Is This Your Idea of Fun?

“Fun” in the snow – Christmas 2005. Enough already!

Carrying on with my rant in this post, daytime temperatures in our box are as difficult to control as nighttime temps. Heat explodes through four floor vents spaced within 12 feet. As the temperature rises we begin gasping for breath and grow pale and nauseous with heat exhaustion.

When the furnace finally cuts out, the atmospheric pressure in our ‘cabin’ drops, making my ears pop. The silence is welcome but sudden, like unplugging your teenager’s stereo. One of us will be caught in the middle of shouting a sentence as the roar abates and my tinnitus becomes apparent again in the quiet. The heat wave recedes and recedes and recedes and goose bumps make a reappearance. Then the fight ensues over the furnace remote.

The location of the thermostat remains a mystery to us so we don’t know if it is affected by the stove or where we sit pumping out bad vibes or our own hot air as we complain.

Depending on our latitude and altitude and simply the vagaries of the weather we can be alternating from day to day with heating and air conditioning and back to heating. The trailer acts like a greenhouse, warming quickly in the sun and cooling down just as quickly as a cloud comes over.

Curiously this cooling phenomenon doesn’t happen at sunset; the trailer holds an uncomfortable level of heat until 5 am when the temperature plummets and it is then impossible to get warm and get back to sleep. I’d get up and get on with the day but what can you do when your other half is snoozing happily in the same ‘room’?

The air conditioning vents are in the ceiling, less than a foot from my head sending arctic blasts down the back of my neck and ruffling my hair. Jimmy is okay. He tends to find something to do and sits in a pocket of still air between gale winds. I twist the vents away causing the flame to blow out on the stove, then twist the vents again away from the stove. As I move up and down our tiny kitchen area I get gusts from three different directions.

All I want is for the temperature to be just right and stay just right. Is that too much to ask?

I suppose the subjects of terrorism, government, airline policies and finances (mentioned here in case you are thinking, where did that come from?) can be lumped together for the purposes of this rant. Terrorist threats have prompted the government to put stricter security policies in place which will cost the airlines more to implement, justifying yet more fees on our already escalating airfares back to the UK.

We now pay to eat, to imbibe, to take a suitcase, to book a seat. Soon they will charge you to sneeze. Used to an endless supply of free wine, we tell ourselves that orange juice is so much healthier.

More importantly (than a glass of wine? Heck!) we are questioning whether we can afford to fly to the UK every spring and autumn, as we have been doing, to see our grown up children and little grandchildren. Airfares have gone up, health insurance premiums have gone up, the pound against the dollar is down, interest rates are down. I’m not sure we can live here at all if we can’t afford to see our family regularly.

Bonjour France?

Hola Espana?

Buongiorno Italy?

G’day Sydney? A third grandchild has been born in Australia.

Himself won’t live in England. Don’t get me started on that.

The view from our RV Christmas ’05. It may have a familiar look to many of you!

I never want to fly again. I mean it this time.

Sydney Airport (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A jolt of anxiety was what we got when we tried to check in online for our 15 hour flight from Sydney to San Francisco followed by a connecting flight to Phoenix. Our flight to San Francisco had been cancelled. After much angst and many now-what-are-we-going-to-do’s the airline sent an email to say we were rebooked on a flight to LA and onwards. We didn’t care for the seats we’d been allocated so tried to change them. That’s when the trouble started.

Darlene greeted us with a wan smile when we arrived the next day at the check-in desk before she began processing our reservations and passports.

“I guess the flight is full,” Jimmy said conversationally.

“It’s overbooked,” she said bluntly.

Out the window went our plans of asking her to reassign us some better seats.

“Have you checked in online?” she asked.

“We’ve no idea.”

She looked up from her busyness.

“We tried to change our seats before checking in and couldn’t so checked in then phoned the airline at the airport. She unchecked us but couldn’t change our seats either. We checked in again but had so many conflicting emails, we don’t know what we’ve done.” Darlene frowned and tapped her computer keys.

