I know it might seem strange, but I find flying amusing. I’ve been flying since I was a chibi, so I’m not afraid of it. Plus you have to follow the statistics, you are more likely to get killed on the freeway in a car, than flying. Like most, I don’t enjoy turbulence, but that is neither here nor there (Editor’s note: I enjoy the occasional bit of turbulence simply for the roller coaster aspects.).
I enjoy people watching on the flights, most especially during the boarding process and in the lounges before the flights. It is interesting to look at the people going by and try to figure out why they are flying or what they do. Sure most people are flying for a vacation, but some are for business. Most of the hardcore business people are easy to spot; they are generally in slacks and dressier shirts. My favorite though are the groups that travel in their monogrammed shirts.
Depending on where you go, and when, you also tend to get a reasonable amount of college students. Today, I was behind one during the boarding process. Cute girl. She had her backpack and her iPod, and was just a tiny bit unsure of everything. Combine that with her young and conservative look, and I’d bet she was a first semester freshman returning home for a few days.
I saw another attractive young lady get on the plane and sit down reasonably near by. She was fairly shapely, with platinum blond hair, and she was showing it off. On top of it she was wearing (very) short shorts and heels. Seriously, who wears high heals onto a plane? Since the plane was headed to the LA area and then on to Vegas, there were really only two options.
A) a wanna be actress (Megan Fox she was not)
B) Stripper.
Since she was near enough for me to notice she was not reading or anything, I’d say stripper.
Other than the people, the main thing I’ve noticed as of late is that people are trying to use their carry on to bring their entire damn living rooms. CHECK YOUR BAGS PEOPLE. For god’s sakes, I was on Southwest, bags fly for free. I can almost (keyword, ALMOST) understand it on some airlines like Northworst where it costs $15 for the first bag (fuckers), but not on Southwest. Some of the people were carrying on so much crap it was unbelievable. One lady had a large suitcase (I seriously wonder if it fit within the allowed carry-on size), a gigantic purse, what looked like a backpack of sorts and and an overcoat draped in her arms which would have been overkill in the antarctic in the middle of winter. I don’t know if it is just because I’ve had good luck with my luggage (I think I remember our stuff getting lost once or twice when I was younger, but nothing recent) but I always check a bag.
“But it takes soooo long to get your bags afterward”, you say. I say, Shut the hell up. Unless you are flying on a 747 or bigger, it takes less than 15 minutes to get your bags. If you flew out of a reasonably large airport, it probably took you longer to get through security at the front end, not to mention the hour or two of waiting around and the 30 minutes of boarding (unless you are flying Southwest, who can board a plane damn freaking fast). Who cares about another 15 minutes at the tail end? You’re flying, you know you are going to lose some time.
Then there is the bathroom situation, but that is a discussion for another day. So next time you fly, check your bags, sit down, shut up, and enjoy yourself. People watch, you might even get the entertainment of kibitzing some idiot blogging about his plane flight, it’s certainly more exciting than reading Sky Mall for the 20th time (there is never anything new in that magazine, get over it).