Saturday, January 16, 2010

Traveling Again

Oy - it's been a long week.

I was out the door on Monday at 05:10 and returned to home sweet home at 21:10 on Friday. A long week indeed.

While I bonded with some people in my new division, there was entirely too much time spent with each other. 12-16 hour days....always together. Sleep was the only time alone. Even my 05:00 workouts had someone from the group in that tiny hotel exercise room.

But in an odd way, I did miss the air travel. Kind of, but not really, in a George Clooney Up in the Air, sorta way.

There is an art to air travel - how to pack, how to check in and where to sit in the plane. I think some is intuitive, but much is learned behaviour if you take the time to truly observe how things flow.

For instance, if you have to use four or five of those plastic bins to put shit in to go through x-ray, you do not know how to pack for the plane. Two should be the max and only because your laptop can't go through with anything else. You pick out the experience business travelers in a heartbeat (it's a love beat).

We silently mock those who hold us up, but the people who roll their eyes or sigh at the offenders are closer to being the newbies than experienced travelers. For the most part we suffer in silence with all-knowing looks to each other, while never giving ourselves away.

One change, albeit a slight one, but that I picked up on immediately, was the verbiage in the emergency demonstration (not that I watched, but I heard snippets): In the event of a water landing......

No longer is the word "unlikely" in that phrase.

Has one plane landing in the Hudson, out of the thousands that take off and land daily, deemed this a higher probability? It doesn't seem to make sense when you look at the mean.

But I'm home - for a week. Last night the bed went girl, boy, girl, boy (the girls were the cats - this is not a Bob, Carol, Ted & Alice kind of thing), so all was right with the world.


Song by: Dar Williams

3 comments:

Birdie said...

Okay, I'm one of those with multiple bins: purse and shoes, computer, computer bag, jacket. Don't you sigh at me. I'm fast and I plan carefully for that security check.

I love your closing picture: girl, boy, girl, boy. Very sweet.

cb said...

Glad you made it home. And I totally agree about the two bin limit.

A Lewis said...

Did you take this pic? You were on a CRJ, eh? 700? 900? Glad you're home. Now, chill.....relax.