Text 20495, 100 rader
Skriven 2007-09-20 20:04:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: 9/11 rite - air 151
===========================
As you know, I am an advocate of getting out the travel
on 9/11 - I figure that if even a percent of a percent of
the population thinks as I do, the planes will be fuller on
what has come to be called "Patriot Day" (distinguished from
Patriots' Day, which is the day on which the Boston Marathon
is run) than on other days, and some sort of statement will
be made. Of course, not many at all think as I do, and loads
are quite light on this date, as more people seem to be
afraid of the big bad wolf in Afghanistan preying on their
sorry individual skins. Let's face it, every time there is a
sag in air travel on that date, it's another little Bin Laden
attack - a great investment on his part, as 9/11/01 keeps paying
dividends every year (actually, as I notice every week or two,
little dividends are paid every day in the inconvenience and
productivity loss at the airports). I'm not saying that everyone
has the discretionary time or resources to do anything like my
"we will not be moved" commemoration, but someone besides me
should. This year, I had a rehearsal on 9/10 in the evening and
a concert the next evening, so I used some miles to take a quick
turnaround that would, but for the miles, have cost as much as
going to London or San Fran.

I tried to convince my brother to go with me, and he was
interested: "Actually getting on a plane!?," he exclaimed.
Until I gave him my time constraints, which dampened his
enthusiasm to zero, as he refuses to get up before ten or
eleven. Anyhow.

Cabbed it to the Metro at 5:30 and then to the airport,
which was not exactly hopping. There is a regular security
line and an elite security (first class, business class, One
World members, Star Alliance members, it says); the latter
was invaded several times, and the gatekeepers did not keep
the gate, so it actually ended up taking longer than the
regular line. Which meant 3 minutes as opposed to 2, from
queue to the gates. As I thus had easily half an hour more
than I'd budgeted for, I got on the previous flight, which
was pretty lightly loaded - I had the first row of Economy
all to myself.

0911 UA 603 DCA ORD 0700 0804 319 6F
was     605         0745 0849 320 6A

Channel 9 was on, and as this is my lullaby, I slept wheels
up to wheels down. I'm sure it was a perfectly fine flight.
Got to ORD a tad early and scouted about for a burger, but
at 8, nobody was serving anything edible (the bars were
doing a brisk business, though). I went to the Club to my
favorite cubicle only to find it had been filled by one of
three free Internet workstations, which I appropriated and
courtesy of Dell, United, and T-Mobile did my e-mail, read
the Flyertalk bulletin boards, and checked on my return
(the noon flight).

Which was cancelled. They had rebooked me, though, on the
earlier flight and given me the exit row window. Checking
further, I discovered that the 10:00 had been cancelled as
well, so they were making one aircraft work for three.

 UA 610 ORD DCA 1100 1352 733 10F
was 612 ORD DCA 1200 1446 319 6A

It was a very crowded flight, as they'd shoehorned in lots
of extra passengers. The guy they ended up putting next to
me was a pilot in uniform, which could have made for an
interesting conversation, but it didn't, as Channel 9 was
on again, and I slept pretty much the whole way through this
one as well, stretching into the empty space where 9F was
omitted to facilitate access to the emergency exit. We
landed right on time despite our having been delayed on
departure by the sardine packing process. As I was kind
of hungry, I jumped at the nearest Fuddrucker's, which just
happens to be at the first United gate. Surprisingly, the
burger was fresh, quite tasty, and under $5. Of course, 2c
worth of soda water and 2c worth of syrup add another two
bucks, and it is on such add-ons that I expect the place
makes its money. The burgers are 1/3 lb of "fresh ground
chuck"; I ordered mine rare, the counter girl read back
medium rare, and it came medium well as expected. It's a
thin maybe 1/3" patty that overhangs the pretty big bun
(almost real bread!); pretty good beefy beef, a bit of
gristle, which doesn't bother me, cooked a little grayish
on a griddle. Somewhere between Five Guys at its best and
Five Guys at its worst (a bit of franchise variation there,
but the same goes for Fudd's - I've had embarrassingly icky
burgers at a couple locations, especially Rte 1 north in Saugus).

The somewhat abbreviated condiment bar had ketchup, mustard,
mayo, bbq sauce, A-1 (I think), lettuce, tomato, onion,
salsa, and pickled jalapeno wheels. I tried all the veggies:
three of the four leaves of lettuce were fine, one of the
two tomato slices actually tasted like tomato, the onion
was oniony, the jalapenos sour, and the salsa heavily
scented with cilantro, a mercy, as it was mostly stale
leftover tomato and stale leftover onion.


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