BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

I’m sure some of you noticed recently that the header banner for Brainpan Leakage went through a bit of a change. At the time of this writing (which is not necessarily the time at which this entry will be deployed) it is back to normal. However, around the time I was heading for Ohio it had the addition of some little cartoon characters along with captions, as seen above. This was because here in Saint Louis we were in our 11th straight day of temperatures in the 95+ range combined with high humidity, which in turn created heat indexes in the 110+ range and extreme heat advisories throughout the area. Being an old fat guy, I wasn’t overly excited about the weather, but then, that is what air conditioning is for, correct?

Well, I suppose that all depends on who you ask, or in my case, which airplane you board.

Yes, imagine my dismay upon boarding the decrepit DC-9, only to discover that the auxiliary power unit was malfunctioning, which effectively left us sitting at the gate with no Air Conditioning and unable to start the engines. As we sat there sweltering in the convection oven of an airliner, the captain came on the loudspeaker and announced that we would not be obtaining a new all weather DieHard battery from Sears as one would expect. Seems he had managed to bribe some guys in yellow vests and earmuffs to give us a jump as soon as they managed to find where they stashed the cables.

Eventually, the “screaming metal death tube,” as my publicist insists on calling airplanes, was coughing and sputtering up the tarmac, and soon afterward we were winging our way toward Detroit Metro Airport (remember, I said we couldn’t get there from here and all that…) The rest of the flight was uneventful, more or less. The guy next to me spent the entire hour and 10 minutes reading page 72 of a Johnathan Kellerman novel while bobbling his head back and forth and making “skrrrzzznnnnxxx” noises. And of course there was Mister Chronic Halitosis, but we won’t go there.

Upon finally reaching Detroit, the “farthest terminal/gate statute” was invoked and I had to trudge something on the order of a mile plus to get to my connecting flight. Now one of of the things about DTW is that they apparently watched the original 1976 version of Logan’s Run several times and then dropped a couple of hits of LSD before they built it. At least, that’s my best guess. I say this because they have this elevated indoor bullet train looking thing which will take you from terminal to terminal if you don’t want to walk, and it is oddly reminiscent of the “shuttle tubes” from the movie. If that’s not enough, (and this is where the LSD had to have come in) there is also the Acid Trip Tunnel, pictured above. This underground passageway runs beneath the tarmac and between terminals. Just so you know, it actually looks like that photo. It’s dark, lit only by weirdly shifting, low-wattage, multi-colored lights behind patterned Plexiglas panels along the sides. And, just to make sure it is “Carousel-Like” (see Logan’s Run) there are speakers playing whale noises, electronic music, and other bizarre electro-whacky sounds. One would definitely want to avoid this area after spending a bit too much time in one of the lounges if you get my meaning.

So, anyway, I hoofed it to my connecting gate since I didn’t have much of a layover and arrived with plenty of time to spare. What I didn’t realize at that particular moment was that I had way more time to spare than I originally thought.

“Why is that?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell you… (You knew I would…)

I had no more texted Heather of VFG (Violet Flame Gifts) to let her know I was on the ground in Detroit and that my next flight was running on time, than the gate agent flipped a switch and announced that there was a delay due to a crew member calling in sick and the standby replacement not answering the phone. Therefore, rather than leave in 30 minutes at 5:17 as scheduled, we would be departing at 7:11.

I immediately started looking around for a Slurpee machine, because it was somewhere around this point in time that I had an epiphany – It seemed that Northwest Airlines was now under the control of the Southland Corporation…

More to come…

Murv

Next Installment: You Want Blonde Or Brunette On That?

Those of you who follow me on Twitter, etc, know that I went to Ohio recently. I had a book signing and presented workshops at a great store called Violet Flame Gifts. VFG is absolutely wonderful. Heather, the owner, and her entire family always treat me like royalty, they feed me until I am about to burst, and they are just plain fun to be around, as are the folks who come to the store for the seminars and such. I am always glad to return to VFG or the VFG sponsored event, Earth Warriors Festival, because I know I will have a great time while I am there.

However… (aww c’mon, you knew it was coming)… In the 5 years I have been visiting the Newark, Ohio store, either my trip to or from has been fraught with some kind of issue, such as delays. I don’t blame Heather or VFG for this, so please don’t get that idea. These are things completely out of her control. I’m just starting to believe there is an anti-Murv vortex hanging over the Ohio valley, but only insofar as travel – specifically flying.

Now, at the risk of waxing nostalgic, something I do all the time as you all well know, I’m old enough that I can clearly recall when air travel was nothing short of glamorous. It was the purview of those with money, and those who could afford to travel in the lap of luxury.

Back then, flight attendants were called Stewardesses, and they were the bomb. Not only were they pretty and wore great uniforms, they smiled and made you feel welcome, important, and appreciated.

Hell, in 1975 one of them donned a headset, climbed behind the controls, and flew a crippled 747 through the mountains of Colorado after a light aircraft ripped a hole in the side of the Jumbo Jet and killed off the flight crew… Okay, okay, so Airport ’75 was just a movie. It didn’t actually happen. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that back in the day, “Stewardesses” were the “bomb” – little girls wanted to grow up to be them, and little boys wanted to grow up to date them. And who could blame them? These were the elite hostesses of the air. The cream of the crop.

