by Jon Waldrep
On the almost four-hour plane ride from Seattle to Anchorage, the nerdy guy sitting next to me really, really wanted to have a long conversation about all of the Resident Evil games and movies, including what my opinion was about each one and how I would rank them and which ones had the best CGI, etc. I asked him how much he knew about massive genital warts somehow forming in the shapes of former famous presidents’ heads, not unlike a little Mt. Rushmore in your underpants. Surprisingly, we did not talk much after that.
Who decided that you had to have a PhD to figure out how to set the alarm on a hotel clock?
Just went through security at Fairbanks Airport. It was me and seven TSA agents. Not another soul in sight. It took fifteen seconds to get through. I felt like I was sneaking on the best ride at Disneyland in the middle of the night.
So today, as I was driving to Reno, a woman driving a U-Haul moving van almost ran me off the road (and over the side of the mountain) when she tried to get into my lane with me in it. After getting back on the road (and peeing myself ever so slightly), I passed her and just drove on. Ironically, about twenty minutes later, I was at a rest stop talking on the phone when who should pull in? Yes, the U-Haul death dealer. I went up to her and said, "Hey, no biggie, but you almost killed me back there. I'm just saying..."
She replied nonchalantly, "Oh, really? Sorry about that," and that was it. I left. It was the most anti-climactic, near-death, road rage experience ever.
Yes! Only 950,246 miles to go to be a Million Miler on my airline card!
I just spent ten minutes looking for my car in a parking lot. Oh yeah, that's right – I’m thousands of miles from home and driving a rental.
Ok, in hindsight, it’s not a good idea to start a two-hour drive with a couple of bran muffins and a huge energy drink...
I dutifully passed through the TSA scanner, assuming the awkward, frozen-in-time, jumping jack position with my feet in the yellow footprints on the mat. Then, I walked out and put my feet, once again, on the yellow footprints, waiting for the crossing guard (I mean super-motivated TSA agent) to give me the thumbs up and let me retrieve my belt, shoes and 11 pounds of loose change from the plastic bin at the end of the conveyor belt. That’s when I got the bad news. “Sir,” the TSA agent told me, “I’m afraid we’ve detected a groin abnormality in your scan.” I looked back at the scanner, and, sure enough, my Lego-man, yellow outline of a body had a small, red square smack dab in the general vicinity of tighty-whiteyville.
“Do you think it’s the steel plate in my right testicle?” I asked. “Not everyone who served in Occupy Wall Street came back in one piece, buddy.”
The TSA agent was not amused. “I’m going to need you to go with these two agents, please,” he said, indicating the Of Mice and Men pair who had joined the party. I was led into a small room and given a brief explanation of how this was going to go down. I noted immediately the complete and utter lack of enthusiasm the pair seemed to have for the job at hand. The one who seemed to be in charge explained the hilarity that was about to ensue. “Sir,” he said in a flat voice, “because of the result of your scan and the area in question, we are required by law to conduct a search of your, um, well, that area. You will be able to leave your pants on.” He clearly was not looking forward to this. “Do you have any questions?”
“No. I get it. You’re going to feel me up. Go trout fishing in America. Put your thumb on the scale. Say hello to my little friends. Cast a wide net and haul in your limit of genitailia. Yeah, I get it.” He had no response to this, but just began his (surprisingly gentle) cupping. At this point, my goal was to make him as uncomfortable as possible. So, while he cupped and poked, as if he were trying to determine if a fresh loaf of bread was done, I keep up a steady patter. “It’s funny, but my wife and I met this way. You know, we would be legally married in 11 states by now. Am I supposed to be feeling tingly all over? If you want me to cough at any time, just let me know. Do I feel a little uneven to you? I have been told I have a bit of a dangling participial on the right. I don’t know if this is a full service pat down, but my inner thigh is a little tight. This is weird, but I’m having a senior prom flashback.” And then, thankfully, it was over, and I was on my way. But not without two new, special friends and a pair of underwear sure to evoke memories from that point forward.
The worst thing about early morning flights: "Hey, isn't this the same (slightly damp) towel I used to dry off four hours ago?”
