Oooh, boy. There is a reason the red eye from California is always a bad idea. I learned this lesson years ago during a trip to my friend Denelle's wedding. You just don't have enough time to sleep. The flight from SFO to ATL was only a little over 4 hours - but you lose 3 coming back. And the flight is always packed. I was seated in a center seat of hell and hadn't thought to bring a neck ring pillow... so, I spent the trip ever hunched over my lap trying to sleep while folded up like a cell phone or with my head nodding to the left, the right, the front. Ugh.
It was a strange trip - and I'm still asleep so I can't promise to make much sense. I didn't meet up with Tracy in SF - the work day ran very long and we couldn't jibe on phone calls. I didn't see anything of SF except the hotel and the site I went to. This is business travel after all.
Anyway, I booked the 11:35 flight home because today (Friday) is a day I requested off for a friend's band that is coming into town. I wanted to make sure I didn't get booked for anything so I took the whole day off. Then when this last-minute trip came up, I didn't want to spend my vacation day traveling so I chose the red-eye of doom.
We didn't even board until midnight. A passenger on the incoming flight on my plane was caught smoking in the restroom on the tarmac at JFK. The guy is Russian and claimed he doesn't speak English and didn't know... yeah, right. Nobody bought it. But I really felt for the guy - he was traveling with his family and the cops confiscated his tickets to the next destination! But I pity him because I suspect he was on a flight from Moscow to JFK to SFO to ???. Of course, you can't smoke on planes anymore. And you may or may not know that you can't smoke anywhere in JFK. So by the time he was on his flight to SFO he was probably really jonesin'. And then his flight was delayed on the tarmac. I think he just cracked.
Well, it seems the entire police force was called out - 6 cops showed up to deal with this guy. It was really overkill. All the Delta folks were positively outraged. Outraged! I thought they overreacted. But I guess as a smoker I can relate. I really don't think it's smart for major airports - particularly major connecting airports like JFK, LaGuardia, LAX, etc., to not offer any smoking whatsoever when passengers can be coming in from 10, 15, 20 hour flights before connecting to another. How about an outdoor pen area that doesn't require leaving security but isn't "inside" ? I don't know... give a guy a break.
Anyway, got back at 7:30 a.m., took effing shuttle to effing park&ride, drove home in rush hour traffic, walked into house and into bed by 9:30. If I had taken a 9 a.m. flight from SFO today, I would be getting back around 4 p.m. today. I'm not sure sleeping until 2:30 really was worth it. In fact, I'm sure it wasn't.
P.S. For some reason, even though I have at last topped 75,000 miles, I am still not Platinum. There is some confusing language about miles earned in 2006, earning Platinum in 2007. Of course, it's 2007 now so Delta needs to update their site. Because they suck!
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Salt Lake City has the best airport with a smoking room that's like a glass fishbowl and air that shoots down to make sure all the smoke stays in there. It's really not that damn hard for people to not be jack asses, but it's more fun to blow things out of proportion. I don't really care to smell the smoke now that I've quit, but I still think that smokers should have options available, and I do feel sorry for the poor guy to a degree - even if you really just can't do what he did and expect people to be calm. Now I'm all riled back up.
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