#294 – Flight
Posted on January 19, 2012 at 12:00 am by Chris
Chapter: Comic
It’s such a horrible feeling when you are going to miss your plane. The whole experience of air travel gives me such a powerless feeling. I’m at the whim of a gauntlet of people and metal detectors. Any of them can decide that I don’t get to fly. Adding the fact that my plane took off before I even got into the airport just multiplies it all by stomach churning proportions.
Today’s Biff knows where he is.
One of many reasons I don’t fly if it can at all be helped. It saves me from inexcusable incompetence like the time O’Hare changed my plane to depart from a gate in a completely different building from what was listed on the monitors when I got off the connecting flight an hour before and didn’t announce it until LAST CALL.
… and yet nobody understands why I am terrified of airports instead of something more normal like the actual flying part.
Sounds perfectly sensible to me; the actual flying is the only part of the experience that doesn’t suck.
I regularly have nightmares about missed trains or missed flights, where the second one is worst, and the first one often leads to the second one. Seriously, I hate those nights.
When I’m actually going somewhere I keep being overly panic about all the documents I need. I will check whether I really have my passport every 15 minutes. Inbetween I will check for the tickets 3 times. It’s manic.
All that even though (or maybe because) the trips are mostly business and I do a lot of travelling. I always hoped to get used to it but it gets worse.
I so much envy those that sit at the airport and sip their Latte while reading a newspaper and making a fully relaxed impression.
I hate the airports these days, but I love the flying. I keep thinking I should learn to fly and get my own plane. You can get a used Cessna 150 for 15-20k these days, though I’ll have to lose some weight if I want to make its load limits.
For the longest time, Will Rogers Airport up in Oklahoma City was going under renovations. When we’d go to meet relatives, we’d sometimes have to run plywood mazes from one part to the other. All those twists and turns, backtracking and stuff, and I never did get rewarded with a hunk of cheese.
I used to love flying home to Chicago just for the chance to get lost at O’Hare on the return flight. It was the fun thing about the airport, exploring and killing the 2 hours before my flight. This was 30-40 years ago. Now that Midway is fully functional again, I haven’t seen the inside of O’Hare in ages. And I hate Midway, crowded, confusing and nothing interesting about the place itself. It’s almost like a big very busy cab stand. And I’m always scared I’ll miss my flight even though I get through the rental care return with more than 2hrs to spare. The TSA lines at Midway give new meaning to long and slow.
Fortunately, living in Australia, I will never have to face that situation.
I’ve never been on a plane before. Rest assured, I’m still sufficiently scared of them.
I don’t fly anymore; I’m not going to be treated like an inmate just to travel. It’s much less energy efficient than trains anyway (about 1/6th), and travelling by train is much more relaxing; everyone’s much less stressed and in no hurry, the seats are bigger and more comfortable, it’s easier to take a stroll all around the train, and even get to stretch your legs outside at stops. Not to mention much larger baggage storage before the extra charges set in (Amtrak allows two carry-ons and three 3’x3’x3′ checked bags without extra charge, each can weigh 50 pounds. You could bring a set of car tyres (without rims) with you for no extra charge).
I took a train through the Montana rocky mountains last winter, something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and it was incredibly beautiful.