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If anyone has had a chance to BUY Louis CK’s latest stand up https://buy.louisck.net/news he has a joke in there about now that he’s super popular he’s been flying first class but it wont last. He also adds that he sees soldiers “fly on a shitty airline to get to a war in coach between two fat guys” He then adds that he should give up his first class seat to them but he never does but the THOUGHT of himself doing that make himself feel good. Hilarious.

On a friends facebook page(thanks Bo!) they had asked what new years resolution should they do this year and someone basically had a lot of volunteer opportunities but really was doing good for someone else in 2012 and I thought I should try to think of something like that I can do with all my travel. So this year as I get my first class upgrades for basically just being on a plane a lot I WILL give up my seat to any soldiers if they are on my plane. They’ve earned it a lot more than I have. They can take the warm nuts and a hot towel. I’ll take the fat guys who take their shoes off. First flight of 2012 is today, O’Hare to San Fran.

A few months ago I hit Executive Platinum American Airlines. For those that don’t live at the airport, that means I’ve either flown 100,000 miles or 100 flights. In my case both. The main benefit of this level of status is you get automatically upgraded to 1st class if there are any availableseats. The majority of my flights since then have been in 1st class so my complaints now mostly consist of coach passengers, or as I call the masses gen pop, using the 1st class bathroom and how tired my face gets giving them the stink eye as they walk past me when they bored. Real world problems I know. Today however is a different story.

It’s the holidays, everyone that flies once a year is out. It’s a completely amature hour. I’m leaving Dallas (DFW) which has one of the worst security lines.  At DFW they have 2 lines feeding into 1 bag check while the body-scanner does nothing most of the time. Then for whatever reason the metal butcher table you put your stuff on doesn’t actually connect to the bag scanner so you have to then pick your bags up again and put them on the actual conveyor belt. 2 lines fight to get their stuff on the conveyorbelt in this weird awkwardness of is it my turn or your turn, are you not ready yet you still have your belt on, it’s awful. While you stand in line wondering “what is taking so long” you can figure out why it’s so slow and probably come up with a better solution. Usually they have 2 bag scanners going. Not today, we got it down to 1 to really turn the screws to the holiday travel folks who can just stand and watch 7 TSA employees standing around with nothing to do. Awesome.

After I lead in the conveyor belt dance with my partner across from me and pass through the body-scannerI’m waiting for my bags to come through. Now my bag has so much electronics in it, it should be pulled out for a manual check every time. It happens maybe once every 15 times. Today was going to be one of those days. I have a TSA “approved” bag so I dont have to take my laptop out every time when I fly. You just flip the side open and send it through. It’s worked fine so far. As the TSA agent is lifting my bag up like lifting a large toddler under the arms with a full diaper and not paying attention to where my laptop is in the bag, hint it’s the diaper part, I watch my diaper/laptop slide on out and crash onto the floor. She quickly scrambles to pick it up hoping nobody saw.

TSA #1: “Whose bag is this? “

Me: “That would be my laptop you just dropped on the floor”

TSA #1 with attitude: “Oh well yea you are suppose to take these out of the bag so it’s not my fault I dropped it.”

Me: “It’s a TSA approved bag and nobody has dropped it before, can you also pick up my battery that flew off too?”

TSA #1: “We’ll I’m going to run it through again and then we’ll see if it still works.”

Me: “How kind of you.”

TSA #2: “LOCK DOWN!”

A random supervisor yells out lock down, people start hitting buttons, all the belts stop moving and if you were waiting for your stuff to come out of the bag scan congratulations you are now a suspect. All 4 of us, including someone’sgrandma, were shuffled to the middle of security while who knows what they were doing. 10 seconds later TSA#2 shouts out “TEST OVER” and we were allowed to retrieve our stuff. Grandma muttered “oh dear” I’m right there with ya nana. I was allowed then to check out my laptop to see if I it still worked, thankfully it did. TSA#1 had some flop sweat going while it was booting up. Then….

