Good morning, Monday Morning Mob! Roads are a piece of cake, not caked with anything except for a little frosting here and there, since temps ARE hovering right around the 32ish zone. No crumbs on the plate, and in spite of the aforementioned frosting, there doesn’t seem to be any icing. Now, above 5,000 feet there’s a subtle suggestion of thin fog… but it’s really just a cakewalk.
Mrs. Kdog and I just got back from Denver late last night… spent the weekend out there. Being a flight that originated in Colorado, we flew on a McDonald-Double-ass A420. It smoked a little, but the pilot, Jeff Spicoli, said for one, his glaucoma justified it, and (B), it was totally legal as a RECREATIONAL flight, and (second), we were going to order a pizza to be delivered once we were really high. It was freakin’ hilarious, bro. Plus, the pilot let everybody take turns flying the plane, ‘cause, why not?
We were not in First-Class… we flew roach. (Where, incidentally, seats have now been squeezed together so tightly nowadays that you have to sort of bunch your legs up on your seat… no floor space is there where they USED to let you stow your knees, calves, and feet… NOW your knees stay against your chest. Rumor has it that eventually the seatbacks will ALSO be removed, so that you just sort of lean up against the person behind you.) One problem though, is that carry-on baggies are limited to an ounce or less. Please reefer to hash tag hash tag for why.
Say… every time—EVERY time—I hear statistics about a flight, they’ll always list how many hours each of the flight crew members have under their belts. You know, 2,000 hours for the pilot, 3,300 hours for the co-pilot, whatever, and it’s always how many hours specific to that model of aircraft. But I’m starting to wonder if they maybe get those hours in the same way that we get “miles.” Like, you know, I can rent a car for a week, and the rental car place will give me 10,000 miles. The credit card company will give me 25,000 miles for renting using their card. I think that the drive-thru at Wendy’s even gives you 20 or 30 miles. Whatever. Point being, I don’t ever have to leave the ground in order to collect a lot of evidence that I’ve flown a billion freakin’ miles! So, do pilots get their hours that way? One reason I ask is this: If these flight crew people always have some “number” of hours, that SHOULD mean that once, they had ZERO hours on this type of plane, and I’ve never heard about THAT happening. Has any airline ever wanted to be responsible for putting a pilot in the driver’s seat, some guy with zero hours? It just seems irresponsible. So, I just think pilots rent a lot of cars, using credit cards… how else do those hours accrue?
The Denver airport is great. Denver is known as the “Omelet City,” and is about a mile high. Being a mile high, there’s this club you can join while on an airplane… even before takeoff! It’s some sort of loophole in the club rulebook, that the Puritans had not bylined or expressed clearly, so debauchery ensues, even while sitting on the tarmac.
I got so busted, though. The stewardesses, many of whom LOOKED like boys, were demonstrating how to open doors and wear floaties, but I took that class when I was two. So, I just closed my eyes, and took a lil’ nappy-poo. But then, when the test was handed out, I didn’t do very well. I totally didn’t know that that was going to be on the written test! (Damn lucky for me, some chump totally left the cheat sheet in the seatback in front of me… along with a bag of soup that REALLY paid off, once the munchies kicked in. Thanks, Bro… whoever you are.)
Turns out, though, there was even more uptightliness to deal with. Like, partway through the flight, I noticed that my “no smoking” light was OBVIOUSLY broken… it never turned off. Not that I’m impatient or anything, but after ten minutes of exceedingly generous patience on my part, I finally lit up one of my, “Job Menthol 1000s.” Duh. They got really bent out of shape! Oh, and once I presented some good arguments as to why THEIR position was “lame,” they got benter. I said, “Well, you don’t have any little light that says I’m not supposed to sing show tunes into my hairbrush, while pirouetting down the aisles!” I mean, if that was forbidden, there should be a little light for that, too, right? Whatever. Some German guy called, Herr Marshall got all burly on me then. Geez…
The part I always hate the most about flying? Once the plane gets to the gate, and 180 people stand up from their seats, simultaneously. I am certain that this means the release of 180 previously-held-hostage farts entering the extremely local atmosphere simultaneously.
At least when we finally debarked (disbarked? unbarked? rebarked? Whatever… some sort of barking) after arriving back at Ontario, it was easy to find the car. See, I ALWAYS park right by China Airlines… so that later, when I’m lost and can’t find it, I’ll say to the parking attendant, “Hey, I’m china find my car…” And then it always comes back to me.