LEAVING ON A JET PLANE... PART TWO

Now we're through security, and into the main part of the airport.

And this I simply love.

It's people walking briskly and purposely to their gates - or at least trying to appear purposeful as they try to find out where their gate is.

There's your gargantuan restrooms that echo with banging stall doors and people trying to fit their carry-on luggage in the actual stall with them - I still believe they are designed to overcompensate for the broom closet restrooms on the planes.

And my favorite - all the food. Overpriced, over processed, over packaged dry sandwiches -- huge cookies all wrapped in cellophane - grande size sodas - huge bags of candy, sweets and squishy fish and worms. And since it's impossible to get any food through security, you are at their complete mercy.

The restaurants, I must admit I avoid. Everyone seems to be drinking and using an obscene amount of condiments on huge slabs of meat (I'm predominantly a vegetarian) and suddenly becoming extremely friendly with any attractive stranger standing near them at the bar (and I'm predominantly non-attractive).

And then everyone stages themselves in the waiting area by the gate. The first-class and first-time fliers put themselves right by the gate, carefully sitting in the sling-type chairs with a minimum of one empty seat between. The coach fliers, and those who fly regularly, sit in the remaining rows, with college students folding themselves to the floor so they can keep logged in with the internet.

And I sit as far away as I can while still being able to dimly hear the announcements. I can't figure out to this day why the first-class people are boarded first, and why they WANT to be on the airplane when the rest of us, at least on smaller aircraft, are forced to slowly move past them and (inadvertently?) bang them with the carry-on luggage.

Although I completely understand why people pay the extra money for first-class - each time I squeeze into my seat and hike my knees up against the seat in front of me, I wish wish wish I could have gone and gotten a first-class seat - I hate feeling like a pretzel scrunched up with warm bodies pressing me back on every side.

I try to be an agreeable seat-partner - I don't try to take up extra space, I do keep my elbows in, I don't play with the lights (although I absolutely MUST have the air vent blowing right on me - the only way I don't get airsick).

But by the end of even the very short hops from Tucson to Phoenix, or LA to San Diego, I am already weary of every one's deodorant scent, and what they ate before the boarded, and am convinced I've caught pneumonia from that dude coughing in the row behind me.

So the final ending is landing, tumbling out of the crowded plane, gathering your belongings and running into the arms of someone you love at that destination.

WHITE FLAT SOFT

How can simply sitting be so exhausting?

It has been shown that while moving around, we assume a fairly upright posture. But when we sit and relax, the head and neck slowly protrude, because the muscles that support them get tired. As the muscles tire, they relax, and we get what is called "protruded head posture."

When this is maintained long enough (say a seven hour flight from Honolulu to Phoenix), it causes overstretching of the ligaments.

Okay, our physiology lesson for the day is over.

So after 'just sitting' all snug in my flight, visions of soft

bedding and multiple large pillows danced in my head, contrasting violently with the haunting reality of a four+ hour drive home from the airport.

Guess which one won?

And I didn't care about thread count, I didn't care about the free breakfast (stale bagels, weak coffee and juice), I didn't even care about how many stars the hotel has on its Expedia review.

All I cared that it was there - it was clean - and it was soft.

Ahhhhhhh.

PUBLIC APOLOGY TO HAWAIIAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 36

First, allow me explore some dark scenarios with you - nightmares inspired by CNN then exploited by Fox News until you will hide under your bed whimpering and shaking for the rest of your limited and miserable existence.

Number one: H1N1 (previously called the "swine flu," but since that phrase didn't scare people enough and somehow restricted it to poor Mexicans who don't travel enough internationally to allow it to become a terrifying pandemic, it became H1N1, which is a WHOLE lot more frightening, reeking of control, test tubes, modified genes and government control - it also helps that a large monetary penalty applies to any news source which uses 'swine flu' instead of the shocking H1N1).

Here I think the major scare factor is that you can't really tell when you have H1N1 as opposed to a regular case of the flu (like Alzheimer's - diagnosed only when your brain is autopsied) BUT WITH H1N1 the chance that YOU ARE GOING TO DIE are so INCREDIBLY INCREASED like from 1.12% to 1.13% DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS YOU ARE GOING TO DIE DIE DIE and you aren't even going to KNOW IT IS H1N1 UNTIL AT YOUR FUNERAL!!