TSA #3: “Whose bag is this?”

silence

TSA #3: “WHOSE bag is this!”

Now we got a random bag left at security. Is this part of the test? Nobody knows. They immediately started tearing it apart frantically. This entire whirlwind of insanity happened within 3 minutes. How is that even possible? During this commotion I escaped out and down to the Admirals Club where I can get something to eat without having to worry about some gypsy stealing my bag when I’m in the bathroom.

Enjoy your flights this holiday season.    

I’m in a town this week that dosen’t have a lot going when it comes to restaurants. I lost track of time today after work and when I went to grab something from the hotel the kitchen was closed. I asked the front desk what around was open.

Front Desk: “Umm at this hour you got Arby’s, the Mexican place across the street, or Perkins”.

Me: “What’s Perkins?”

Front Desk: “You don’t know what a Perkins is?

Me: blank stare

Front Desk: “Seriously where are you from?”

Me: “…..Chicago”

Front Desk: “Wow that’s crazy, it’s like a Denny’s but not nearly as nice.”

Me:”Great thanks.”

Front Desk: “Can’t believe you never heard of a Perkins.”

I’m glad I was able to make that guys night. You know he’s totally telling everyone that works that desk this exact same story except for replace “me” with “city boy”.

Anyways I opted for the Mexican place but I do have it on good authority that Perkins has good pies. Sounds like I have a date with a french silk tomorrow.

It’s been a bit since I had anything to write but two different things have happened.

I’m annoyed by several things when I fly. One of them is misbehaving children. Now I know to a kid everything is basically the game Jet Grind Radio/Jet Set Radio for Dreamcast. They need to climb up on things, over them, under them, tag things with either markers or boogers, and try to break the trey table clean off. That’s fine, you scoped out my seat, the table wont come off, settle down break out the Nintendo DS or a coloring book and chill out. That’s the parents job to keep them in line. In one of my more recent flights that parent didn’t even punch the time clock. This kid was out of control the entire flight. He was basically slamming himself into the back of my seat. I even did the turn around and give the Larry David stink eye look to the mom which I’ve never had to do yet. She didn’t get it. Finally after too much slam dancing with my seat and whatever bag of sugar they ate earlier that day, something had to give. The kid puked on himself and the back of my seat. Sorry kid you have a terrible parent enjoy that smell for the rest of the day. Thankfully we only had about 20 minutes left in the flight with that mess. Do not tempt the flight gods.

The second issue was I’ve finally had my luggage lost. I almost never check my bag but this time someone in the security line saw me and made me try to fit my suitcase into the metal display thing they have to check the size. That thing is not accurate mainly since my bag has never ever fit in there yet it has fit on 100% of all planes I’ve been on. When I landed in Chattanooga at 11:30 PM on Sunday my luggage didn’t make the trip. They told me it would be there by 1. I assumed 1 AM, they meant 1 PM the following day. I had to be at work at 9 am and there is nothing open at midnight in Chattanooga. So thankfully everyone was ok with me wearing jeans and a Mouserat (watch parks and rec) shirt on Monday. 

I’m sure there will be some more posts on the horizon. As the Stark’s say, “Winter Is Coming.”

I was on my way to the Redmond, Oregon airport, all 8 gates of it, yesterday but to do that we had to take a smaller plane from Seattle. This plane was relatively small but I’ve taken small planes before. This one was different. This one was all propellers. I instantly wanted a fedora I could pull down over my eyes like Indiana Jones when he’s crossing over the Pacific, or in my case, Portland. The problem was we had too many people in the rear of the plane. So the poor flight attendant had to go on the intercom explaining the weight problem and ask some people to move to the front. Nobody did. So he then had to go back there duck duck goose style and pick some fat people to move. Horrible. Also the entire city(?) I’m in smells like a giant bonfire. It’s awesome. They have these signs up along the road that say what current condition is for forest fire. They are all “Red”, critical. If a truck backfires basically and entire forest goes up. I hope the smell stays on my sweatshirt for a little bit and that my hotel doesn’t burn down.