I’m in the airport in Seattle waiting for my flight to Anchorage. A few seconds ago a young couple sprinted by at almost a full on run, awkwardly lugging their bags, pushing a stroller and clutching their boarding passes like winning lottery tickets. They were both sucking in air like the fat kid in P.E. and the panicked look on their faces said it all, ‘We are about to miss our flight.” In contrast, the little three-year -old in the stroller was so happy, grinning ear-to-ear, waving her arms in the air and practically screaming, “Go faster Mommy! Go faster!” Sometimes life offers you a glimpse of beautiful contrast.
Apparently, the A/C in my hotel room only has two settings: off and full-throttle, freezing, Arctic air, gale force wind storm cold enough to freeze your snot and totally invert your testicles. I'm having a hard time deciding which one to go with.
Judging from the noise coming from the hotel room above me, it seems to be occupied by Thumper, a Mexican wrestler, a couple of Mandrake plants, Charlie Brown's teacher and some guy who made one trip too many to the all-you-can-eat Vindaloo chicken buffet.
While flying home today there was this guy in the Seattle airport who totally looked like he should be an international assassin. I was very tempted to go up to him and say, “I thought Jason Bourne killed you.”
Note to self: not a good idea for anyone involved to hang out the "do not disturb" sign when naked.
Driving back from Fresno yesterday, I got into an ugly fight with my GPS. She said some things that were just wrong. I said some things I later regretted. She is just so stubborn and rigid and unyielding. I like to mix things up once in a while. Anyway, I think we're OK now.
I have a new clock app on my Kindle. I got it specifically so I could use my Kindle as a nightstand clock with an alarm that was easier to use than the typical PhD-highly-suggested, IQ of 197 plus required hotel clock radio. Last night, I set the alarm and fell blissfully asleep while the neon green, analog numbers softly bathed the room in a dim glow suitable for a scene in a Ridley Scott Alien movie. I was in a deep sleep when the alarm went off this morning: a loud, slumber-shattering, Pokémon seizure-inducing, high-pitched beeping that is the electronic equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. I shot straight up in bed with one thought and one thought only: How do I turn this thing off? In my cheery state of setting the alarm last night, I didn’t go so far as to figure that out. Holding my Kindle, each jarring note of the alarm hitting me like a hellish combination of a dentist’s drill and a dozen mosquitos mating in my eardrum, I pushed and slid and swiped everything I could see on the screen to no avail. The alarm continued to warn of impending tsunamis and an imminent German air raid. OH MY GOD, MUST MAKE IT STOP! I tried closing the app, but that didn’t work. I opened it again and went into the menu, looking for a way to end the madness, but there was nothing there. SWEET, BLESSED JESUS AND ALL THAT IS HOLY, WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO? I fiddled and fussed and then, as I imagined an angry mob of hotel guests armed with pitchforks, clubs and torches (and maybe a Kindle of their own! Gasp!), it hit me. YOU IDIOT, JUST TURN IT OFF! Pushing down on the power button with enough pressure to stop blood from spurting out of a major artery, and with the alarm from hell still screeching at me like a cheated-on girlfriend, the Kindle greeted me with this screen: “DO YOU WANT TO SHUT DOWN YOUR KINDLE?” followed by two buttons reading “Shut Down” and “Cancel.” At that moment, I had never wanted anything so badly in my life. I tapped, tapped, tapped the “Shut Down” button like one of Poe’s ravens and watched as the Kindle’s screen turned black and, FINALLY, off. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
WAIT A MINUTE…THE ALARM IS STILL GOING! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? Had I downloaded an app from the future? Was my Kindle being run by some demonic creature from Hell? Am I being punked? Did someone just really, really want to make sure I didn’t oversleep? I jumped out of bed thinking that I might be able to flush the Kindle down the toilet. That’s when I noticed my cell phone on the floor, where I had apparently knocked it to in the middle of the night. OH YEAH, I had set the alarm on my phone as a back-up, just in case, and it was my phone, not my Kindle, that was beeping like R2-D2 high on meth and a bad can of WD-40. I turned off my phone, and the room was once again silence. Oops. My bad. And my Kindle app? It never did turn on the alarm. I’m going back to bed.