Number two: Terrorists - difficult as it is to keep the attention-deficit American public aware that there are still extremists who passionately believe in blowing up people (including themselves), the new image of fear is suicide-bombers targeting public areas where the public congregate - such as football stadiums, shopping malls, and the line to the only clean stall in the ladies restroom.

That is when terrorists will strike - something like anthrax dropped in the middle of the Super Bowl (just when the score is tied in the fourth quarter with 29 seconds left on the play clock and Houston has control of the ball) - or at the newest Target Enormément (the fourth in Venice, California this year) , a short man of uncertain but darker ancestry (wearing a baseball cap and a New England Patriots shirt - I have learned everything I know about criminals from NCIS, CSI and Law and Order) will be moving slowly through the crowd injecting each impatient customer individually with a rare and complex virus that IMMEDIATELY turns them into a mindless zombie who RUNS to Wal-Mart, purchases ALL the Charmin Toilet Paper and drive America insanely short of tissue choices.


Okay. Now back to my story.

So imagine a crowded flight of tourists... excuse me, visitors (the Hawaiian Visitor's Bureau feels that sounds better).... so a flight of crowded visitors.... um.... a visitor flight of crowds? Whatever - I was on an airplane for a long, long flight with a great number of other people (42% of Asian ethnicity, 31% military families, and the remaining 27% wearing tee shirts printed saying "Waikiki Forever" & "Kona Dry Goods").

And yes, I was that woman nosily expelling globs of nasal mucus into tissue after tissue after tissue - and then coughing and hacking and spitting up phlegm the entire seven hours of our flight, spending whatever cooties she had through each and every molecule of re-conditioned and shared 1.8 cubic feet of air per passenger throughout the entire airplane.

This is the only flight I wished had been crying infants and screaming toddlers to cover up all of the disgusting sounds I was producing.

And if 98% of the people scrunched in with me didn't think at least once about H1N2, close quarters, and this might be something more than a cold, I will eat my hat.

I think I was saved from a public lynching (or being locked into the smallest restroom) only by the mind-numbing in-flight movie of Eddie Murphy in Nickelodeon's "Imagine That" (hasn't the plot of overly-detached-father-figure ignores cute-little-girl-figure until magical-connection-or-curse joins-them-together been done about, what, three billion times now?).


Again, to all on that flight, my deepest and sincerest apologies to everyone who was on that flight.

PANIC IS NOT LOGICAL

I don't like flying. I'm not scared of flying, I just don't like it.

The seats keep getting smaller as my butt gets wider, the amenities one by one are being taken away (you used to get a meal on almost ANY flight... not that you necessarily would wanna eat it, but you could get one), and the only place you get a movie anymore without going international (actually, you get TWO) is flying to Hawaii

Plus I have a not-quite-pinched nerve in my back (slightly- tweaked-nerve?) that generally does not cooperate when I sit for extended periods of time. And the flight time to Hawaii is seven hours going and six and a half hours coming back (wind resistance).

So I end up standing in the back with the flight attendants and scaring off people who need to use the restrooms - they see me on my feet, assume there is a line, and go back to their seat. I probably cause more passengers to race to terminal restrooms the moment the plane lands than anyone in history. Especially after a seven hour flight and multiple fluids.

But back to not liking to fly. Like I said, I'm not scared of it, but I have a daughter who is TERRIFIED of flying - her flying, me flying, anyone flying.

No, it's not Harmony, you sillies. Harmony isn't scared of ANYthing... well, actually, she is scared of a couple of things but I am not going to list them publicly.

But Joy is literally freaking out because her brother flies back to college early tomorrow morning, and I leave Sunday for (how did you guess it?) Hawaii again.

But hey, this time I am going for a REASON, not just for FUN. I am going for a JOB... involving my grandchildren. But it is a SERIOUS task - honestly.

Anyone have any suggestions for combating something that is purely and solely emotionally fed and intellectually illogical?

And yes, she is already on medication to just deal with daily life.

But really, any ideas? Besides locking her up in a padded room until I get back home?