My suitcase had disappeared and passport and boarding card had been returned to me. Darlene studied Jimmy’s green card and continued to frown and tap.

“I’m just phoning the service desk. I’m sorry to keep you,” she said.

Jimmy looked worried. “I’m not on the flight,” he muttered. I began wondering where I’d packed my phone so we could call his daughter to come back to the airport and pick him up. We’d already been told by someone in the queue that the last seat on the flight had gone and no more seats were available until two days hence. How big is LAX? Would I find my connecting flight? And where was that taxi rank in Phoenix? Keys! Must get J’s keys. I left mine in the apartment. I was going to have to switch out of blond mode to get myself home.

The theme restaurant and control tower at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But what I said out loud was, “She’s looking at your passport and checking your green card. We know there’s no problem with it. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

After another 10 minutes of deliberate non eye contact from Darlene, she finally shared, “You have a seat on the flight,” she said looking at me. “I don’t have a seat booked for you,” she said to Jimmy.

Darlene put her head down again and kept tapping. Jimmy started sweating. Other passengers checked in and came and went, came and went. We stood our ground. No one said a word. Another 5 minutes went by.

“37 E and F. Are they the seats you were booked on?”

“Yes.”

L1140523.JPG (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“You’re both on the flight.”

“Don’t do that to me!” Jimmy cried.

Darlene’s facial muscles relaxed into a smile. “Can I offer you a piece of advice? Don’t phone the help desk. They’re helpless. They mess up people’s reservations and when the flight is full we can’t fix it.”

English: Qantas A380 preparing to depart LAX on it’s first flight on the new LAX-SYD route October 24, 2008. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Good to know.

We’ll fly with Qantas next time.

Yes, yes, I know. I’ve just contradicted the title. I have to fly. I don’t have to love it. Do you love air travel?

Bad Seat Karma

Back at Heathrow in the departure lounge after two weeks on my own in England and smelling like a tart’s boudoir after a visit to the perfume shop I settled down to watch the overhead screens for my flight.

Like the flibbertigibbet I am when tense, my eyes flitted from screen to book to screen to magazine to screen to newspaper to screen and took in nothing other than the fact that the departure gate hadn’t been announced for my 10 hour flight with only 20 minutes left until departure time. Had I missed something? Had the aircraft come and gone without me? Wishing my absent minder to share in my panic though there was nothing he could do to help me I decided to text him. Good journey to H’row. Watching screens for gate. Paying attn. Wont miss flight. XX.  He’ll know that’s not true and wonder what is wrong.

By perusing best sellers, window shopping, drinking cappuccinos, reading sensational headlines on tabloids before returning them to the shelf dog-eared, trips to the loo and trying on bracelets I’d ambled right down to gate 25. When my gate number popped up on the overhead screen for boarding – gate 1a – it was completely at the other end of the terminal building.

My minder would be cross with me if he knew. He would remind me of the time I missed my flight from New York to Baltimore because I was playing video games or the time all the cars on the Seattle ferry were honking at him because he had to wait behind the wheel of our car, engine running, while I stood at the rail of the ferry watching the approach of the fetching Seattle skyline oblivious to his ire (until I got back in the car that is). He would have made me stay put near my gate. Oh well.

I huffed and puffed the length of the terminal building carrying in my heavy backpack a large bottle of water, five magazines, three books and a newspaper for the flight knowing I would probably watch two films, drink the airline’s wine and fall asleep instead. Flustered, I sprinted straight through the now nearly empty gate to board . . . . a bus.

What? Where am I? The bus station? Mustn’t procrastinate when I’m on my own and pay better attention. Ah yes, the aircraft had been abandoned halfway across the tarmac and we were to be bussed out to it. Looking around for familiar faces on the bus to reassure myself I was in the right place, a few unfamiliar weary faces glanced back at me. I realised that as I’d checked in online, not queued at check-in, I wouldn’t recognise my fellow passengers. I could be about to jet off anywhere in the world if I’d bounded through the wrong gate and the ground staff happened to glaze over just at the point when I handed over the scrap of paper that I’d printed off as my boarding card. I made a mental note to check our destination as I boarded the plane, like some addled old dear.

