You might want to grab a snack or hit the bathroom before you start reading this. This could be a long one, and there's no intermission scheduled... and excuse the worse than usual grammar, I'm very tired...
Let's start at the beginning, Tuesday. I arrive at Bangor International Airport about an hour before my flight, ready to go. I park the car (only $7 a day!), check in (six American Eagle employees hanging out at the desk, just looking for something to do) and head up to security. As I make my way
thru the
Disneyesque weaving line for security, where
i'm the only one in line, a light goes off in my head. Sh*t. I packed all my toiletries. Face wash, shaving gel, moisturizer and after shave (luckily I forgot the toothpaste at home). All of which are bigger than the 3
oz's allowed and all of which are expensive. I try to take good care of my skin, what can I say? So I have to throw everything out. The lesson, as always, I'm an idiot.
It must have been a good day at the airport as the crack staff only set off the master alarm twice in the 30 or so minutes I sat there. No one could figure out how to use the keypad on the door. Anyway, the plane is tiny (3 seats to a row, as were all my planes the past couple of days), and the pilot looks like the flying version of
Doogie Howser, all 12 years old of him. Not much I can do but pray, so off to Logan we go.
At Logan I decide to get some lunch. After some careful consideration, McDonald's is the lucky winner. One tiny problem though. NO ONE working there speaks
english, so I have to use my fingers to show which value meal I want (#9 chicken nuggets, can't go wrong). I have no problem with people coming to this country and working hard to better their life, but if you're can't speak the language, don't get a job in the service industry!
(side note, ever notice that there are never any clocks in airports? For people like me who don't wear a watch, you have to find one of those little arrive/depart
tv's to see what time it is. One would think that having large time pieces in a time based field would be beneficial. Then again, the flights are always delayed anyway, so its tough to miss your flight.)
I arrive in Pittsburgh and take the airport shuttle to my hotel and check in. (Side note #2, working for the
cheaparse company I do, they decide that everyone at training will have to share a room. With a complete stranger. Someone I've never met before in my entire life. Weird.)
So I go up to the room, open the door, and what do I see? A room with one bed and a pull out couch.
Being the aforementioned idiot that I am, I decide to be a nice guy and give the bed to my early 60's roommate, who turns out snores like its his job. Once I shared a hotel room in Spokane, WA, with my parents and I ended up sleeping in the bathroom
cuz my dad snored so loud. This guy was a close second to that.
Ironically enough, I had a very vivid dream that my back really hurt, and when I woke up, my back hurt! Go figure. You'd think that some
scientician out there would invent a pull out couch mattress that wasn't the most uncomfortable thing ever to sleep on.
So I won't bore you with the training details, except the following
tid bits:
1. Two of the guys there thought that I looked like Toby from The Office. Huh??
C'mon now! I've been told that I look like Matt Damon ( I love drunken Georgetown girls), which obviously isn't true, and some guy from Ugly Betty, which I've never watched, but Toby! The guy is like 10 years older than me and such a depressing character. Not cool.
2. The guy sitting next to me spent half the class looking on
Craigslist.com for girls in Pittsburgh to email to go out that night. Can you say sketchy?
Off to the Pittsburgh airport I go where of course my flight is delayed and of course its one of those tiny 3 seats to a row planes again. This time though, I get a wannabe
Goodfella sitting next to me. Overweight, black shoes, black pants, black expensive t shirt, very much balding and a gray goatee, and he decides that he wants to take up as much of my space as possible. So as I'm perusing the Sky Miles catalog (trying to decide which would be more useful. A portable breathalyzer, an electric tie rack, an inspirational poster (
yaknow, the ones that have a pick of a man on top of a mountain with the word 'achievement' and some inspirational quote under it) and a toaster that cooks both the hot dog and bun at the same time) and wannabe Tony next to me starts falling asleep, allowing himself to sprawl into my sacred personal space. Not cool. So I take the passive aggressive approach. Cough a little too loud, trying to wake him up, shuffle around in the seat trying to get comfortable occasionally nudging him and after those don't work I decide to start tapping my leg to the beat of my
iPod (
cuz of course his leg was up against mine) Doesn't work. So I sit pancaked to the window of the plane for the duration of the flight. I hate people.
And finally, I'll end with these snippets:
- A big "what the heck?" to Mike, Phil, Rob and Jim, none of whom answered their phone last night when I called looking for a Red Sox score. Seriously, I expect better of you guys.
- And a big thank you to my lovely wife for answering the phone and giving me the score in her own little broken baseball lingo kinda way.
Well, I'm home now, and not flying again for a while, thank god. Although the misses is heading back to Boston for a couple of days this wknd/next week, so I'll be all alone in the house. Do you think its possible to bring the fridge and microwave into the living room for a couple of days? I guess there's only one way to find out...
