BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

…just to be the man who ate a cheese-burr-gerrrrrrr.

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Okay… I know, I know… Enough with massacring the Proclaimer’s tune… They sing it way better than I do anyway.

So, I ran my mouth about my recent travel experience to and from Ohio, nothing new about that. I run my mouth all the time. But, there are a couple of other things I also did this go around.

The first is, I filled out the online questionnaire the airline kept harping about. Usually I don’t do that sort of stuff because I simply don’t have the time, but I figured what the hell.

Now here’s the thing. I did NOT piss and moan. Well, not much… After all, I had already written the 4 part blog about the trip and put the posts into the queue for deployment, so all of my pissing and moaning was pretty much finished. Anywho, to be honest I actually gave them a pretty good review. I even lauded praise upon a gate agent at Chicago O’Hare for her professional handling of a sticky situation with a young pilot who in my opinion was in need of an anger management class. I mean, adults generally don’t throw screaming fit temper tantrums when they don’t get their way – especially in front a terminal full of people… But then, maybe that’s just the way I see things, and we all know I see things differently than most…

But back to that online thing… When the questions got around to asking if I was delayed for more than 15 minutes on any particular flight/connection, I told the truth and said yes.

I honestly don’t know if it was my answers on the questionnaire, or something that the airline took it upon themselves to do simply because they are wonderful people. I’m inclined to believe it is option #1, but at any rate, I received the following in the mail:

Since Ms. Elizabeth Reed, General Manager of Customer Care for NWA was so kind as to send this, I figured that since I had pretty much blasted them – in my own tongue in cheek fashion, of course – via Brainpan Leakage, I should be fair about things and point out that they did in fact apologize, and even gave me an extra 1000 miles on my frequent flyer account.

That’s actually more than I can say for some of the other airlines I have flown.

Now I just need someplace to go. I wonder how far 1000 frequent flyer miles will get me? Of course, if I redeem them and the airplane has an auxiliary power unit malfunctioning, no air conditioning, and instead of sending someone to Sears for a DieHard battery the pilot bribes some guys in yellow vests and earmuffs to give us a jump, just as soon as they can find where they stashed the cables, I think I might have to scream.

But, not in front of a terminal full of people.

The second thing I did involved a hamburger… Well, a cheeseburger to be precise. As you well know, in the installment titled You Want Blonde Or Brunette On That, I took some more of my tongue in cheek pot shots – or in this case slapshots –  at the restaurant chain, Fuddruckers. I won’t go into euphemistic details about my experience there, after all I did just that in the aforementioned post.

The thing that triggered me doing the thing, so to speak – (hey, fancy word usage… that’s why I get paid the big bucks) – was the fact that so many of you took me to task… Well, actually only one of you took me to task (yes, you George) Still, a huge number of you either commented here, on Facebook, or even sent me a direct email to tell me how absolutely wonderful Fuddruckers truly is, and that my experience must have been an isolated incident. Y’all also went on to tell me that I should file a complaint with the corporate office.

Well, I ruminated on that a bit, and while it’s something I don’t normally do, I surfed on by Fuddruckers.com and found their feedback form. I sent them a comment letting them know about my experience, and that I was only doing such because several of my readers had urged me to do so.

Now they are mad at all of you…

Just kidding. Kinda.

But, seriously, within something around 36 hours I received an email from the corporate office, thanking me for the feedback and letting me know it had been forwarded on to the appropriate store. Less than 8 hours after that I received a very nice apology email from the manager of the store in question, and she is sending me a gift card.

I have to say that kind of integrity out of a company is pretty damned impressive. At least, to me it is, because that hasn’t always been my experience with some other chains. If you don’t know which one I’m talking about search my blog for “square hamburgers are evil” and see what you find.

So anyway, next time I’m on the road and have a layover while making a connection – I mean, you simply cannot fly anywhere these days without making a connection in some faraway place, we’ve already established that – I’ll be keeping my eye out for a Fuddruckers. I’m really looking forward to finally having that truly stellar hunk-o-seared-moo-cow on a bun that E K waxed droolific about so many years ago.

And yes, you too, George… 😉

More to come…

Murv

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…