The Daily Booger

I love flying, primarily because there is little about the current air travel process that is not thoroughly comical. This fact is made especially juicy when combined with the fact that I’ve already realized, about a day or two into this blog, that I’m desperate for writing material. Thus my recent visit to my out-of-state girlfriend had the added benefit of providing me with blog material. Although, for my readers that happen to be said girlfriend, I would like to stress that this was a totally secondary, side-wise, minuscule benefit to my trip.

At the airport I shared the shuttle from long-term parking to the Sacramento International terminal (it was an exciting day in the city when the Sacramento airport went international, with one flight to Mexico every other week — take that Los Angeles!) with a lady whose dog loves to run and kill things. I know this because she talked about her dog to the other lady next to her non-stop for the entire duration of the shuttle ride. Her dog also likes to travel, eat, poop, and bark loudly at night for no apparent reason, thus setting him sharply apart from, I don’t know, the genre of dogs who don’t like to eat, poop, and bark.

After I made it to the terminal I printed my e-ticket from the e-ticket booth provided, for my convenience, at the end of a long complicated maze of elastic rope which was keeping an disorderly line of approximately one passenger in line, counting myself. The concept of an e-ticket is that, if your life is structured such that the one thing computers have the inability to screw up is your travel schedule, you can amend that by purchasing a plane ticket on a computer, from another computer, and then print it out from separate computer just in case neither of the previous two messed anything up. Not that it really matters whether or not you ever manage to print your ticket because your flight will be delayed and eventually canceled. The last time I flew I departed from San Fransisco on the only flight to successfully leave the airport during that week, and even that was delayed. Sitting in the San Fransisco lounge before my flight I spoke with a man who had been in the terminal since the Carter administration, surviving on complimentary peanut donations made to him by arriving travelers. His latest travel goal was to catch a flight home in time for his daughter’s wedding, whom he had last seen as a three-year-old.

But the people who run the airlines do not care. They’re out of touch with the real world, remember, these are the same people who have seen to it that the airport overhead speakers continually broadcast useful information to you, the traveler, such as that you are not accept packages or luggage donations from strangers, or to let them carry your luggage for you unattended. I’m not sure what these people are thinking because it’s obvious, if you just look around the San Fransisco airport, any stranger who attempted to assist a random passenger with their luggage would probably get shot before they could even touch a suitcase.

As I sat in the lounge for my current flight, the pattern of loud speaking women broadcasting interesting details of their lives to the world at large continued with a southern woman talking on her cell phone. She was talking to someone at our destination (Salt Lake, Utah) where I was to lay over, and at one point was desperately trying to figure out the time difference between here and there. After listening to her make numerous comments such as “so wuz the tam difference in Sat Lake?” and “Aye don’t mean to be dumb… but… ha’d aye check dat?”, I piped up and confirmed for her that, yes, it was a one hour difference, naively hoping that this was the last question the lady needed to before she could hang up, or at least lower her voice. But I was wrong and she proceeded to discuss, at length, the intimate details of her business job, which apparently has to do with both dead turkeys and the stock market.

But thankfully everything went well on my flight and I made it to Texas in time to share dinner with my girlfriend. Because I love to eat. And bark.