The trip in process…….

[osodecanela]

I made it to SFO with plenty of time to spare.

When I logged on this afternoon from work to try and get a seat assignment, I found I had already been placed in a middle seat and no window or aisle seats were left available anywhere on the plane. Damned few seats were open at all. Once at the gate, I found that the flight had been oversold and they were seeking volunteers to take a later flight in the morning for a $300 voucher, which quickly got bumped up to $350. I was tempted, but not with a connecting flight awaiting me in Houston. I just prayed I would NOT be seated between a couple of other bears. Ursine sardines.

I sort of lucked out. I was between two slender young women. It still was a tight fit. I tried vainly to get some sleep and I think I did actually loose consciousness for a short while. It was however just to uncomfortable for me to get any meaningful sleep.

The difference between bolt upright and reclining in an economy seat on Continental is about 10 degrees. Mercifully, the overhead compartments are on the roomy side and I did not have to put a bag under the seat in front of me. However, the seating is narrow enough that any time I started to drift off, my arms fell to my sides, against the leg of the woman on either side of me. Not appropriate. (see the video I posted yesterday – I’ll be damned if I impose on another traveler.) Eventually I pulled my arms inside my scrub shirt which kept them off my seatmates, but by that point we were already making our initial descent into Houston.

I am reminded in part why I don’t like Texas much. It’s 5 am right now on May 2nd and it’s painfully hot and humid here. I had to take the train that runs between the terminals here (arrived at “E”, departing from “B”), and the humid heat is stifling even at 5 am. How do people live in this?

So now I sit, nursing a cup of Mickey D’s coffee, which surprisingly is not bad. I’m hoping the headache I’m nursing is caffeine withdrawal and nothing else. At first I was impressed with the strength of this cup. It has to be one of the heaviest weight Styrofoam cups I have ever seen. very effectively insulated. Now the green inside me wants to know how long for it to biodegrade (if ever?). I’m observing all the packaging waste strewn about this airport food court. There have probably been a couple of hundred people through here as I’ve sat nursing this cup of joe. The amount of debris is staggering. There are two cleaning people/worker bees hovering about. I’ve seen them fill and empty two 33 gallon trash cans twice in the past 15 minutes.

Now that was a surprise. I was debating a second cup and decided to simply toss this cup away after a single use was wasteful. The woman at the counter raised her eyebrows when I returned and asked for more coffee, and decided not to charge me for a refill. I think I’m going to toss the cup into my bag and see how long I can continue to use it over the next few days. How long can I keep this out of a landfill?

Comments

Change airlines

[healerpatrick.livejournal.com]

Word of note to all larger people (over 100#), do not fly anything other than JetBlue if you can help it. They have the industry's WIDEST seats and LONGEST leg room in the industry. I've flown then several times and wow those few extra inches make a lot of difference. The great thing too is you assign YOURSELF to your seat when you book the flight. The sooner you book, the easier it is to find a good seat. And you can login anytime and change your seat assignment if your row fills up and there's an empty row in another part of the plane. For those of us in the SF Bay Area they fly out of SFO and Oakland with most flights out of Oakland. You'd have to check to see where they fly to, but it's worth investigating and once in a while paying just a little extra, not much. They don't serve meals, but they'll fill you up on snacks and beverages. And they have private screens with DirectTV and one of the satellite radio companies for LOTS of entertainment options. They also have 4 movies for pay if you want to watch something besides the freebie stuff.

[moofedct.livejournal.com]

Hey if it helps any, I've been using the same water bottle (intended for use as such) for three years now. It's the perfect size, right at 600 mL, so I just drink 5 per day. The rest is bonus!