I can’t say as I have ever been terrified by flying.  Sure all the loud noises on takeoff and landing cause an uptick in heart rate occasionally.  And outside of a sudden drop in altitude, in- flight turbulence is something I have gotten used to.  But recently I had a flight that had me wondering if maybe I ought to spend a little more time getting my affairs in order.  It involved the first leg of my return trip from visiting my elderly mother who lives in St. George, Utah.  There aren’t many options for flying back and forth from Omaha and St. George.  All require a plane change in Denver.  i prefer flying into and out of Las Vegas, which is only a 1 and 1/2 hour drive from St. George.  Then I can catch a direct flight, and car rental is not exorbitant because usually my visit with my mom is only for 2 or 3 days.  But because of my mother’s failing health, moving her into assisted living, sprucing up her condo and making  realty arrangements for its sale, my trips there have taken more time,  and I have found using my mother’s car that she no longer drives saves me considerably on transportation expenses.  And so transpired my first flight out of the St. George airport.

I encountered my first hurdle right off in the TSA line.  At the check in station, my boarding pass would not scan.  I had printed it off of my mother’s PC.  I am a Mac person and find PC’s unwieldily, but after battling with all the changing of screens and clicking on the multiple tabs required by a PC that my Mac forgoes, I got the thing to print properly I assumed.  The bar code was plainly visible.  But there I was, holding up the line, albeit a line of merely 4 people  (this is the St. George airport).  After viewing me suspiciously, the TSA employee called over an associate and between the two of them they must have come to the conclusion I was no eminent threat and let me proceed.  As luck would have it, I was not allotted pre-appoved status on my boarding pass.  Actually it wouldn’t matter in any case, because the St. George airport has no PRE line, nor from all appearances does it need one.   Don’t get me wrong.  It’s a very nice little airport, architecturally very modern and clean.  And the city has grown by leaps and bounds.  But it’s a retirement community.  There just isn’t a lot of activity going on that requires an urgent movement of population.  Well, I suppose there are more funerals per capita.  There’s that.  But this is Mormon country,  It’s not like there is a huge Jewish community where sticking the dead in the ground asap is all part of the program.  I think there is like a 24 hour time limit or something for them.  Then there might be a sudden rush for travel reservations.  There are smatterings of Protestants and Catholics (of which my mother is one), but Mormons predominate here and I get the impression that particular religion gives a wide birth to any family that has to make funeral arrangements.   I mean just look at the the streets in Utah.  Talk about wide birth.  In Omaha, there’s a likely chance you’ll knock off your car’s side view mirror on a street-side mail box.  In St. George, all the two lane streets are close to six lanes worth of pavement.  A Boeing 737 could land on any  one of them.  I don’t know for sure, but I think the Mormons plan way ahead and don’t do much of rushing into anything.  So I bet they put their dead on ice.  Gives you time to snag a cheap flight.  No need for haste.

There are no exceptions to the screening procedure here.  Everyone, get your belt and shoes off and take all that shit out of your pockets.  To complicate things at this point I have an after market knee joint. Remembering to mention this fact usually saves me a lot of grief at the TSA checkpoint.  But at the St. George airport, all members of the surgically improved club get patted down, and when this happens to you be prepared for an examination of medical quality thoroughness.  A picture of the guy that performed  mine is at right.  In all honesty, considering the probability of joint replacement in the general population of St. George, I  would hazard a guess that if you unfortunately book the same flight as the St. George chapter of AARP, you should prepare  yourself for a long wait in the TSA line.

