There And Back Again: A Travel Tale by Dirk Phoenix

DirkPhoenix

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Sep 30, 2004
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Austin, Land of pot and...pot
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Vodka. Motherfucking. Tonic.

I've never hated flying, just hated the feeling of negative g-forces. It's a bit unnatural. This, compiled with my love of feeling as little as possible, made the flight to Washington Dulles that much more enjoyable. It wouldn't have turned out this way if it weren't for the young couple and their brood of three.

Children are a wonderful thing, as long as they are your children. Then they are the shitting-pissing-puking-yelling-screaming-kicking machines that the rest of us wish would be confined to small enclosed spaces underneath a seat cushion. There aren't enough Pokemon or Tigger and Company videos in the world from preventing a child from hitting the flight attendant call button like it was an appeal to higher powers for Ronald McDonald himself to join the flight. The knob that controls the airflow becomes a test of childly strength; who can turn it the most before mom gets mad.

So vodka tonics it was. I feel less than nothing as we descent over the Potomac, save for the numbing kickassness of Skyy. Once the plane landed, I trotted to baggage claim, where I learned that a large Pakistani population had taken up residence at Dulles Airport and now work as baggage handlers. Normally I would patiently wait for the bags to tumble out off the ramp, pick up my belongings and retreat before I was asked if “you want bag cart ok?” but since I was carrying a laptop, 2 bags, and 2 gigantic plastic cases filled with what must have looked to the Transportation Safety Administration as a white trash nuclear bomb, I figured what the hell. The vodka tonics agreed, so Kashmir the former boxer loaded up my belongings. Lemme tell you, it was worth the $20 tip.

The vodka tonics agreed.
 
DirkPhoenix said:
Children are a wonderful thing, as long as they are your children. Then they are the shitting-pissing-puking-yelling-screaming-kicking machines that the rest of us wish would be confined to small enclosed spaces underneath a seat cushion.

QFMFT I'm still angsty over a close encounter I had with a kid and parent at Brusters last week.....fucking center of the universe bastards.... :mad:
 
Airports suck when you are sober.

Shawn and I went to LA in June. On the way home, we were waiting in line at the gate, and we hear this crazy, groaning, low-pitched, monotonously disgusting noise slowly getting louder, coming up behind us. We were taking a red-eye back to Tampa, and had an extremely hard day, so our paitience were wearing thin. As the nosie got closer we realize that it is a friggin' cat, locked up in a carrier, and really, really, pisssed off to be in there. MEOW, MEOW, MEOW, over and over and over... The woman who was carrying it was obilvious to these noises; we thought the thing was dying. As the noises got closer, we realized that there is a chance this lady and her dying cat are going to be on OUR direct, 5.5 hour flight back to Tampa. We now started to plot the beating and killing of the animal, and /or the way we would prevent this crazy, oblivious bitch from boarding the plane with the cat-in-heat.

SCORE!!! She walks past our gate. As she approaches the next gate we see the smiling faces of the people in the next line over drop to frowns. Selfishly, we breathe a sigh of relief and move from the line to the seats in the waiting area.

Then we see the Hell-Child. It is 10 o'clock at night, and here is this idiot woman who is sitting there taking a bunch of shit from her 5 year old (approx) kid about buying him a toy, or candy, or whatever it was he was yelling about. He may have even slapped her in the face.

Again the plotting begins: "We are asking for our money back if that hell-child is on our flight" or "lets see if we can slip some sleeping pills into his juice." Shawn says: "I'll go up and smack that little mother-fucker, and his Mom too if she gives me any shit." (Sorry about the language; I am quoting now.)

Odviously none of the threats were carried out. Shawn is not even a violent man; but the thought of having to ride on an airplane with this little brat for that long on an OVERNIGHT flight after the day we had just had, was unfathomable.

We made it home without issue. The kid shut up after his father had finally had enough, and it was an uneventful flight.

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