Everyone has their own unique challenges with travel and I
am no exception.
Not surprisingly I have my own too.
Mine revolves around the population that is defined as the
fellow traveler for the most part and other well meaning friends and
acquaintances.
The issue is always the same.
“What are we flying on today?” the person will ask.
“A plane” I mumble struggling to locate the seat belt which
is buried in the cleft between my seat and this other, contorting the body
which is anyway already contorted with limited leg room.
“Not that…I meant… what have we here”, looks at the handout
with instructions for an emergency, “a Boeing 7-some number-7” with a knowing
look.
“Hope it is better than the last one that I flew on. The
food was hopeless. But then again XXX Airlines has the same plane with a screen
in front of the seat, not like this where we need opera glasses not that it
helps with the glare of the lights. …
Also these modern planes are too quiet. You worry whether we
are flying at all. I prefer the noisy Caravelle or Fokker from the old days
personally….
The latest Airbus apparently has better leg room but these
airlines are so cheap they don’t even offer candy nowadays, why will they buy
planes which have lesser seats…
The seats are another issue. I like the combo of 2-aisle-3-aisle-2.
Some planes have that still even for long haul flights….
After all this they are still late and they always lose my
luggage somewhere along the way…”
You would have noted from my clever and subtle use of
punctuation that the multiple dots represent the parts of the rave, rant and
ramble that I would have faded out of unknowingly. The inverted comma that
started from “Hope it is better...” ended only in the para above which means
that I did not need to respond anyway.
By then the attendant would announce that the Sydney LA
flight was at journey’s end and soon I would saunter past my erstwhile fellow traveler still waiting
for his or her luggage wondering….if only they reinstate the earlier practice
of distributing cotton balls to passengers I for one wouldn’t mind paying more
for the seat.
Then comes the next bit. Your host receives you and
complains about the timing of the flight and how they had to take off a whole
day from work but couldn’t work from home as the PC conked out or something.
Then you have to make a presentation of the various airlines
on this route and justify the reason for taking this flight.
Then comes the embarrassing aspect of the fare for the
ticket. Without bothering to ask after me , that has to be the first question
in question. I would have always paid an exorbitant fare based on the
incredulous eye-brows lifted “really” from the listener.
Of course I would have tried several travel agents, the
airline office and the internet but that has to be explained in full...all
futile anyway what with the oncoming jet lag things can only go downhill from
here.
And months later all this has to be reviewed threadbare in most social situations.
And so it goes…awfully sorry to stop this abruptly but I
have a plane to catch and fellow travelers to bond with…
