The Simple DudeA Simple Dude in a Complex World

As I mentioned in Monday’s airplane bathroom post, my Lady Friend and I flew back from vacation last week.  A few interesting things happened between the airport and the flight home, and I am going to split the story up into two posts.

For some damn reason we had an 8:45am flight coming back home, and the drive to the airport is about 30 minutes on a normal day, but rush hour made it much longer.  When we finally got there, the little electronic check-in kiosk had a line, so we patiently waited.  Well, my Lady Friend was patient.  I was a nervous-nellie because I like checking in early with the hopes of nabbing a coveted exit row seat.

The line inched along to the point where we were next.  But the woman in front of us had no clue what she was doing.  At every screen she read it closely, paused, looked around as if someone should come help her then read it closely again before hitting the “continue” button.  Eventually she gets to the screen to print her boarding pass but gets an error saying she has to go to the baggage check desk – something to do with a delayed or canceled flight I think.  I kindly point out where she needs to go, resisting the urge to shove her out of my freakin’ way.

At least he won't get scanned.

I’m already flustered because I can see the TSA security line is long and our flight will start boarding any minute.  We go through the kiosk process, and when I get to the end screen before printing the boarding pass it says we’ll have to speak to the airline agent at our gate to get seat assignments.  Great.  The flight is overbooked and we’ll either be asked if we can accept getting bumped, or at best get crappy single separated seats somewhere in the back of the plane.

Going through the agonizingly slow security line my mood went from anxious to agitated to downright pissy.  By the time we got to our gate they were boarding the plane.  I talked to the lady at the counter and she confirmed they overbooked, and it would be 10 minutes before she could assign us seats.

At this news my Lady Friend decided to go get Starbucks… probably because she wanted to get away from my crabbiness.  She walks over to the Starbucks while I stand their with our bags watching people loading on to what I hope will be our plane.  After a few minutes they make an announcement for us to approach the counter.  I wrangle our bags over and hand her my boarding pass.

The airline woman makes a joke about us probably wanting to get on the plane.  I say at this point we’d probably take standing room only seats.  She smiles and hands me new boarding passes saying I’ll probably like these seats better than standing room.  They were First Class.  Score!  Not wanting to miss any time sitting in luxury while getting free food and drinks, I find my Lady Friend waiting in a slow line at Starbucks.  She had yet to order, so I told her to skip it so that we could board.

My intention was to not tell her where we were sitting until we got on the plane (hoping she wouldn’t look at the boarding pass to closely) but me pulling her out of line pissed her off since she was now going to miss out on a Starbucks in addition to being rushed around the airport by some jackass.  (me)  So I had to tell her where we were sitting just to stop the stink eye she was giving me.

I’ve flown first class a few times due to overbooking issues and each time it makes me wish like hell I had the money to do it every time.  It’s a completely different experience.  In addition to the free food and booze (unlimited refills) you have enough leg room to do yoga.  You know, if you were into that.

After getting seated but before taking off (and starting my first of many bloody marys) there was an incident on the plane…  I’ll be back in a couple days to tell that story.

SD