Monday, April 13, 2009

A Lesson for Those People Prone to Flying

It's been about forever since I lasted posted. I've just had so much to do. Okay, that's a lie. I'm just lazy as sin, but I do have some good stories from my adventures in the Motherland...

I'll start with the flight from Hell. At first, this flight across the pond looked like the greatest stroke of luck that I've ever had when it comes to flying, but I should have known better. The travel gods are no friend of mine. I had a midnight flight from ATL into Heathrow which landed around noon UK time. So I'm thinking - awesome, I won't be jet lagged. I'll take my perfect sleep combination (1 ambien and 2 glasses of wine...goodnight ATL good afternoon London) and life will be good. Not to mention that a midnight flight would be a breeze going through the 7 layers of Hell/Atlanta security. And on top of all that (gasp! could there be more) my flight was practically empty and I had no one sitting next to me when I checked in around 7 pm online.

I arrive at the airport with plenty of time to spare and feeling great about this hassle free flight. I board the plane and find a nice African man sitting next to me (i.e. 27F). He's great. Wants to talk about whether or not I like my blackberry (of course I'm hastily texting trying to decide what my next move should be). The plane is only about half full and I was one of the last people to board, so I say goodbye to the Witch Doctor and move across the middle aisle to the left side of the plane in an open 2 seater (i.e. 29B). I'm thinking 'hey....not too bad.' I spark up a conversation with Jew-fro in the middle aisle and as they're about to shut the door, Big Foot boards and needs me to move out of his seat. Crapbag. But not all hope is lost! There's still a 3 seater open in the middle of the plane (i.e. 30 C,D,E)! My lucky stars. I sit down and see there are some newspapers in the center seat and realize that someone is probably sitting somewhere in this row, but oh well, there's 3 seats. Plenty of room for me and anyone under 400 pounds. Wrong again.

The woman who had commandeered this prime seat location (let's call her Bitch Face) returned from the luxurious Coach lavatory to find little ol' me sitting in the aisle seat (30C). Shooting death rays out of her eyes she moves to her seat on the other aisle seat (30E), looking for another open row. Obviously, people move quickly on plane (I have no idea why since the seats are so spacious and recline almost fully to a bed position), and there were no seats left. She's stuck with me. I start to read my book and we take off.

Bitch Face is clearly less than happy with me for stealing her ability to lay down in three seats. No faster had we reached a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet and the pilot turned off the fasten seat belt sign than BF moved into the center seat (30D). I'm not sure if my UGA sweatshirt made me appear as Santa Clause because BF was practically sitting on my lap at this point. Well, I find this extremely funny and choose not to move just to spite her. Even my ambien and wine combination did not allow me to sleep with my new found tumor on my right arm.

For the next 9 hours, BF and I arm wrestle over the arm rest (I couldn't figure out to whom the arm rest really belonged) as she leans on me and I put my elbow into her back. I even raised the arm rest at one point to a 45 degree angle while Bitch Face was again using the lavatory, so that she could lean on that instead of my numb right arm, but she promptly put the arm rest down when she returned from dropping the Cosbys (Cosbies?) off at the pool. At one point I almost spit my gum in her hair, but I'm much too sweet for that nonsense. In retrospect, I should have said: "Listen, you two-bit hooker. You didn't pay for 3 seats, so back off." I decided against confrontation. Instead I'll just blog about it on the internet and hope that she comes across it someday and realize what a horrible person she is.

Moral of the story: Always fly business class.