I hope you're properly showered and groomed.
Oh great. Now we need a better class of first class.
(I've never flown first class.)
Who's paying?
[I'm told that playing games with the seats that fold down into beds gives you away as an imposter.]
Well, my beard doesn't have AIDS, if that's what you're getting at.
Maybe I'll get bumped to first class when I fly tomorrow. Just kidding. I'm on Southwest.
I hope you're properly showered and groomed. Just kidding! You're Jewish.
6: So you're not singing the blues.
The last time I flew first class (also bumped) I sat next to Nicky Hilton. One assumes that Paris doesn't fly commercial like a loser.
I miss flying first class. We did it all the time when I was a kid and Mom flew for TWA. The food was fantastic, and Mom used to let me distribute the hot towels at the end of the flight.
I kind of resent air travel now for not being at all like it was when I was a flight attendant's kid in the seventies.
Domestic or international? Do you get a bed?
We're actually not getting fed, even though it's a three hour tour.
I never sat next to anybody famous on an airplane, but I did once share a stairway with Michael Keaton. To commemorate the event, a memorial Pottery Barn was built on the site.
No. It was a stationary Pottery.Barn.
And I'm in front of Hawaii so I can recline my seat for the first time since you all ruined that for me. It's been years!
That only barely counts as first class, but you can probably get a free Mimosa so it's all good.
Since you were a flight attendant's kid in the 1970s, first class has gotten much nicer, the truly rich don't even fly on commercial airplanes anymore, and coach has gotten much much worse. Largely because of deregulation. Oh and also working conditions for flight attendants are worse, with the significant exception that the workplace is less outrageously sexist. It doesn't violate the analogy ban if it's an eencapsulation of everything.
I flew first class once, when the first class ticket was only $10 more than the coach ticket. I figured I could drink the difference.
I also fly first class sometimes when I'm flying on points - the ratio isn't as absurd as it is when I have to pay with dollars. Same with the Acela.
I guess I meant I only paid money for first class once.
The one time I got bumped, it was a gate agent's apology for my awful itinerary (five flights in one day to get from Austin to Maine). It was kind of great, because the flight where I got bumped was Houston to Philadelphia. We sat on the plane for two hours before takeoff and an hour and a half after landing (summer thunderstorms). The more comfortable seats and free booze and snacks really took the edge off.
I flew first class a few times when I was using my parents' miles and found it could be the same number of points as economy. The circumstances that led to that have changed, but I found I felt more comfortable dressed up a bit (buttoned shirt and khakis) compared to how I normally fly.
I guess that's why I ended up dressing the same for my train trip to Texas leaving today.
I always fly dressed like that. I don't like to deal with the government while wearing clothes that make me look like I don't know a lawyer.
Also, I look thinner in that type of clothing.
A friend sat next to Robert Redford in first class once. He (Redford) was chatty and said talked a lot about horses.
First class offers only a partial reprieve from the unremitting agony of air travel.
Although the one time I got bumped on a Boston-to-LA flight on a relatively new airplane it was much nicer than usual first class, with seats like weird gray bubbles extracted from an alien spaceship.
And on international flights I've been bumped to business class but not to real first class, which is the really crazy thing that actually looks like it would completely make up for all the usual unpleasantness of air travel.
The last international flight I took was on TWA.
One of the times I've taken the train across the country I saw a guy probably in his late 60s/early 70s in the lounge car somewhere in the Midwest wearing a T-shirt with the message: "I'm retired. This is dressed up." Not kidding! He was white.
This is the first year in 15 or so that I've not flown enough to make status -- I guess I had to manufacture trips at the end of the year a couple of time -- and so my free upgrade life is over.
I used to travel every year with my son -- then ages 10-14 -- and we'd switch off who sat in the upgraded seat. On his turns, he'd send me back a glass of wine or a brownie, much to the amusement of the flight staff, and annoyance of other people in steerage.
IME, in first, the customs concerning social interaction are inverted -- one is supposed to talk to one's seatmate, unless they are working. Let's hope the Geebies have acquired some good stories to tell. #hasheebielandedyet
Just saw airport security run a "wand" over the hands of a kid who's probably about 3 years old. Maybe they thought she recently fired a weapon?
30 That's hilarious.
This discussion make me think I should start tracking miles and get a miles credit card, but I already feel too restricted by life to have yet another thing to keep track of.
30 That's hilarious.
This discussion make me think I should start tracking miles and get a miles credit card, but I already feel too restricted by life to have yet another thing to keep track of.
A family friend who has gotten suckered into my talk of "I'm really going to fly again, maybe sometime soon" has offered to fly somewhere with me if I want, and says we have to fly first class because it's so much better. The thing about not flying out of a fear of flying is everyone tells you often that flying is goddamned horrible even if you're not irrationally convinced of your impending death the whole time.
26, 27: It totallly does. Well, security lines aside. I've been bumped a couple times to first class. Once flying back from China (which I may have mentioned before - it was very dodgy, they were just picking random white people out of the queue and giving us first class upgrades) and once flying back from the US. It's a totally different experience and almost nice enough to make you willing to pay five times as much for transatlantic travel, but not quite. Your less than stellar experiences may be at least partially due to the unremitting shittiness of US airlines.
Those were on BA and Virgin, respectively, FWIW.
We got bumped randomly to business class on the way to Europe once and it was fucking delightful. I didn't want the flight to end.
I got bumped randomly to first class on the way from SF to Vegas once and that set the tone for the weekend nicely.
IME, in first, the customs concerning social interaction are inverted -- one is supposed to talk to one's seatmate
This is one of the terrible things about first class.