There was a twenty minute boarding delay onto my plane.  That always bothers me a bit.  A basic question usually arises- why?  It’s 7am.  The plane has been sitting around all night.  Are they waiting for the sun to come up to throw daylight on the problem?  I became aware of impending trouble as I finally started to strap myself into my seat.  It was cold as a refrigerator in an igloo in there.  To top things off I was wearing cargo shorts and T-shirt, my customary attire for St. George in March.  I like to travel light.  I knew the temperature for that morning was going to be cool by St.George standards, however my total time in an outside environment amounted to the walk from a taxi to the airport front door.  But inside the plane I was freezing.  Normally I find them stuffy and frantically twist and turn my overhead cool air nozzle to coax anything I can out of it.  At first I thought that might be the problem, so I twisted and turned it to make sure nothing was coming out of it, and nothing was.  That doesn’t happen really till the engines fire up.  I finally got some insight into the very cold facts from the stewardess.  Singular.  It’s St. George.  Your in luck if the plane you are  headed out of St George on has two pilots.  This particular stewardess was bundled up in a winter coat, was wearing ear muffs underneath the hood of that coat, and accessorized her ensemble with a colorful pair of fur-lined gloves.

I don’t recall much of  the mandatory aircraft safety instruction. That was the second thing that didn’t work on this plane- the intercom system.  I never pay attention to that stuff anyway.  What’s the point.  As far as the oxygen mask goes, my feeling is I’d just as soon not mess with it.  That way I might be totally unconscious when the plane disintegrates into an explosive inferno.     And the floatation device I’m supposedly sitting on.  Come on!   I’m flying across the Great American Desert for Pete’s sake.  The Vegas odds of this plane landing in water would be comparable to those given to a gopher winning the Kentucky Derby.  One thing I did glean from the stewardess’s teeth-chattering speech was that the plane had some sort of heating malfunction and we would be in for a rather cool flight.

I was starting to get a little nervous.  It seemed to me there was an inordinate number of electrical problems going on here.  That is never good.  Some loose wire could be shorting out.  What’s next?  An electric arch that causes the fuel to ignite?  I began to wonder about the more structurally pertinent things on this airplane.  I peered out the window, scanning the wing for missing rivets.  As we took off, I felt the aircraft was taking far to much time to become airborne, and was making way too many strange sounds.  After twenty minutes of air travel, a third problem presented itself.  It’s details were never made completely clear to me.  As I said, the intercom system was useless.  There was a lot of commotion in the rear of the plane, some grumbling and a yelp, something in the way of a scream maybe.  My take on the inaudible intercom explanation the stewardess gave was that the rest room toilet was malfunctioning as well as the lock on that door. This is never a problem for me on a flight that is less than two hours.  It is always part of my pre flight protocol to drag my luggage through the spottily hygienic airport rest room facility and use all means to prepare myself  for this  very type of adventure.  But on this plane, and I suspect all passenger planes using the St. George airport, one rest room is all you get.  So I imagine there were some people aboard who wished they were as dedicated to a pre boarding schedule as I always am.

By this point in time I don’t think I was alone in thinking this plane might fall out of the sky.  But after a touch down that had to completely blow out at least one shock absorber on the wheel struts, we all made it alive to the Denver airport.  You would think that would be the end of this story but you are wrong.  Our plane remained stationary on a side runway for 30 minutes.  First, we could not proceed to the terminal because another plane with problems of its own was blocking our gate.  Then when our pilot was given instructions to proceed to a different gate, we  could not disembark because there apparently was no jetway in working order available for us to disembark on.  So close!  By this point as you can imagine there was a lot of grumbling going on.  Passengers who previously had decided to get through the chilly ordeal by loading up on Bloody Marys were starting to become cognizant of the fact that since this plane had no available rest room, that decision might prove to be an embarrassing one.  When all gate problems were finally resolved and the hatch opened, a communal shout of relief resounded from our plane that very possible could be heard  echoing through the entire Denver International Airport.

Of course everyone was anxious to get off that plane, but I don’t care how overly extended your bladder is you’re not going to bull rush past me while I’m still getting out of my seat.  Wait your turn.  People are so impatient.  There is always some uppity strutting prick who thinks the rules don’t apply to him.  You don’t proceed until the person in front of you does.  It’s simple  courtesy.  If you fail to comprehend this rule of etiquette by attempting to slip past me, I am  going to hip-check you into the adjacent row of seats.  I will make it look accidental, but nonetheless I will also make it a point to see that the maneuver is as painful as possible for you.

