A few more reflections on my recent trip back east.
I flew from Seattle to Boston, leaving at 10:30 p.m. our time. What they call the red-eye.
I was hoping I could get some sleep on the plane. There was a long day ahead of me. I’d be landing at Logan International at 6:30 eastern time and my schedule wasn’t going to let me get to bed until late that night.
This particular flight was full—every seat was taken because the Seattle Seahawks were playing in the Super Bowl that weekend. Everybody was wearing Seahawks team gear. That was kind of cool—like being a part of it all.
I did manage to get some sleep and wasn’t in too bad of shape when I got off the plane in Boston.
Logan airport is a pretty big place and it’s a long, long walk from the gate where we got off the plane to the baggage claim. It’s all inside, and the hallways are hugely wide.
The baggage claim is so far away they actually have moving sidewalks, just like on the Jetsons. They look like long escalators on flat ground. Signs were posted overhead that established the moving sidewalk rules of the road—if you wanted to just stand then you were supposed to stay on the right, but if you wanted to keep walking then you were supposed to stay left.
This hallway was long enough they actually had two of these moving sidewalks.
I walked the first one I came to, but the second one I decided to just stand and let it do the work. I had set my bag down and was leaning on the handrail, which (like and sidewalk) moves along too.
Unfortunately the handrail was moving ever so slightly faster than the sidewalk part and pretty soon I realized that I was getting ahead of myself, so to speak.
Turns out the trip going east was much more relaxing than the return flight. I got the middle seat on a flight out of Boston just after dawn. It can get pretty boring looking at the back of the seat in front of you for hours on end. Every time I tried to doze off I’d wake up with a kink in my neck. I understand now why people buy those travel pillows that are shaped like bedpans.
When they give the pre-flight safety instructions and they show you how to put on the inflatable life jackets, I wonder if any one has ever put one of those on while the stewardess is talking and pulled that cord? It could happen. I was taking a hearing test at the sawmill once that had half a dozen of us sitting there with headphones on our heads and a little switch with a cord running out of the wall in our hand. Whenever we heard a tone we were supposed to push the button and hold it until the sound went away.
The test had just started when this co-worker, who was having a slow day, got confused by the technology or something. Because when he heard the tone he raised the switch to his mouth, pressed the button and said, “Yeah, yeah I hear it!”
So it’s probably happened sometime that some poor smuck who was just trying to follow instructions inflated a life jacket and found themselves being escorted off the plane.
As a matter of fact it almost happened that morning on the plane—I was so tempted.