Friday night I was flying first class next to a teenage kid who had a long string of questions about how to compare different varieties of e-reader. Just because I was using one brand didn't mean I knew the ins and outs of all the others.
Then he had another long string of questions about where the bathrooms were located and whether he should stay in his seat due to the fasten-seatbelt light being on. He seemed very relieved when I told him he should just get up.
35: Where is your whiteness now?
Ugh, "What are we doing for Xmas Eve, having a big dinner and inviting a bunch of people over?" I'm guessing no, given that this is the first I've heard of this grand desire! I was thinking early dinner, early bedtime, especially since the baby is running a fever and waking a lot at night. But I am a grinchy buzzkill again, apparently, and this is why Christians are better people than non-. Grr.
Although in my family, the tradition was that the little kids gave out their gifts to others on Xmas Eve so that they didn't get overshadowed by big gifts the next day. And on Christmas itself a friend is coming to take the cats, so that will be a big deal.... I need a better attitude, though.mm
I was almost on a plane with Christie Todd Whitman in 1998 (I know because I heard her on her cell) and though at the time she was kind of low-level famous, I was sort of happy about it because people with my affliction believe it's good luck to fly with someone famous* and though I'm not superstitious, I take what I can get. Except then the weather channel started talking about thunderstorms "KNIFING THROUGH THE MIDWEST" (emphasis on all words mine, but actual words of Weather Channel) and I made my way to Port Authority and got on a bus to Indianapolis.
*Excluding Buddy Holly, Grace Moore, Carole Lombard, Patsy Cline...
We're here! We ended up flying into Bozeman and stopping at a greatgrandmother's and finally arriving around dinner time, at which point the blog was down.
The flight was less unpleasant than it is in coach.
45: Wheee!
I did not break the blog, but am sort of grateful it wasn't around so that I didn't have anyone encouraging me to keep insisting I was right and break the family more than I did. But I was right.
You definitely want to keep the house quiet on Christmas Eve... don't want to mess up Santa's targeting, or those new package delivery drones he's using this year.
He seemed very relieved when I told him he should just get up.
You should have told him it was O.K. to get up before he pissed himself.
My sister got bumped once as a teenager on a BA flight from London to Boston or Boston to London.
She was also once offered $10,000 when they needed people to get off of a flight on Christmas Eve because of weight concerns. I wish she had taken it.
Oh, the blog was down? That precisely coincided with my time on the train, up till now when I got into LA Union Station.
I got bumped to first class once when I was a kid. I don't remember it very well. I think that's the only time I've flown first class, although I've now racked up enough miles on Alaska that I'll probably get an automatic upgrade at some point.
51: You'll find phone service spotty for a bunch of tomorrow, if memory serves.
The sounds very plausible. (I was assuming there would be wifi because I'm used to that on Capitol Corridor, but it looks like not.)
While the track passed through Vandenberg AFB I saw what looked like rocket gantries, and thought "Surely it's something else, military gantries would be classified or something." But on research, it looks like that's what they were.
No first class today, but I do have an A boarding card.
You cannot explain why nobody will come to move the jetway such a way that a seven year old isn't still annoyed. Or a forty-something.
You can now play Minecraft for the whole flight.
||
NMM2 Mikhail Kalashnikov. Bang.
|>
Hah, I was just going to write the same thing. Except I was going to call him Калашников.
We're actually not getting fed
I do hope you rolled off the plane sufficiently lubricated.
Sorry to hear that Flippanter. That is really rotten. (If it is cholera, you can read a book for that.)
||
My dad just called me to ask if I'll do him a favor go to my town's local cat-themed boutique and pick up some cat-themed socks for my mother for Christmas. I'm perfectly happy to do this errand, and I actually think it's pretty adorable that my father buys my mother cat socks.
But then I think, surely his much larger town has a dedicated store for cat-based merchandise. Don't most towns?
|>
If your mom is like my mom, what she actually wants is to live in a world of Kliban cats. Don't indulge that desire.
But then I think, surely his much larger town has a dedicated store for cat-based merchandise. Don't most towns?
I don't think I've ever seen a store like this in any town, regardless of size.
I've never heard of a story like this, outside of Lake Wobegon.
When we were going to go to the Outer Banks, one of my relatives was excited because apparently there was a cat-themed store there when she was last there. But it doesn't seem to exist anymore, bringing the world's total number of cat-themed stores down to 1 (Stanley's).
66: Huh, we have a stored called Two Dancing Cats that is a spa. I always assumed it was a spa for cats. Not only is it not for cats, it's not even a spa! They sell "spa gift baskets." You too can pay $127 for a loofah and bubble bath.
I have no idea how to even google if there is a cat-themed store in this area.
Maybe Bing is better for some things
"Cat" is Massachusetts dialect for "spa."
So maybe "deli" is Massachusetts dialect for "cat"?
Facebook now helpfully translates "N'est-ce pas?" to "Is not it?"
Just saw airport security run a "wand" over the hands of a kid who's probably about 3 years old.
My then 5 year old got patted down when we flew to Canada all those years ago. She didn't know whether to be terrified or entertained.
I know I've told it before, but when I went through customs in Frankfurt many years ago I got patted down. The guard surprised me with the big finish of cupping my balls like we were the nearest of dears and, in my surprise, I blurted out the first word of German to come to mind: "Danke!"
In at-best-tangential travel news, my creepy cousin has moved permanently to a small town which is also one of my favorite places to visit. If I ever go there again I'll have to be in total social media stealth mode and I won't be able to see a single drag show. Goddamn it.