Travelling Man

I actually wrote this entry before the last one, but couldn't let it be the 100th post.

I'm on my third plane in a week now, and many things came back to me quickly. I forgot how much I dislike the actual act of traveling, especially for work. When I was flying to New Hampshire, We pushed back from the gate and immediately went into the penalty box to wait. We were on a hold because there were too many aircraft that needed to taxi and not enough room to put them all and still handle the inbound aircraft taxiing to their gates. So we waited until we could get a number to take off. 35 minutes later, the captain comes on and tells us that we are going to start our taxi, but it would still be a while before we were airborne as we were number 46 for departure. That's 45 aircraft in front of us. If everything goes perfect, it's 90 seconds per departure. Four thousand fifty seconds. Sixty-seven and a half minutes more before we're even in the air. Once we did get airborne they managed to cut about 15-20 minutes out of the route, So it was for 33 minutes. I honestly could have driver to New Hampshire faster than the whole process took.

Flying home was fairly innocuous other than the fact the flight was at 6:50 in the morning. I'm definitely now what anyone would consider a morning person. I was going through security and emptied everything I normally do. I've even been broken down to the point where I take off my shoes if they're not sandals (I still refuse to walk through barefoot). I walk through the metal detector and the person tells me to empty my pockets fully. I didn't set it off. I have NOTHING metal in my pockets. All that is left in my pocket is my wallet. I NEVER put my wallet through the X-Ray because I don't want to leave it unattended. I tell him it's just my wallet and he says he doesn't care it has to go through. I say fine and go through his little game. I go through, again don't set off the metal detector, but I'm sent for additional screening. Now you are told to always face your belongings during this. While I was being hand wanded and patted down, I'm told to turn around so they can do the other side. I say I need to keep an eye on my belongings. He said "we're watching them, you need to turn around sir." Against my better judgement (and knowing the next flight is a few hours away) I turn around. I go through all of this and guess what, they find nothing. I was wearing lacrosse shorts and a T-shirt. Not much place to hide anything. I go and collect all my items and go on my merry way. I went out to dinner and my debit card was declined. I thought that was odd, put it on a different card and planned on calling my bank when i got home to see what was going on. Literally as I'm walking in to my apartment, my bank calls me asking me to verify some recent transactions. I"m able to verify all but one that was to an on-line bookstore. They immediately cancelled the card and are sending me a new card. I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but I can't help but think that someone grabbed the number while my wallet was sitting on the belt.

Now we come to today. There were storms in and around the Newark area. Arrivals were delayed an average of 1 hour. Being the professional traveller that I am, I looked ahead of time and saw that the aircraft making up my flight was delayed on it's inbound flight. I still get to the airport about when I normally do, about an hour before departure. I get to the gate 45 minutes before departure and my flight is listed as on time, but there is no aircraft at the gate. It shows up about 30 minutes to departure and needs to be deplaned, catered and cleaned. about 10 minutes before the scheduled departure, the gate agent comes on and says that the plane hasn't been cleaned yet, that as soon as they get a cleaning crew there, they'd go ahead and board us, and that our departure time was moved back 15 minutes. They board first class, and the cleaners are still finishing up in coach, and then exit the aircraft. The official reason for our late departure? "Waiting for connecting passengers" Now that may have been true, but there were no breaks in the boarding process, and as soon as the last person was on the plane, they immediately shut the door so we could push back and wait to taxi because of the storms.