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8th Jul 09
M. R. SellarsContinued from: Murv’s Not So Excellent Adventure…
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?
