Fly Airline Delight - Completely Customized for YOU

The news today lists the sorry state of airline travel, although, to my mind, it doesn't go into nearly enough detail. "On time" grievances seem to be what the industry is tracked on -- well, and safety, of course -- but they've missed some of the more important issues from the traverler's viewpoint.

How about this for the perfect flight:

• Select your seat size to fit your body, just as you do your jeans. "I need a 32 short, please, and my husband will need a 40 long." This would accommodate every ass and every leg length, as well as also apply to the size of the toilet facility. No one I know, or have ever known, can possibly do everything necessary for personal hygiene in a toilet area that size. And on flights lasting over four hours, could one of the attendants please attend to the state of the stall? By the time you land, the facilities are too disgusting to use. A shower would be nice, too. I've taken shorter journeys on trains that have had shower facilities. Wouldn't it be wonderful to arrive at your vacation destination actually smelling good? I'm sure the taxi drivers and hotel personnel would appreciate it.
• Choose your meals when you book your flight, so you know exactly which antacid or H2 blocker to bring with you. "No, I don't want the congealed pasta this trip. I'd much prefer the mystery fish, slimy lettuce and tasteless dressing, please, and without the cold, hard roll. "
• A breakfast snack before landing? "I'll pass on the salmonella burrito...maybe the stale croissant and fake butter instead."
• If we book early enough we can already choose our seat location, but wouldn't it be lovely to have the spot tailored more to our likes and dislikes? "Please do not seat me near anyone under the age of 30, and I'd prefer the quieter section for introverts. No big-mouthed, big-haired gals from Big D with too much makeup, jangling jewelry and a terrible accent. No Gen-X executives who want to show me their iPods and iPhones and pictures of their iWives and iChildren." If you're traveling alone, astrological seating would work... fire signs matched with air signs, water and earth signs seated together. Bladder compatibility would be a great touch, too.
• Drinks? Your choices now are limited to alcohol, canned soda, stale Evian, weak coffee and tea, lukewarm milk and plain ice. Why couldn't they have a little Starbuck's cart and serve something worth drinking...along with a side order of whatever sleeping pill works best for you?
• Reading material in the seatback pockets? Forget "Sky Mall" and "Duty Free" and stuff the pocket full of those thick magazines that each weigh too much to carry on board, a real news magazine or two, or maybe something naughty that you're too embarrassed to buy yourself. And forget the sick bag... If I need to vomit, I'd rather do it on the rude flight attendant's shoes. Oh -- can't a gazillion dollar industry afford real pillows, instead of those engorged Q-Tips with the scratchy covers?
  
• The 777 airplane has individual TV monitors for your viewing pleasure, but, alas, nothing pleasurable to view. There must have been 227 million videos produced by now... surely some computer geek somewhere can figure out how to store a decent-sized library of watchable videos on a plane that big. And, I'm not really sure why the "flight map" representation (which tracks the true position of the plane for the entire flight) has all the site descriptions labeled in Spanish. I wondered for awhile if I was actually on Cubano Airlines when I saw "Oceano Atlantico" and "Nuevo York" on the map. It would also be a tad more comforting if the tiny airplane graphic didn't look like it was headed nose down, directly INTO the ground at the destination airport.
• It's ironic how the airline informational magazine reminds us of the dangers of DVT's during long flights, yet the pilot keeps the seat belt sign on the entire time so you can only creep into the aisles when your bladder is about to burst. Take out two more seats and install a small treadmill, for God's sake. A human being is not meant to spend 18 hours seated in one position, strapped down with no room for leg movement. It's not an unreasonable request, particularly since they have already alerted us to the danger.
• Decide either by lottery or an additional fee which passenger gets to use the shared arm rest, and ditto for which passengers get to leap into the aisle and off the plane first. Those final five minutes after landing get ugly.
• It costs roughly $8000 to fly to Europe in business class (with reclining chairs, plush blankets, better food and service). I think it would be reasonable if the airline accepted one child or another asset in lieu of the $8000.
• And my last request... how about if all airline personnel realize that passengers are customers -- the people who actually pay real (and lots of) money for their tickets --which ultimately provides their paychecks. If the minimum-wage grocery bagger at the supermarket can make eye contact and generate a little friendly small talk, why can't the "professionals" on airplanes do at least that? The only time I've seen any real warmth has been the cheery farewell as passengers exit the aircraft. "Bye, now. Have a great day....Thanks for choosing Snotty Uncomfortable Airlines" (Translation: "Thank God we're on the ground and you're finally leaving the plane. You are scum, and it was way too much trouble to serve you. I hope this flight was late enough that you miss your next connection. Ta Ta!")

