Hello from way up in the sky, en route to Minnesota. I'll post this when I hit the hotel room but I'm writing it from seat D-10 on a Northwest Airlines flight. A nice flight attendant lady is prowling the aisle with a bottle of H2O and a stack of nested plastic cups, asking everyone, "Water? Water? Anyone want water?" She makes it sound like we're not likely to get any in Minneapolis so we'd better tank up now.
The flight left right on time and they're saying we'll be in 10-15 minutes early. I like that. If I ran an airline, I think I'd pad the schedule so every flight would get in 10-15 minutes earlier than we say. It might take us just as long as any other airline to get you where you're going (or longer) but when you thought of us, you'd think, "Boy, they're good…they're usually 10-15 minutes early."
Security at LAX was the usual drag, made draggier by a raging debate ahead of me in my line. A lady who looked a lot like Paris Hilton (but wasn't) was refusing to remove her footwear…and getting very loud and strident about it. On one hand, she had a point. They were sandals — and I could have hidden a lot more weaponry or explosives in my wallet, which I did not have to put on the conveyor belt, than she could have secreted in her flip-flops. On the other hand, it was not like she had a prayer of winning the argument and having one lowly Security Agent reverse TSA policy.
"You're required to put your shoes through the x-ray," said a man of steadily-diminishing patience while behind us, we could all hear voices crying out, "My plane leaves in ten minutes" or similar pleas. For some reason, no one thought to move her to one side and debate the issue while others passed on through. Paris kept responding, as if someone was paying her to say it as many times as possible, "But these are not shoes." She was right on some theoretical level but wrong to think she was getting on her plane without complying. By the time she did as ordered, the line behind her was the length of the Nile and at least a few people had probably missed their flights.
The pilot just said we're at 31,000 feet and we'll be starting our descent shortly. He'll "have us on the ground" (isn't there a nicer way to put that?) in about 25 minutes and then there's 5-10 minutes to taxi to our gate. I think the "10-15 minutes early" didn't include taxi time so maybe we're not as far ahead of schedule as they suggested.
I'm going to wrap this up and spend the rest of the flight paging through the in-flight magazine, getting up to speed on the Great Steakhouses of America. How is it that I never get to vote on what gets onto those lists? It couldn't be because they're just a cheap advertising ploy and that the restaurants listed are the ones that paid to be included, could it? If it turns out that's the case, I'm going to stop wagering on these things.