Text 4077, 115 rader
Skriven 2008-03-20 21:35:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 1 11
=================
FL  811 BOS BWI 1746 2010 717 2F
was 800 BOS BWI 1848 2019 717 11A

I took the hated Valujet because I needed a one-way
short-notice flight and the majors were charging $300 and up
for something that cost them maybe $50. Airtran got me there
for about half, in business class.

Bunch o' weather up and down the east coast this day.

My plane was delayed (for some reason they knew this early
in the morning), so I got on the earlier flight, which
ended up being kind of delayed as well, so my arrival was
just about what I'd contracted for, which is good.

Sat next to an agreeable young woman whose Delta flight had
been cancelled. Agreeable, that is, except for the fact that
she worked for an on-line advertising concern. When flying
this airline I generally enjoy the XM entertainment; this
time chatting with my seatmate took the whole flight.

The brunette flight attendant, as the captain reported on
the PA, was shortly to leave for Dancing with the Stars,
where she would exercise her skills at the lambada and was
to partner Regis Philbin, something like that. The flight
and landing were pretty bumpy; as we entered the terminal,
we heard announcements giving instructions for passengers
of "Continental Airlines diverted flight 485," so life
could be worse.

==

NW 291 IAD DTW 0921 1105 D93 3D

Premium security at Dulles took about 3 minutes, all told, so I
had an hour at the WorldClub to BBS and an experiment involving
tomato juice and beer, inspired by a thread on the Flyertalk
US Air forum regarding interesting drinks that can be made from
the limited selection of adult ingredients catered by that
airline (tomato juice and beer, if more juice, seems to me
more like a cold soup than a drink; if more beer, not so
good). Moseyed to the gate next door to see a line and no
motions toward boarding, so I wandered around for another 5;
when I got back, the red carpet was empty, the Skyteam
elites knowing more about the overhead space on the DC9
than I did. Had a tough time finding room for my carryon.

Ugly dirty equipment with some of the worst first-class seat
pitch I've ever seen, either compounded, depending on your
point of view, or mitigated by the fact that recline is some
of the paltriest I've encountered.

The guy next to me looked like an ex-athlete gone to seed
and appeared uncomfortable, even while using the whole
armrest for his arm and most of the middle underseat storage
for his legs. I was glad for once that I am not BIG.

We took off half an hour late owing to a fault in the first
officer's communications gear not being fixed in a timely
way, itself owing to the maintenance guy's having showed
up with the wrong tools.

The flight attendant serving us in the first-class cabin
was somewhere between the worst possible US Air or United
(my regular airlines) crew and a horseman of the Apocalypse.
After she snatched my overcoat from me, wordlessly, I decided
to tune her out and slept through the flight. We landed 20
late; I hurried by but not without thanking her. She looked at
me stonily. I wondered if she had been jilted by me thirty
or forty years ago or something.

A bit of a sprint from gate 23 toward gate 66 (at landing
time our nasty attendant had made one gate announcement only,
Memphis at gate 66). Luckily I checked a monitor on the
way: gate 51. I toyed with the paranoid notion that she'd
made her solitary announcement with the desired effect of
stranding me in beautiful Wayne County Metropolitan Airport.

At the proper gate they were using the red carpet for
general boarding. Huffing and puffing from the exercise,
I went to the regular carpet and skipped the line.

NW 283 DTW MEM 1155 1254 D93 2D

This had been scheduled as a D95, and so the general boarding
rubishness was compounded by people with assignments in rows
22-25 wandering around lost, as as I understand row 21 is
the last on the shrunk version of the DC9. Again, I had a
tough time finding room for my carryon. We took off on time.

My seatmate was an extremely taciturn young man, whose only
communication with the FA was the word "diet," said several
times with gradations of annoyance depending on whether she
figured out what he said or not. "Diet" meant Diet Pepsi.

I asked for a Courvoisier, and the cheery stew (complete
contrast to the previous one) opined that there wasn't any.
I implored her to look, as my tooth was hurting something
awful. She came back with the magic elixir, calling herself
a big fat liar (all false - she was medium-size, pleasingly
plump, and "lie" is a funny term). Pistachio nut mix is a
step up from most of the King Nut offerings; it's not so
fine as UA's (occasionally offered) macadamia-laced mixed
nuts, but it's better than mini pretzels, supreme nut mix,
cranberry nut mix, or a sharp stick in the eye. We landed
15 early, so I had time to enjoy the actually quite nice
WorldClub for a while before succumbing to the aroma of BBQ
that wafts throughout this airport. My connection, formerly
scheduled out of A6, was moved to the B pier right next to
Interstate, where the brisket was good, way better than
anything the airport Corky's offers.

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