Jet Lag, Lag, Lag, Lag

I'm not exactly sure just how to place my foot on this escalator that is my "normal life." A vacation, especially one that involves lonnnnng plane flights and the biologic chaos of many time zones, disorients and confuses, and I'm not quite ready to take that last sliding step back into reality. I have, in fact, spent the last two days in the land of JetLag, where jammies are the national uniform, 3:30 a.m. is the perfect time for tuna and noodles, and where there isn't enough Xanax to recover from the flight home.

Short version: The trip to Europe was completely fabulous... and flying completely sucks.

Longer version:
I found it so ironic that Monday's online news' lead story was of the unfortunate woman who died in custody after being a little too uppity about getting bumped from a flight. How easily that could have been me in either Miami or Dallas on Sunday.

International travel security and U.S. Customs make it almost impossible to get to a connecting flight unless you have at least a three-hour interval AND nothing unexpected encroaches on those hours. After a "security breach" in Miami delayed our flight for an hour, I raised a little ruckus about the five whole minutes I would have in Dallas to go from one concourse to its diagonal twin (at least a 20-minute walk), but the sweet voice of reason whispered in my ear to restrain myself and my demands... the demands were falling on deaf ears, anyway.

The TSA and the airlines themselves are perhaps the most rigid authoritative bodies we will encounter in our normal American lives. It's abundantly clear they're not kidding about their mission, and none of them offer any illusions that they are serving customers. Every passenger is clearly suspect, simply an inconvenient annoyance cluttering up their day. Southwest Airlines was recently profiled on CBS Sunday Morning for their legendary customer service...maybe they could loan a few mentors to American Airlines and the personnel at the Dallas and Miami terminals.

Enough bitching -- let's just say I won't be nominating anyone connected to aviation for employee of the month...and if you wondered where the power-mad characters from movies like "Cool Hand Luke" have gone... they are alive and well, working for the TSA in Miami.

Excepting one day where I ended up ass over teakettle, face down on the sidewalk in front of Carfax Tower, "The Centre of Oxford," our trip couldn't have been better. (The fall was the fault of an insidious, vicious map. Maps hate me and are clearly out to kill me. This map only managed to inflict several bruises and a possible broken toe, but I didn't let it ruin my day... I braved on at a snail's pace, and the foolish, feckless map ended up in the trash!)

Oxford, while beautiful and crammed full of history with a capital aitch, is also crammed with buses and traffic worthy of a much larger town. London is first and foremost a city -- not unlike New York or San Francisco (well, except for those thousand years of history and all that impeccable civility, of course). But Paris......ahhh, Paris!

I'm sure the crowds are as fierce, the traffic as crazy and the prices as high as in London, but in that setting, surrounded by all that tranquil beauty, who really cares? In fact, who even notices?

I'm going to deck the first person who asks me about the "rude French." We encountered only one grump (a late-night taxi driver) and everyone else was as friendly and helpful as we could have hoped for. Not speaking fluent French may be a tiny handicap, but everyone we met made a tremendous effort to communicate, and their "little bit of English" was almost always perfect. One fellow traveler at Charles de Gaulle airport even gave us a primer on using the automated ticket machines for the RER trains then personally shepherded us to the correct track -- he struggling with English, we lost in our primitive French, but connecting through his courtesy and charm.