I must say it was a very disgruntled group getting off that plane.  Not many thank you’s passed along to the bundled up stewardess as people paraded out the door.  One passenger in particular seemed to relay a concise and thoughtful expression of how we all felt about this airline.  I have posted a picture of her below.  The flight delays I encountered required I make a mad dash to make my flight connection to Omaha.  I was a few minutes late, but the attendants held the plane for me and another passenger.  Of course there was no time to perform my prerequisite pre-boarding ritual in a DIA rest room.  As I quick-stepped down the jetway, I said a silent prayer that this airplane had a functioning rest room.  That is another story I may some day tell you about.

As i have mentioned I am getting up there in age.  Because of that I have to tell you I have become more alert to the proliferating number of scamming operations that are swirling around my fellow saliva-droolers and blue-haired walker-pushers.  One thing I’ve personally been confronted with lately is magazine double-billing.  This sounds like a scam, but in my case I can’t say that is an accurate assumption.  My wife and I subscribe to three magazines- Time, The Week, and Consumer Reports.  For the most part, I have always considered the content of all three to be factually accurate and suitable to my needs.  No problem there.  But all three at one time or another have had some sort of accounting wire-crossing episode when it came time to send me a bill.  Recently I even had two copies of the same magazine sent to me every month for an entire year.  I’m forever getting billing notices four or five months after I have already paid for an annual subscription.  WTF!  Admittedly, one problem might fall squarely on my shoulders.  Actually I should say my wife’s shoulders.  It was her sister who talked us into purchasing some magazine subscriptions from one of her kids who needed to score a cub scout badge or something.  You know that routine.  And I’m not saying I am totally blameless.  We’ve all been there- doing groundwork for our kids when they should be the ones pounding the pavement for those sales.

You know, come to think of it, I am blameless.  I was a shitty salesman as a kid and I am pretty sure I passed that right on down to both of my kids.  I hated knocking on doors and pandering to crotchety old geezers, especially Old Man Smith who lived in the house next to us when I was growing up.  He was an asshole with all the trimmings.  Because of that I really can’t say I recall ever badgering friends and neighbors on behalf of my kids and their sales projects.  I have always tried to avoid hypocritical conduct when forced into an example setting situation with my children.  I can’t claim to be the perfect parent, of course.  I admit there were those times when I had to take the “college amendment.”  That’s the thing when you tell your kids to do as you say, not as you did.  It exempts you from those mistakes you made in college that involved massive amounts of alcohol.  But overall I tried to parent by example and did a pretty good job if I do say so myself.  I have two great kids who overall haven’t given me too much grief.  Neither of them pursued a career in sales, but they’ve certainly done all right with the career paths they have chosen.  In the end I think I probably did them a favor.   It was ok with me if they only sold a couple boxes of Thin Mints or a bag or two of microwave popcorn.  The real lesson for them I suppose was dealing with the scorn of respective scout masters and mistresses, but so what?  No pressure from old dad to overachieve.  I think that is retroactively important.

Now back to this billing thing.  Maybe, just maybe, there were those rare situations where we had one subscription going and then along came the plea to buy another from a relative or pathetic looking Camp Fire Girl.  But god damn it.  These magazine people have computers by now don’t they?  Can’t they do some cross-referencing.  I mean you match up 3 or 4 pieces of identity data and you have the same person.  Come on!  It’s not rocket science.  When I was a practicing pharmacist we looked for personal identity duplication all the time as we entered  patient information.  It’s  basic computer safety and common sense.  And don’t forget etiquette.  Don’t leave that out. For Pete’s sake you have a phone on your desk, and another one in your pants pocket you set on vibrate, not because your boss told you to, but because you hope you’ll get a long series of robo-calls that will bump your dick and keep it occupied for awhile.  Pull it out (NO NOT THAT!) and give me the courtesy of a call if you’re not sure the data your looking at is repetitive.

