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I have to come right out and say this. For the first time ever, I was on a flight where people were throwing up. For some reason this is a big deal to me. And to others, judging by the Claudine's reaction. I don't know where if it ranks on your "list of things to do before you die", but I can cross it off my list.
First of all, everything went smoothly in Georgia. The ISP people switched us over to an IP address group outside their firewall at 9:30 rather than 1:00 as previously promised. It took me no time at all to install my firewall box. And, because of my superior planning which involved e-mailing the raw config file to my NJ ISP ahead of time, the VPN gateways and policies were already setup when I plugged the unit into the network. Except for some trouble of a system having the same name as a computer on our RI network, everything went smoothly. I was out of there by 1:00 and on my way back to the airport.
I know, I know, you want to hear about the vomit! Screw the Windows networking crap! Just wait. Ok, I'll just say that I'm glad I got there early. I went to the counter and asked if I could get an earlier flight. The guy put me on the 4:30 flight (with an aisle seat, no less) moving me up from the 6:40 flight (with the dreaded "middle of the row" seat). I was happy, thinking I would be home oh-so-early. I got to the security gate. Or I should say, I got in the line to get near the security gate. It was a truly amazing line. About 24 seperate lines, each approximately 100 yeards long. But I didn't care, I was going home early. So what if it took me 45 minutes to get throught this line, it would still give me about 45 minutes to get something to eat before getting on the plane. I finally got through the line (without being singled out for further invasion this time) and walked to the gate where I saw a message flashing that my new early flight would be leaving at 5:50 PM. Bleah. Ok. Let's get something to eat. Oh... all the actual restaurants are back on the other side of the security gates, you say? Can you just kill me now? Fine... I get two the greasiest pretzles from some "stand" and sit. And sit. And sit. Which is perfect because I'll only be sitting for two hours on the plane. You just can't get enough sitting, I always say.
We get on the plane and the pilot tells we've been delayed because it's raining in Newark and there is a very low "ceiling" and "visiblity" is only an 1/8 of a mile. All of these are buzzwords for "we are Continental Airlines and if we could think of a way to make money by abusing you any more, we would". He tells us that he hopes to get an "ok" from Newark in the next 5 minutes or so. I realize that I'll never fully understand the theory of relativity, but I would like someone to explain to me how 5 minutes in the cockpit of a plane really turns out to be 23 minutes in the back of the plane. Is there some time warp that causes time to slow down as you get further back in the plane? I know that relativity is somehow connected to the speed of light, but we were still waiting at the gate.
We finally get up in the air and the pilot (at least, I think it was a pilot - it could just be a recording that they play every flight), said that he could have us at the gate at Newark in "1 hour and 27 minutes." And I believed him. How stupid am I? How many times am I going to be suckered in by the lies of a commercial airline pilot? Or his recorded voice? The first 2 1/2 hours of the flight were fairly uneventful. Then we started our descent into Newark.
Landing at Newark is always bad. For some reason, the descent is long and drawn out. I don't know if it is just because the 3 NY/NJ area airports make things so busy that they string everything out, or if is just the way the terrain is. I mean, if you fly into Salt Lake City, you come of a mountain range and you basically drop out of the sky to make it onto the runway. Well, we start our descent and as soon as we do, the plane starts shaking. Not violently. But just enough to start that sick feeling. It is pretty constant, but with no pattern so you can't get "used" to it. I'm starting to feel queasy - that sweaty feeling with your mouth watering for no reason. After 15 minutes of this I hear the flaps go down, so I know that we should get below the clouds soon. Five minutes later, the flaps go back up. The "captain" comes on: "Ladies and gentlemen, the plane in front of us slowed down and we couldn't keep our proper spacing, so we've been asked to step out of line, loop around and get back in line. It'll be about another 10 minutes." AAAUUGGH!!
I take a deep breath, because I know that 10 minutes means at least 20. Suddenly, I hear a massive retching noise. About 6 rows in front of me, I see the woman in the aisle seat leap up, putting distance between her and the person in the middle seat of her row. She was not taking any chances. Then another retch as I see the head of that person pitch forward and disappear. Then, the head of the person in the window seat disappear. I guess being in close proxemity to the puking was just too much for that guy. Now, I'm split between being really amused or losing it myself. I needed a diversion, but this was certainly not keeping my mind off of losing my lunch (and when I say lunch, I mean 2 greasy pretzels and a tiny little turkey "sandwich" that was our "snack" on the flight). Fortunately, we got on the ground pretty soon after that. I didn't see anyone else barf. When I got home, Claudine was in bed already. She was watching T.V., but was a little drowsy. She was happy to see me but she tired. As I was telling her about my trip, she was giving me one syllable answers. When I got to the vomit portion, her eyes snapped open. "Really?" she asked, "I've never seen that before. Then what happened?" Suddenly, my pedestrian story became an amusing antecdote.
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