Even in the midst of an urban area filled with 11 million people, about 2.5 million in Paris proper, there is an ambiance, a relaxation, even a peace that permeates each experience. Where life could be frantic, it's instead leisurely...somehow time is stretched, expanded, and the days seem long enough, deep enough to accommodate any possibility.

I'm not naive enough to think Europe and the UK have all the answers to modern living, but from my perspective they have made a few better choices than we have in some important areas, including lifestyle. I'm using my soapbox on "Blog Action Day," October 15th, to rant about these differences. For today, let's just say it's nice to be home AND I wish I were still in Paris...not an easy conflict to resolve.

The last item on my "to do for trip" list is to "get back to work." I guess I should.

Paris...Tomorrow!

The alarm is set for 4 a.m. Thursday morning, then I'm off...

My son Mike is speaking at a symposium at St. Catherine's College in Oxford, and because of family obligations his wife was unable to accompany him...so the little dear invited Mom to go. YAY!

Anticipation is, for me, the most delicious pleasure, and I've been swimming in it for weeks. Anticipation allows imagination to meld with possibility, to set the stage, to enhance the experience. Events often don't seem quite real to me without internalizing the fantasy surrounding them, and I've loved this time of mental preparation, even more than the joy of list-making... and by now I even have a list of my lists. Planning a trip, from the first concept through the slow accretion of details to this climactic day of final-things-to-do, may be my favorite part of a journey, almost (but not quite) as lovely as dessert.

I convinced him that flying into Paris was a better bargain than London, so we added three days in Paris at the beginning, and we'll wind up the trip with two days in London. He's never been to France or England, so I will act as guide and shepherd....since I am utterly direction- and map-challenged, this will be either interesting or a disaster, depending on how good the food is. If we're lucky, his Blackberry will have GPS and "lost" will be only a state of mind. He's also refused to learn even a syllable of French, and I worry if "Je suis la mere" will be interpreted as "I am the mother" or "I am the sea."

I promised myself in this previous post that I wouldn't attempt another uber-ambitious European vacation, but this opportunity is just too sweet to pass up, despite the ungodly amount of flying time it takes to GET there and RETURN from there in those cramped, cold seats. I would pay an extra $500 per ticket if the flight included a La-Z-Boy lounge chair and a treadmill. (The very first day Expedia Dot Com offers teleportation, I'm there!)

Mike also moonlights as a photographer and will be taking his hubba hubba camera, which he's promised to share with me (under strict supervision, I'm sure). I'm hoping that photography, croissants, crepes and English ploughman's lunches will be the backbone of the trip.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks -- save my seat in the chat room....... au revoir and cheerio!

Monday Melange

GOOD MORNING.....

I've posted a few new things in the "new" column to the right that you might find interesting and may not have seen.... from fractal images to a humorous take on bizarre diets, to Blog Action Day and Photo Friday... and (just a reminder) as each Sunday is posting day for Post Secret, there are new secrets on that site you may have missed.

Since it's back-to-work Monday for many of us, you might need a break later. I found these links to be worth a bit of time and think you will too.

And....I'm starting the countdown today -- exactly one month until I leave for Europe again, this time with one of my sons, who is speaking at a symposium at Oxford. We're spending a few days in Paris, a few in Oxford and a few in London.

He's never been to any of those cities, and I do have a loose agenda of sights for him to explore with his hubba hubba camera. I learned my lesson last year about cramming too much into a whirlwind tour (described HERE,) but if anyone has any suggestions of favorite things to see or do or eat in those cities, I'd love to hear them. You can leave as "comments" here or email to cynblogger@aol.com -- and THANKS!

If It's Tuesday In Europe, My Feet Hurt

This time last year I was frantically making lists and checking them 37 times, spending my days on ricksteves.com for packing tips, confirming and reconfirming foreign reservations, trying to remember high school and college French, sweating my way through exchanging money and stashing it discreetly in my little waist pack, and hoping transportation security in three countries wouldn't question my excessively large supply of Xanax.... (flying, especially over the Atlantic for eight hours, scares the crap outta me).

This time this year I'm serenely sitting at my computer, happily viewing the 338 pictures I took during that trip to Europe (see my favorites to your right) and vowing never to leave my house again with passport in hand.

