fifteen seconds later. I swear that it’s little things like this that cause people to snap.
The airline was kind enough not to give me any information as to what gate my connected flight was departing from. It turns out that not only did I have to sprint to make my flight on time (I stepped off the plane around seven o’clock while my flight was scheduled to take off at 7:10), but I had to sprint halfway across the airport to get from the U.S. Airways section to American Airlines. Not only that, but I had to go through another security checkpoint! Oh lucky me! Well, as Murphy’s law would dictate, they decided that I needed additional screening and that they needed to pat me down. They confiscated the pocket knife that my dad gave me. Believe me, they will be hearing about that. I told them that this was ridiculous and that I had a flight to catch, but they were entirely unsympathetic. I figured at this point I was screwed no matter what, but in vain, I raced through the terminal, not even knowing which gate I was looking for. What’s more, I didn’t have time to put together my stuff at the security checkpoint, so I was darting from gate to gate carrying an thrown together mish-mash of my laptop, the laptop case, my carryon bag, my leather jacket, and the lunch I packed.
Well I dashed up to the right gate, finding it by pure luck, and handed the attendant my ticket just as they were announcing that it was final boarding call to an empty waiting area. I was about thirty seconds away from spending the evening in the Indianapolis airport. You’d think that after managing, albeit barely, to get onto the plane, my troubles would be over, but oh no. I am currently sitting in the very back of the airplane, where what I can only presume is the engine, is humming so loudly that I have the volume on the laptop turned up to the max, and I can still barely hear my music, let alone hear myself think. Too add insult to injury, as I opened up my laptop and started typing this entry, the jerkass in front of me was kind enough to lean his seat back all the way. People are just so considerate, aren’t they?
Let this be a lesson to the lot of you to go into any instance of air travel expecting and preparing for the worst. Now that I have all that off my chest, let me tell you about the positives. Karol was kind enough to give me a book for Chanukah entitled “The World According to the Simpsons.” It was a very thoughtful gift and it’s a marvelous book. During this whole baffling ordeal, I managed to blow through about one hundred and fifty pages of it. A fair portion of it consists of ideas I’ve heard before, but the way the author analyzes The Simpsons, the show’s social commentary, and the show’s social impact is very compelling. Also, on this second flight the flight attendants have been very nice and considerate. So there you go. Let’s hope this trend of ineptitude does not continue, and my luggage makes it to DFW no problem.
Editor’s Note: So temporally, as I write this one paragraph (just this paragraph, not the one after it) I’m already home. Not only did I have to wait on the airplane once we’d landed because our gate wasn’t clear, but the airline proceeded to lose my luggage. That was just super, let me tell you. This was truly the trip from hell. Now back to your regularly scheduled entry.
Well, I haven’t posted any entries lately, mostly because they would be incredibly boring. The vast majority of the entries would read something like, “Well today I spent the vast majority of my day studying…and didn’t do much else. Let’s cover a couple highlights over the past few days. I went down to Chinatown with Karol and did some Chanukah shopping. Nick managed to get his hands on the Wii, so we’ve played some Wii Sports. It’s good fun. Honestly, the rest of time was pretty much studying. I just went into lockdown mode and tried to make sure I was going to do well on my finals. How did I do you ask? Well I had a take home final for Election Process, and I spent a lot of time on it. I’m already set in that class more or less, so it’s not like it was a big deal, but I felt good about what I turned in. I studied with Alison I. before my Central Problems in Philosophy final, and I hope I helped her out some. Again, I felt good about the final, and I felt like I had a solid enough grip on the material. For Ethics, I was a bit concerned going in, even though I’d studied like a maniac for the test. However, when I asked James D. to reassure me, he pointed out that in the half an hour prior to the test, I’d basically reviewed all the material for everyone sitting out in the hallway. I realized he was right, and I think (hopefully) that I knocked the test out of the park, but we’ll see. The only one I’m not sure about is Civil Liberties. It was another legal hypothetical, and I spent a whopping four hours on it. It was as grueling as it sounds. In the time I wrote a nine page legal opinion. I didn’t think I had it in me. Again, we’ll see how it goes.
And that’s pretty much where I am at the moment. There’s a lot that I’d like to get done over the break, not the least of which is taking some time to relax, de-stress, and enjoy the holiday. I hope everyone out there has a wonderful break and gets to spend some quality time with the people they care about. Here’s looking at you, kids.