I have flown on three trips this year: Atlanta, Dallas, and Tulsa. All through DFW or to DFW. My favorite terminal in DFW is Terminal D. It’s the most modern and has better restaurant selections and more elbow room. And there seems to be plenty of places to plug in. If you have an iPhone this is very important. Because the battery life on a iPhone is woefully short. Laptops too I suppose.
I remember hunting for an electrical outlet in Chicago’s O’Hare airport one time. I found one along a corrider with a glass wall. It had outlets reserved for the battery powered carts terminal employees drove all over the place. There was no seats. Just floor. About a half dozen travelers were lined up against the glass sitting on the floor, including me, all plugged into a few outlets. Fortunately no carts needed charging so we weren’t shooed away.
I can’t remember how many times I flew last year, but I do know I went through the Pittsburgh airport. It reminded of the airport in Langoliers film. It was mostly deserted except for one small shopping area in the center of the X shaped terminal bldg. And this was at 5pm. We reboarded our plane and flew on to Charlotte, NC and got there about 9ish. Their airport was hopping. Lots of foot traffic and shops were open.
I don’t fly that much but have been doing so a lot more the past few years. There was a time when I was nervous when I flew and then there was a time when I was terrified when I flew. And now I’m back to being slightly nervous. I knew the airline stats about crashes so logically I knew the odds were low. It was firmly clinging to statistics that kept me boarding planes no matter how I felt. I can tell when other passengers are freaked out more by flying than I am.
Though there was this one time when we took off from Puerto Vallarta and we lost an engine. Everyone got real quiet. I guess that’s the sound of 200 sphincters puckering. There was a lot of clapping when we landed back at PV’s airport. Flew home the next day. I think the trick is to calm my overactive imagination and not watch documentaries about plane mishaps, disastrous or otherwise. Because I can think of hundreds of mostly unrealistic ways for a plane to go down. It was like trying not to think of pink elephants. The most likely explanation is those worry brain cells all died and now I won’t panic unless the plane has rolled over.
Anyway, I wasn’t planning on writing much at all. More like a sentence or two. I’ve not really proofed what I’ve written so it probably doesn’t make much sense. I’m probably writing more in this post because I’m avoiding doing some necessary work like gathering documents needed to get our taxes done.
The thought I had in mind with the title is that it’s 2010 and it’s mid-March already. One quarter of the year is almost gone.
One last thing. Tulsa airport has this small world vibe to it. I’m always running into people I know there. I don’t know why. It just happens. And on my trip back from Tulsa I ran into someone I knew. For me I thought well, small world indeed. For them I think I was the last person they would have wanted to run into, much less be on the same plane for an hour. So I kept a respectful distance.
