Once again,
I have been doing a bit more traveling lately than usual, so maybe it is the 20,000 air miles compounded over eight weeks, or maybe the half a dozen of long drives down the coast, but even the 12 mile daily commute (with 25 traffic lights each way) has been providing me more “bitchin” fuel.

This fuel has been providing me hours and hours of internal dialog, mostly me fuming about some idiot or jerkoff (aka A-hole cleaned up for PG).
Ok side note here – idiot is someone who is driving faster than you, maybe weaving in and out of traffic, most likely cutting you off - just so he can turn into that Arbys up the road- and slam his brakes, a jerfkoff is someone who is in front of you that will not go any faster no matter how late you are– yeah that guy who is in the left lane set on cruise control going one mile UNDER the speed limit and has you waving your hands around like Phil Harmonic.
But my road woes are for another short rant.

The friendly skies have their roots in incompetence (of their passangers)

In airline travel there is a whole other set of people, or cows, not sure which. But I have noticed a bad pattern involving the 100 people in seating zones two, three, and four that crowd that small funnel like roped off cordon to the gate so that poor ol me (zone one) with the window seat (this is important information that will come up again in just a minute) can’t get through. So the attendants jump to announcing the next zone.

No biggie, because I am a nice guy.
Before they went to this zone thing I would always just wait it out. I see no reason to be in a hurry to stand in line to hand over your ticket, so that you can stand in line in the jet way, so that you can then stand in line in the aisle of the aircraft. I have over three thousand flight hours as a crew member on aircraft, I don’t need the thrill of standing in those lines. One problem with my polite and patient strategy was that I never had space in the overhead compartments, because Mrs. Blue Hair with the two large bags of nick knacks for her 15 grandchildren, or Mr. Flip Flops – the just out of college, the - can’t afford shoes punk - with the extra bag of laundry, or Homo-simpatico with the John Denver special addition guitar, took all the available space. Oh and did I mention that I always try to fly the window seat. Well having the window seat means that since I waited, I have to crawl over the large (rotund) hefty large man in the aisle seat and over the poor sap that has to sit between the two of us… But I don’t feel sorry for him since he has either assumed no one is sitting in the window seat or does not care.
Sidebar Rant – why in all that is holy or unholy assume that anyway? when the attendants over the VERY LOUD and improperly attenuated PA system keep assuring us that the flight is full and we need to hurry and get to our seats and step out of the aisle to let the folks behind us get by – of course even that maneuver is something that I want to see. To step out of the aisle you have to sit in Senior Husky’s lap…. And there is only 5.67 inches of leg room between end of seat and the back of the seat back in front – well until the nice guy in front of you slams his seat back into your knees just microseconds after the plane in airborne.

Oh where was I?
oh yeah so middle seat guy for some reason is all strapped in, (but he will be the first to undo his seat belt within seconds of landing) has his free in-flight magazine out and is in the middle of the crossword puzzle with his shoes off.

Ok so the CEOs of the major airlines during a round of golf or drinks (or some midlevel under utilized employee during a very boring fall afternoon after eating three Big-Macs for lunch) got smart and figured out the zone seating deal. Now here is the thing – I am not the sharpest pencil in the box and somehow I figured this whole zone thing out. But for some reason known only to Pavel, his dog, and airline travelers, once the airline agent begins his or her announcement “once again ladies and gentlemen we will begin boarding flight 334 to Fiji at gate 3…” everyone in the seating area jumps up and bumbrushes the gate. I have even seen people that were waiting for flights on adjacent gates jump up and crowd the gate just so they aren’t left out, like a Sailor rushing to the bar at the words “last call”…these are the same people who will take a good look at what each person is eating as they walk through a restaurant, or check out each stall in the bathroom even though they are only going to use the urinal or just wash their hands.

In summary…making a short antidote way to long,
So the three of us that figured out this new and apparently cryptic system AND are not rude enough to elbow our way to the front of the line sit and wonder at the heard. The same hero that is in a hurry to stand in the aforementioned lines is the first one to sigh and roll their eyes when you have to crawl over them. These same folks who stand up to crowd the aisle the very moment the seat belt sign is turned off after landing. In a hurry to stand in a line again… I just don’t get it. I really despise most of my fellow travelers, so much so that if we were found in a situation similar to the characters on LOST, I would have killed them off by the end of season one. Well actually I wouldn’t have to worry about it, since most of today’s travelers wouldn’t make if off a crashed aircraft anyway. How many really pay attention to the safety brief? How many actually could find the exit row (even if behind you) in the event of a crash? Remember the plane will be a twisted mangled wreck, and the cabin will probably not be well lit. And IF they found the exit how many took the five seconds to read the safety card to see how to open the door? So we will probably die anyway since if we can’t seem to get organized with the new zone system then we sure won’t get off the plane before it sinks or blows up.


Ahhhh I feel better, almost want a cigarette after that rant…thanks for flying Gallologic Air.