So maybe all this isn’t exactly a scam. but man it does piss me off.

2/26-  I am really looking forward to trying out the new Kellogg’s Raisin Bran WITH CRANBERRIES!  My wife picked a box up for me this afternoon.  I told her to be sure and get the box WITH CRANBERRIES and she came through.  Sometimes she screws things up on her trips to the supermarket, especially the weekly one.  Once a week.  Like clockwork.  Well almost like clockwork.  She usually goes on Thursdays, but every once in awhile something comes up and she has to go on Wednesday.  Sometimes Friday.  She really hates to go on Saturday.  She says that’s the day it’s a complete shit-storm at that place.  She is pretty good at listing items on her grocery list.  That list is part of my routine too.  We go over it together every morning the day before she actually makes the trip.  We both figure that’s a good idea.  Then maybe if we fuck up and leave something off the list, it gives us a whole day to add it to the original.  But I worry sometimes she’s not paying attention to details, like she might write down just Raisin Bran and skip the WITH CRANBERRIES part.   I don’t like to look over peoples shoulders.  That used to really bother me when I was working.  So I make it a point not to do that with my wife.  And as I mentioned, since I now have a box of Raisin Bran WITH CRANBERRIES in my kitchen cabinet ,  this was a needless concern this time.  Sometimes I just want to give my wife a big hug.

2/27-  Well shit!  I hate to be the one to break the news, but Kellogg’s Raisin Bran with cranberries is a HUGE disappointment.  Not only did I find the product sorely lacking in cranberries, but I think those jokers over at Kellogg’s actually cut back on the raisins.  They probably figured since they were throwing in the cranberries, they could sneak one by us and leave out some raisins.  I think that really sucks.

2/28-  Once again my wife brought back our 1997 Tercel from the Toyota dealership unwashed.  The car needed service again, so as we have done since we have owned it, we drove it to the dealership to get fixed. The car is 18 years old, so as you can see we are nothing if not loyal.  I know we are probably suckers to keep using a dealership for service work, but both my wife and I have trust issues.  We bought the car from these people, and we feel their service department might have a leg up on keeping up with service needs of this car.  Plus, come on.  The car’s approaching the quarter century mark. It’s a two day wait for parts to arrive before repairs can even get started.   I am guessing a dealership has much faster access to parts than anyone doing independent service.

But the dirty car thing is starting to get on my nerves.  For years it was never a problem.  That’s because for years this dealership never had an automated car wash.  Our car was always returned to us with exactly the same amount of dirt on it as when we brought it in.  Then the dealership moved.  You know why they moved?  We were told by the service people there that it was because they didn’t have an automated car wash.  Didn’t have room.  The current facility was too small.  They needed more space.  So they moved, and they moved to a location that is at least a multiple of four distances from what was already an inconvenient drive for us.  I mean it is way in the fuck out there.  It’s over a half hour drive, and that’s if you happen to get lucky and take the expressway when its not jammed with rush hour traffic.  And my wife refuses to take the expressway anyway.  Makes her all nervous-like.  Her route takes a solid 45 minutes,  and thats on a good day without construction detours.  Our Toyota dealership has been at its new location for four years now, and we have had the Tercel serviced there five times.  You know how many times the car has come back clean?  Once.  Their automated car wash has a batting average of .200.  In baseball you get sent back to the minors for that lack of production.  Is that nuts or what?  You know what I would do if I was in charge and told people we had to move because it was imperative we have an automated car wash and then the automated car wash turned out to be a piece of shit?  I’d have the lowest guy on the service department totem pole get out there with a garden hose and bucket of suds and start scrubbing.  I don’t give a shit if it’s snowing.  My reputation is at stake.  That’s what I’d do.