If little Jonny goes on a trip for 7 days and needs one pair of socks and one pair of underwear for each, day how many pairs total does he need of each? I don't know the answer, apparently, because I have 8 pairs of socks and 6 pairs of underwear. This new math is killing me!
Aside from the carpool lanes and the regular lanes, we need a lane designated "really old men wearing hats with the blinker still on."
Because I've been flying so much for work, I've been elevated in the airlines’ caste system from a guy for whom an upgrade was pretty much untouchable to a guy who maybe gets a bump up to first class every three or four flights. That little taste of seventh heaven has really soured me on the cattle car that exists behind the magic curtain. It's not the snob appeal. It's not the somewhat superior food or drink. It's not even the fact that I can get out of the plane 10 seconds after they open the door. No, it's really all about the first-class seat.
Back in coach, the section 8 airline housing for the 98%, some sadist determined that three across seating on either side of the plane with an aisle just wide enough for a fashion model on meth to shimmy through would work out just fine. It hasn't. The three-across seating method makes for a lose-lose flying experience. Let's examine each seat so that I may prove my point.
The window seat: There are some positive things that come with the window seat. Not surprisingly, having a window is one of them. But if you fly a lot, the magic of imagining cumulus clouds as big puffs of cotton and little miniature buildings and cars as, well, little miniature buildings and cars soon wears off. Whenever there is actually something of note to look at (cue your captain telling you to look out the right side of the aircraft to see some mountain, a lake, or the lights of Winnemucca, NV), the person in the middle seat is going to lean over and crane their head to and fro so that they, too, can see whatever wonderfulness is out there. If the exact, questionable scenario were happening in a parked car and a cop went by, you would get a quick burst of white light, a couple seconds of flashing lights and sirens, and a deep voice coming over the PA speaker telling you to 'move along'. The window seat also requires that you have a bladder the size of an ostrich egg, because when the window seat person needs to get up and go, aisle and middle-seat folks need to dislodge and shuffle over and out like guests on a late-night talk show. Finally, if a Canadian goose makes a wrong turn and become mock foie gras after getting sucked into an engine, you'll be among the first to know and will have a front-row seat to impending disaster. I don't want to be the messenger on that one.
The middle seat: Much like the Susan B. Anthony dollar, the middle seat has virtually no redeeming features. Unless you are a rail-thin contortionist and can fold your shoulders like your expensive headphones, inward and flat against your body, you are going to be uncomfortable. Murphy's Law of the middle seat states that the probability is high you will have a sumo wrestler on one side of you and a big 'ol hillbilly (softly humming ”Dueling Banjos” under his breath) on the other. There's nothing worse than spending three hours between the proverbial rock and hard place, unable to exhale fully while your arms are folded high and tight across your chest like an extremely disappointed hall monitor.
The aisle seat: The aisle seat is still my seat of choice despite its many shortcomings. The upside is that I can stand up in the aisle without having to do the funky chicken slide and scoot when coming from the window seat. The down side is really all about that winning hypothesis which states two solid objects can't occupy the same space. My shoulders are wider than the actual seat, meaning there is always a part of me hanging out there in the aisle that the airline has deemed as fair game. If I had a quarter for every time my shoulder or elbow has been clipped by the corner of the stainless steel beverage cart, I could afford to buy my own upgrades for life. But the worst thing about the aisle seat is when two people going in opposite directions decide to pass each other in the aisle in your general vicinity. What is almost physically impossible can only happen if each of those people protrudes way in towards the seat. That is when you find yourself with a face full of either someone's crotch or someone's ass as those two people make enough physical contact to be considered married in about 11 states.