These days, that just isn’t how it is. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some stellar flight attendants out there, and I’ve even met a few – both female and male – but they seem to be few and far between… on my flights, at least. Usually I end up faced with an angry airborne waitress or waiter with a sour disposition and a superiority complex. I suppose it could be the uniform and the wings that make them feel so powerful. If that’s the case, and the outfit carries with it that kind of influence, perhaps I should start wearing a blazer with elbow patches and chewing on a fancy meerschaum pipe. Then maybe I’d feel more like an author instead of just some guy who accidentally sticks words to paper sometimes.

But, as usual, I digress…

To be honest, the flight attendants are only one symptom in a vast array of ailments where air travel is concerned, and thus far they’ve never been my problem on these Ohio odysseys. Well… Except for the guy we’ll call Mr. Chronic Halitosis. He was working coach on the first leg of my trip to Ohio, and I’m not sure what crawled into his mouth and died, but he really needed to pry it out of there and use some strong mouthwash. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the 2 dollar cologne he had bathed in that day really didn’t help either. It just made you gasp, which in turn allowed you to get the full effect of the halitosis. Hmm… Maybe that was his plan all along. Lucky for me it was a short flight.

But, getting back to the other issues… Truth is, the major pain that has been affecting me quite a bit over the last couple of years is the fact that you can no longer “get there from here.” By that I mean you are pretty much unable to board an airplane in Saint Louis and disembark at your destination without first visiting 1 or more additional cities along the way. This holds true for almost any destination with only a few minor exceptions, but especially for Ohio.

And furthermore, it’s not like they pull in, fill up the tank while you make a pit stop, then get back on the way. No, absolutely not. They take you to a city where you don’t want to go in the first place, then kick you out of the plane and send you to find another airplane on which to catch a ride. And apparently, when I wasn’t paying attention, a law was passed which states that your connecting flight shall be leaving from a gate that is to be “no less than 1 mile from your arrival gate, and if the airport is made up of multiple terminals, the departure gate must then be located in the terminal farthest from the arrival gate. Furthermore, all passengers should be subjected to a minimum of 1 delay or 2 gate changes per trip.“

It’s a good thing I like walking and don’t mind the exercise. The hurry up and wait thing, however, I could certainly do without.

So, by now I am sure you have guessed that this is pretty much what happened with my most recent trip to Ohio. And, if you guessed that, give yourself a cigar. If you didn’t, scroll back up and look at the flight plan graphic. Notice how the arrows are aligned to make an infinity symbol? Well, that’s not just a coincidence, because I was the guest of the airline for something on the order of forever.

And, it all began like this…

I started out my day like any other Friday. Up at 5:30 AM, taking out the trash, cleaning the litter boxes, grabbing a shower, packing lunch for E K, getting her majesty and the O-spring out to work and school respectively, etc… After all of that, courtesy of a ride provided by my publicist, by 11:55 AM I was finally sitting at my gate at Lambert Saint Louis International Airport. Now, I would like to say that Lambert has become more efficient, but that simply isn’t the case. What has happened is that so many airlines have moved their hubs away from Saint Louis that we no longer have anywhere near the volume we once had. Therefore, even though I pared down the “arrive 2 hours ahead of your flight time” to 1 1/2 hours, I still had better than an hour before my flight because checking in and getting through security was a breeze. Since I had this wait, and was scheduled for only a short layover at my connection, I decided I had better eat something now while I had a chance.

This seemed like a good idea at the time, however the concourse where my gate happened to be had been undergoing renovations. Now, this will likely be a good thing once finished, but at that particular point in time it meant my choices were limited. I could pick between booze, Star-Make-A-Bucks, some pizza outfit that had a 100 yard long line of people in front of it, or the pre-made sandwich cooler nearby.

Not wanting booze, a danish, or to stand in line, I was pretty much hamstrung. I stood in front of the open faced refrigerator and perused my options. Ham and cheese on whole wheat, or chicken on ciabatta. Ham, chicken… Whole wheat, ciabatta… The debate inside my head raged on for several minutes. Finally I flipped a mental coin and reached for a sandwich. In the end I had the rubber chicken on sawdust bread with wilted lettuce, and an orange juice. If I could believe the label on my sandwich it had been made fresh that day – somewhere in the state of Maryland. Made fresh or not, it didn’t take long for me to conclude that the trip from Maryland to Missouri didn’t exactly agree with it. But, I choked it down anyway, and then cried just a little. I mean, after all, I had just consumed a really horrid $1.25 chicken sandwich. Personally, I really didn’t feel like it was truly worth $1.25, and that just made it all the more sad since I had paid $7.49 for the privilege of gnawing on it. Don’t even get me started on the OJ. I suppose it might have actually been worth the $4.49 for the 12-ounce bottle, given that it had fermented a bit and now contained alcohol. However, I tend to take my screwdrivers a bit less “ripe” if you know what I mean…

Looking back, this was one of the better parts of my travel experience that day, because you see, the minute we boarded the airplane this leg of my trip inevitably fell into the bend over and grab your ankles vortex…

More to come…

Murv

Next Installment: I Thought 7:11 Was A Convenience Store…