Taking my pick of seats at the back of the bus, I chose an empty side-facing bench that would seat three(ish). A plump florid blond collapsed beside me and scooted across as far as she possibly could to leave a narrow gap between us. As the bus filled to capacity with standing room only I could see no further than the belly in front of my face. A voice speaking Arabic or Farsi made me look up to see a dark-eyed beauty homing in on the tiny space beside me. She began to rotate and I hoped she was looking for another seat but like a dog in his bed, she circled twice then began to reverse her ample bottom towards the gap between me and the blond.

Blondie and I exchanged looks of wide-eyed dismay. Either I hadn’t appreciated the size of Sultry Beauty’s aft section or how small the proposed seating area was but as Sultry Beauty’s left bum cheek made contact with my right shoulder I lost sight of Blondie. The large cheek slid down my arm, slithered over my hip, and on impacting the seat squeezed me into a bolt upright position, forcing the air from my lungs and crushing my ribs against the metal armrest.

Afraid to move a muscle for fear of disrupting numerous pressure points and squirting myself out of my seat and across the bus, I prayed that this was my bad seat karma for the journey knowing I could be this unlucky for the next ten hours on the plane. I was breathing shallowly, with eyes bulging when the bus driver eventually braked and eek, eek, eeked to a halt. As I was thrown from side to side my left ribcage was bruised on the arm rest while alternately my whole right side was cushioned in billowing flesh.

The dilemma then was whether to attempt to get up first and extricate myself like a toilet plunger stuck to the floor or stay put. I was wedged under the armrest on one side and a longitudinal section of my thigh on the other side was trapped under Sultry’s voluminous thigh with a pinching sensation as though a row of bulldog clips had been attached. My leg was going numb but rather than leave a strip of flesh behind, I awaited developments. I didn’t need to wait for long. My wide beamed travelling companion bounded to her feet with surprising ease. I gawped at her agility as I fell over across the seat upon release from the body trap and exchanged looks of bemused relief with Blondie, the remaining seat hostage, as Sultry Beauty was swallowed up by the crowd.

The outsome? Seattle flight. Aisle seat. Three seats to myself. Hooray!

Travel Angst

Wow! This had to be a terrible flight. I wonder which airline it was. I’ll look back through my 2008 diary pages. Found this letter in an old notebook. I must have been purging myself of some travel angst. You won’t be surprised to know I didn’t mail it or anything similar to it, but wouldn’t a positive response have been an excellent result? I’ve taken my (or somebody’s) husband’s voice to sound more authoritative. The vocabulary, tone and phrasing is on the silly side but it probably felt good at the time:

My House

My Street

My Village

My County

My Country

1 June ‘08

Dear Sirs

I write regarding my recent flight with your airline. I found your cabin crew to be most disagreeable, particularly a Miss Julia Wicket, who was impertinent towards my wife. Her abrupt and callous manner was most offensive and was upsetting to us both. I wish you to require Miss Wicket to write a letter of apology immediately addressed to Mrs. Amelie Affronted at the above address prostrating herself and begging forgiveness for her behavior.

I cannot begin to describe the detrimental effect this disastrous flight has had upon our holiday and so require you to credit us with 24,000 air miles in Club Class with your assurances that all staff have been selected for their deferential demeanor and have been properly trained in customer services.

Furthermore, I demand a limousine service to and from the airports at either end of our trips, destinations to be decided.

I expect a prompt reply to this letter otherwise I shall be contacting my solicitors to bring a lawsuit against your airline, and shall also involve the media bringing unwanted publicity at this economically difficult time.

Yours faithfully,

Arthur Affronted

(P.S. I now know which airline it was but I’m not telling you.)