Some Notes on Traveling

-- Ah, family reunions. Maybe a day too long, but a lot of fun. My cousins have cute kids, ranging from the toddlers up to the teens. The teens may substitute "cool" for cute if they so desire.

-- When your airplane lands in the fog it's kind of cool. Especially when the tops of the radio/TV transmission towers are above the top cloud layer and you can see the plane's shadow inside the fog.

-- When the PA announcer tells you that "federal regulations prohibit tha smokin' a tabbaccowe inside a da terminal an' widdin fifteen feet a da terminal doorss," you know you're in Chicago.

ETA -- Whoever thought up the new size for paperback books so they fit in your coat pocket without bending in half and tearing the lining is a genius and I hope they made a mint off of it.

-- To the lady who carried three bags onto the flight from Midway to Detroit: You may not call two of them "my purse."

-- To the folks who hang a smaller bag over the extended handle of their wheeled luggage: You ain't foolin' nobody. That's two bags, buckaroo, and the rules say "one" and we're probably not taking off until you give in.

-- Lambert-St. Louis International Airport has a small "spa store" inside the east terminal which offers soothing massages. This is good, because Lambert is a pit. Carpet in gray-brown Dingytone® with a design on it drawn from the Early Schizolithic Era, exposed ventwork, industrial gray metal struts, flat, dull white ceilings, "subdued" lighting better suited to an automotive service bay and a wonderful view of the back of some hangars and sheds. Want a nice, inexpensive postcard or poster print of something like the famed St. Louis Arch or Cardinals Stadium? You're out of luck. Want a tacky silvered picture frame that Elton John would pass on with a "That's a bit too much" or maybe golf wear at a 15 percent markup from the retail outlets in your own hometown? Score!

All the TVs are tuned to CNN with the audio up loud enough to hear but some kind of signal problem means they don't sync, so there's a weird echo-y effect that makes Wolf Blitzer's peculiar oozy mix of smarm and beard and Jack Cafferty's counterfactual self-righteousness that much more annoying.

-- Flying today just plain sucks. I don't mean the security measures. All of the Transportation Safety Admin people I dealt with were courteous, professional and helpful, including to a couple of older people confused by all of the "step through this" and "put that in the bin." Wear shoes that go on and off easy, leave the change at home and don't carry a bunch of junk and you're through pretty quickly.

No, I mean flying in general. My first airplane flight was in 1982 when I came home from Christmas freshman year. I got a meal (not that great, but still a meal) and instead of making me cram my suit bag in into a bin, the attendant hung it up with the first class luggage. We could sit three to a row without using our elbows to do kidney surgery on our seatmates and lean the seat back without forcing whoever was behind us into yoga positions.

Now? We line up like cattle in the order of our boarding pass number because the airline we're flying can't be bothered to let us buy the seat we want when we buy our tickets (and ironically, we're flying it because it's about the best deal remaining in the industry). We're crammed into a plane that has every seat full to make up for all of the routes that rarely fill but which make for great billboard copy. We can do phrenology on the people in front of us and we share more with the people beside us than some married folks do. When a flight runs late, the airline employees at the gate treat us with the casual but accomplished disregard they reserve for people who've already paid their money and are stuck 250 miles from home by either answering our unsurprising "Why is it late?" with "I don't know, I'm just on the gate," or "Just running behind, I think," or "The computer doesn't say."

Worst of all? Well, in the nearly 30 years I've been flying, never once has an attractive single woman in the proper age range sat down next to me and since there's no more reserved seating, I don't have anyone to blame that on but me.