The Flight To D.C.

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Here I sit, confined in an awkward position, covered in ink, blessed with an earache and cramped legs.  No, I’m not getting attacked by a deep-sea octopus, I’m doing something much much worse than that:  I’m on an airplane; American Airlines to be specific.  But it isn’t a regular airplane, oh no!  The plane that I’m on is approximately the size of a porter potty (with roughly the same contents).

 

When I originally got on the plane, I was surprised that I was forced to crouch to prevent hitting my head.  The plane was only 16 rows long, with each row seating three people.  Using my advanced math skills, I effortlessly determined that a total of 48 people were going to die today.  Luckily, my anxiety was quickly dismissed when a kind, omniscient flight attendant slowly walked by and said in a calm, soothing voice:

 

Buckle up.  Now.

 

 

My destination?  Washington D.C., the nation’s capital.  I’m going there with my dad and brother for “bonding time.”  For those of you lucky enough to avoid your parents, allow me to further analyze:  Bonding Time is generally a time where you and a family member that you don’t want anything to do with decide to go somewhere alone.  Most of the time you don’t have any say in the trip’s location, because if you did, the bonding time would be spent on the couch watching Vh1.  I personally know that no matter where me, my brother, and my dad went, I would not have a good time, so I didn’t bother putting any input in the destination:

 

Dad- Alex, how’d you like to go to Washington D.C. for February Vacation?
What I think-Absolutely not!  I would rather swallow a flailing walrus and wash it down with cleaning solution.

What I say- Sure.

 

Going to Washington D.C. itself shouldn’t be a hassle.  It’s about an eight hour drive, and is usually an hour and a half flight.  But not with my father.  My father decided to fly to D.C. on his accumulated Frequent Flyer Miles.  Frequent Flyer Miles are basically points you accrue when you fly on an airline; for every mile you fly you earn a “point.”  These “points” can later be cashed for things like magazine subscriptions, airline tickets, Britney Spears’ hair, etc.  Because my father travels so much for business, he has an estimated 2,489,037,109,972,441 points.  Again, using my advanced mathematical skills, I have determined that my dad could use these points to stay in a five star hotel for 49 years, buy a rental car for 135 years, or even pay 22 billion hookers to make sweet, passionate love to his gold plated body for a week.  But my giving father denied all these benefits, and instead opted for a much better investment: he decided to take us to Washington D.C.  Unfortunately, because he was using Frequent Flyer Miles, my dad had to book two individual connecting flights.  Our first plane, the one that I’m now as I write this, is scheduled to bring us to Raleigh, North Carolina.  We then will wait 18 hours for a second plane to take us to D.C.  For those of you who aren’t geography nerds, allow me to display the route I am forced to take because of Frequent Flyer Miles.

 

Before the flight took off, the pilot of the plane came over the loud speaker and reassuringly said—and I am not making this up:

 

Ladies and gentlemen it appears that the plane’s center of gravity is a little too far forward, so we’d appreciate it if people sitting in rows 1-7 would move back a few rows.  Thank you.

Thanks to some fat ass in the front of the plane, my entire life is flashing before my eyes.  We later found out that our plane’s violent rocking was due to a man in row 9 strumming his fingers on the window (I, for one, am surprised it didn’t shatter the glass).  And it’s not like I have a fear of flying.  I just don’t see the scientific logic in a prodigious hunk of metal weighing over 6 tons can manage to safely remain airborne.  Of course, my spirits weren’t exactly lightened when I heard the conversation between the pilot and ground control:

 

Pilot- Ground control this is Flight 76 awaiting landing instructions.

Ground Control- That’s a negative Flight 76, there appears to be a female deer giving birth on the runway.

Pilot- What do you suspect we do?  We seem to be running low on fuel.

Ground Control- Well, we’re now working on removing the doe and her fawn from the runway by detonating 145 tons of dynamite around them.

Pilot- I’ll try to land on the freeway.

 

Hopefully my flight will end smoothly and maybe the guy in front of my will realize that his reclined chair is crushing my knees.  And while we’re wishing for miracles, let’s hope that my pilot doesn’t decide to power slide into the runway, and that maybe—just maybe—the next flight will have a bathroom.  Hell, maybe it’ll have Vh1.

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