The trip from Amarillo to Hong Kong this time started off a little ratty and fume-laden, now that American Airlines has decided to replace its jet service out of the Texas Panhandle with propeller planes that I thought had been retired during the waning days of World War I.
The plane was loud, dingy, and smelly. The seats felt rickety, and I was sure that, instead of a runway, we were going to be propelled into the air by a giant slingshot and rubber band. And when we did finally take off, the non-stop engine drone was hypnotic enough to put even the most wide-awake into a comatose sleep (well, it was that or the strange fumes, which I think we're coming from the woman next to me).
Speaking of, the woman next to me, her leg spilling into my space (and when I tried to put the armrest down, it cut into her expansive jeans), smelled like she had just spent the better part of a weekend embracing happy hour. She ordered a rum and Diet Coke from the flight attendant, and then launched herself into a lecture about the merits of rum's association with the chemicals in Diet Coke (which, to sum up goes: they're great together! She articulated this several different times, each accompanied by a not-too-subtle spill of her drink on her sleeve).
She was a trucker and owned a bar (or part of, anyway) and gave me her story of woe and liver poisoning. I had no escape.
My flight from Dallas to Los Angeles was longer and this time, being the unsocial creature I am on travel days, I flipped open my laptop thinking I would do something to pass the time. This time the woman next to me was a slight and frail, but she had no trouble trying to constantly throw away a used kleenex every time someone with a trash bag, a plastic bag, or a plastic rattling sound walked by. Since I was in the aisle seat and she in the window seat, she would thrust her arm out directly in front of my computer's screen, dangling her nasty kleenex like a bullfighter in a ring.
The first time I said excuse me. The second time I said it louder. But the fifth time she did this I simply closed the laptop's lid right on her wrist.
"Hey!" she said.
"Oh, sorry," I said. "I must not have seen you there, waving your hand right in front of me."
She was grumpy toward me for the rest of the trip.
The rest of the trip, the final long hours of my 35 hour day, went by slowly. I tried to snooze in the Los Angeles airport international terminal, but that just gave me a hunched back and numb feet. And then the never ending flight, which took off at 2:30 am my time, deposited me in Hong Kong around 8:00 the next morning, ready for adventure.
Or a nap, which this time was far more likely.
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