I watched a flight attendant put a verbal smack down on a kid today, and it was beautiful. As our flight was getting ready to take off, a couple of minutes after the announcement had been made to turn off all electronics, a 20-something-year-old guy in a seat across the aisle was still playing around with his tablet when an older, very sweet-looking flight attendant came our way. When she got to our row she looked over at the young man and said very nicely, “Excuse me, sir, I’m going to need you to turn that off now.” Without looking up, the kid muttered, “In a minute” in a tone that any parent would instantly recognize as young people speak for, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CAN’T YOU SEE I’M BUSY DOING SOMETHING? PLEASE JUST LEAVE ME ALONE FOR TWO MINUTES WHILE I FINISH THIS THING I’M DOING OF MONUMENTAL IMPORTANCE THAT YOU DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND, JEEZ, AND OMG, STOP BUGGING ME! The flight attendant smiled and said, “Sir? Sir?” until the kid finally looked up at her. “Turn…that…off…right…now,” she said in a tone that would have made Dirty Harry pee his pants, accentuating each word like she was speaking to a naughty two-year-old or a shoe-chewing puppy. The pleasant smile was still there, but the eyes were flinty blue steel like David Banner’s before turning into the Hulk. It was subtle, but it was there. It was awesome. The kid’s eyes got big, and his jaw literally dropped, and he froze for a second. If he had been a deer he would have been certain road kill. When he snapped back, he got the tablet turned off in about three seconds. He looked at the flight attendant like a guilty Catholic schoolboy about to get his knuckles smacked on by an industrial-strength ruler. “Thank you,” the flight attendant said simply and sweetly before moving on. I wanted to cheer. It was a beautiful thing.
On my way to Las Vegas for three days of meetings and seven minutes of fun. Going through security, I asked the TSA guy if my fruit basket would be affected by the X-ray. "You have a fruit basket in there?" he asked. "No. It was more of a hypothetical question," I said. Hey...I just wanted to leave him with food for thought.
Sitting next to three nuns in the Portland Airport. One has an iPad, one has a laptop, and one has a new smart phone. Is there a God? I guess there's an app for that!
The alarm clock in my hotel room didn’t work. I called the front desk to see if I could get another one.
Front Desk: Can I help you?
Me: Hey, my alarm clock isn’t working. Can I get another one?
Front Desk: Oh. What’s wrong with it?
Me: You can’t see the numbers.
Front Desk: What numbers?
Me: The numbers that you need to see to actually determine the time. What a minute! Did I get a room for clairvoyants?
Front Desk: For what?
Me: Never mind. So this clock is broken. Can I get another one?
Front Desk: Is it plugged in?
Me: Sweet Jesus! I thought it was powered by hydrogen. Let me check. Yes, it is plugged in.
Front Desk: Did you dim it?
Me: I may have tried to Dim sum it. Not great. Tasted like chicken.
Front Desk: Chicken?
Me: No, I didn’t dim it.
Front Desk: Oh, OK. So, do you w
ant another one?
Me: I’m pretty sure that’s why I called.
Front Desk: OK, I’ll have someone from housekeeping bring you one in about 10 minutes.
Me: Man, if only I could determine the passing of time to know when 10 minutes have expired.
Front Desk: Sorry?
Me: Me too. Thanks.
So, I'm driving down the freeway today with the windows half open (my A/C stopped working the other day) when I look over and see a wasp the size of a cocktail wiener doing the Macarena on the inside of the passenger side window. No worries, I think as I push the button to lower the window. He'll just fly out when it's all the way down, right? Wrong. Somehow the physics got all wonky and the man-killing wasp was propelled like a rocket to the right side of my neck. After screaming like a little girl, I grabbed the first thing I could find to defend myself. It happened to be my Kindle, which was charging on the passenger seat. Anyone driving by me at this point would have looked over and seen a guy in a panic, screaming obscenities while beating himself senseless about the head and neck with a Kindle. I finally landed a lethal blow, and the demon wasp landed on the passenger seat, feet up and motionless. With a great sense of relief, I continued down the highway, hoping my underwear was slightly damp as a result of sweating in the heat and not as a result of the much less desirable alternative. Suddenly, in the tradition of every slasher movie ever made, the seemingly dead wasp rose up and starting buzzing around the car again. What the hell? WHAT THE HELL? This time, I pulled off the freeway and went mano-a-mano with the little bastard until it was pulp. DIE, WASP, DIE!!! After a quick victory dance, I was back in the car and on my way with all the windows up.
