I've done a fair bit of traveling in my life, and there are times when it all goes a bit horribly wrong. I'm a comfortable flyer and can squish myself into tiny economy seats and endure long flights (a necessary evil when you live in Australia), with a mixture of reading, films, and when all else fails, popping in the ear pods and blasting my music to drown out the crying babies and snoring middle-aged men, and just pass the time in a semi-comatose state, ready to rise blearily and stumble out into the fluorescent light of whatever port I end up in.
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| Butterbeer! |
I'd booked a trip around the States in January, returning to my beloved New York for a visit, then heading to Washington DC to check out the Smithsonian and White House. and finishing up at that pinnacle of culture; Orlando for a week of Disney parks and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
One word: Butterbeer.
My flights seldom flew as scheduled, but they got me from A to B eventually.
It was on the return flight to London that we hit rockbottom.
I had to change flights in Miami, and the delays meant I had to do my Amazing Race impersonation as I quite literally sprinted from one terminal to the next in order to make my flight. It was likely an amusing sight for passers by, as I ran up escalators, past travelators, into trains, only to pause with my personal muzak jangling away in my ears as I waited impatiently for my station, then I was off again.
I made my flight with minutes to spare, just in time to hurry and wait.
The wait for take off always seems interminable, especially since music players and e-readers are banned. Apparently they possess sufficient power to make the plane fall out of the sky EVEN WHEN IT IS SITTING ON THE TARMAC. I tend to finish the in-flight magazine in the first fifteen minutes and am then left with nothing to do. So I nap in the hopes I'll be so comatose by the time we take off that I'll simply wake when we land. It has yet to happen, but I live in hope.
Soon, my neighbours arrived - a large family with three young children and two teenagers. The father sat next to meet with a toddler next to him, his wife sat directly behind and they arranged their children around them. Now I had a sulky kid kicking my seat behind me, and two bouncy moody screaming toddlers on the other side of the father. Joy.
About half an hour into the flight, when it was too late to flee the plane, they announced that the in-flight entertainment wasn't working in my section. Not a problem, I thought, and pulled out my Kindle and started reading. Then they announced that the lights were malfunctioning, so they could only be either all on or all off. Rapturous. They made the executive decision to turn them off after dinner, so those who wanted to could sleep.
No! I mentally screamed. Give them eye masks! Let the rest of us read! But, after dinner, off they went, including the reading lights. At this point I discovered my phone battery was critically low and needed to be kept turned off, since I was going to need it to call my aunt when I arrived at the airport.
I tried to sleep, but by now one of the toddlers had fallen asleep across his daddy and was restlessly kicking me in his dreams, something his father did nothing to curtail. In addition, the wife kept leaning over the seat to affectionately fondle her husband's face every few minutes - WEIRD - and would knock me in the side of the head every time she did so.
I watched tv shows on my laptop till the battery died, then settled down to endure the Longest Four Hours of my life, with nothing to do but sit there in the darkness being periodically assaulted by this seemingly endless family.
I was so excited to make it into Heathrow at the end of this, only to be confronted by a new fresh hell. It seemed that 5 flights had landed at the same time. It took me TWO hours to get through customs, not the least of which because the woman conducting the too many queues into the too few checkpoints decided to hold a grudge against my particular line.
Exhausted from lack of sleep and physical and emotional abuse, it was an extremely wobbly shadow of my former self who shambled up to my aunt once I was finally released from my purgatory.
I slept so HARD that night.