On one hand it was a glorious sightseeing vacation, my first in 13 years of self-employment.
On the other hand, it was exactly the wrong trip for this type of comfort-loving, cranky, I-don't-want-to-leave-my-cocoon, curmudgeonly introvert.

In Paris I met up with a long-time friend who is a seasoned traveler, very familiar with many areas of the world and at home everywhere. He's very savvy about money and thus very thrifty, little concerned with gourmet food, amenities or physical comfort while traveling. He's also a certified extrovert.

While I can't speak for all introverts, I suspect that there's a profound difference in the way introverts and extroverts experience the world.

My friend can scan a map or guidebook in 30 seconds, decide in another 20 seconds exactly what he wants to see, find the best route and the best mode of transportation to get there (and not care if he has to run for a train or chase down a taxi), see the place in a flash, drinking everything in with one big gulp, including all historical facts and arcane tidbits....then be ready to move on to the next marvel.

I, on the other hand, need to mull over each possible site for weeks, research its history, plan every move and account for every eventuality, know for sure what the entire day, including the weather, will be like, have at least two fallback plans at the ready, and always arrive at the train station at least a half hour early. I also need to let the history and atmosphere of the site gather around me, to experience it through osmosis and imagination, silence and solitude and see the finer details through the lens of my camera. I'll move on to the next attraction tomorrow... or next week, long after this one has been absorbed.

It's been my experience that extroverts can truly live in the moment -- such a trendy thing to do these days. We poor introverts need to absorb the nuances over time, to meld the reality with expectation and imagination, and only in reflection, association and memory will the experience become real to us, part of us.

It was one of those "if it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium" kinds of trips -- so much to see, a finite time to see it, and no time in between to rest or even to recover from serious jet lag. I can't even blame my friend for all of this -- it was I who set the sightseeing schedule, not realizing at the time I was sabotaging my own experience.

The plan was: a week in France, a week in England, hitting some high points that each of us had seen before and wanted to share with one another, and to see some new things together that had piqued our interest. A leisurely drive through the Loire valley, not to visit the chateaux but a pilgrimage of sorts to the abbey where lie the tombstones of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. (OK, maybe we were really searching for Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn of "The Lion In Winter," but whatever.) Throw in Paris, Chartres, Fleury Abbey, Orleans, London, Windsor and York in 14 short days, and you get the idea. Thank God we decided there wasn't quite enough time for a side trip to Haarlem or Amsterdam!

About three-quarters of the way through the trip, I'm afraid my response to almost everything was, "If it's Tuesday, shut up, leave me alone and let me sleep! NO, I will not walk another two miles to dinner because my feet are killing me now!"

In the end we saw everything we planned, and more, and I arrived home completely exhausted, lollygagging in bed for (seriously) two days before venturing out even for the mail. Transatlantic travel with all the post-911 security is not for the weak, the lame or the getting older. Those little airline seats aren't for the ample of ass, either. Although I had an hour between flights in Dallas on the last leg of the journey, I literally had to run for the gateway because of security delays and changes in gates. (WHY do they do that?)

It's taken 11-1/2 months for me to be able to look back upon that trip with fondness and a bit of nostalgia. It's also taken nearly a year for my introverted brain to assimilate the wonder of everything we saw and experienced, to filter the reality of it through my imagination and be able to realize the amazing history we touched upon. It's quite overwhelming to stand in a cathedral that has stood for a thousand years or longer, to walk on a 4th century Roman floor, and to tour an 11th century kitchen endowed by the most powerful woman of medieval France. I wish, like my friend, I had been able to internalize and feel all this at the time, but only time has been able to impart that to me.

If I'm ever brave enough to venture forth again to Europe, it will be for a much longer time and with far fewer goals. It will be with the knowledge that to appreciate history, I have to become a part of it, even if that's only in my imagination.

Next time, if it's Tuesday, it will be France....and the next Tuesday still France...and the next, and the next, and the next.

Well, maybe one quick side trip to The Netherlands....