About twenty minutes more, and the plane is full. Really, truly full. Every seat is filled, the cabin crew have trouble closing the overhead compartments, and most every seat has a bag stowed under it. My great coat, too big to fit in the cramped overhead storage, rests beside me. I’m usually cold on aeroplanes, anyway. Of course, as soon as I think such a thing, sweat pricks my brow. I reach up to turn on the vent. Nothing happens.
“It is a bit hot, isn’t it?” says the guy next to me. “I can’t get my vent to work either.” We commiserate for a moment; I learn that he’s from Salt Lake City. I ask him about Provo. “It’s about forty-five minutes out along the highway, near the college,” he tells me. “But I don’t really go there much, so I only know the touristy stuff.” I raise my eyebrows. I love doing that. “It’s family-oriented, like most of the state. Lots of marriage. Used to be big on steel, now there’s a lot of call centres and computer industry stuff.” He shrugs. “‘Cause it’s so family-oriented, a lot of big companies have bases in Utah generally. People are willing to work for less in return for flexible schedules (I flinch at the hard ‘c’), nearness to family, and a kid-friendly environment.”
“Uh, hi everyone, this is your Captain speaking.”
“Finally,” mutters someone nearby.
“We’re, uh, having a slight problem with the auxiliary power here—some of you have probably, uh, noticed that there’s no airconditioning, and that the lights are off.”
The cabin falls silent.
“So I just wanted to let you know we’ve, uh, called maintenance, but they say it’ll be a while since there’ve been a few, uh, incidents today. You, um, uh, understand.”
“You’re lucky they’re Mormons,” calls a guy somewhere to the right. “If this were New York, we’d be rioting right now.”
Nobody says anything.
“Well, we would. New Yorkers know when to stand up for themselves!”
The overhead speaker is silent. The New Yorker for Passenger Representative subsides. I reach for my computer again, flip it open, pray for internet. Instead, it connects to an ad hoc network, and some guys unsecured phone (I didn’t know phones could be unsecured like that). Disconnecting, I try again. The wavy icon wavers—the airport network is nigh!
And then we start to taxi.
There are still no lights. The cabin is warm, the same yeasty sort of warm as bread taken from the oven about fifteen minutes before. Not too hot, but certainly not too nice.
The wavy icon stops wavering. The airport network is gone. I curse (silently, so as not to disturb my possibly Mormon neighbours) and run spotlight, trying to find a .pdf I need to read. The guy beside me rests a hand over his eyes.
“New Yorkers would riot all right. That’s what we should be doing, too. How long have we been here?”
“An hour.”
I glance at my watch. An hour ten. I have so missed my shuttle.
Time passes. I try not to look at my watch; I put Scrivener on full screen to hide the computer’s clock. Sweat trickles down my back. Both coats rest on the seat beside me. Shoes are off. Socks are off. I wonder how long before someone else starts stripping down.
“We should riot,” says the Passenger Representative. Nobody has breath enough, will enough, to answer him. He subsides.
“Is it cold in Australia?” the guy next to me asks.
“No. But it’s cold in Boston. Lots of snow. Lots of ice. And it was well below freezing in Montreal. Even more snow. Even more ice.” This takes me a while to say, but I try, hoping the thought of coolness will affect me the way it affects Archie and Jughead during an awful Riverdale summer.
It doesn’t.
Sweat beads on my scalp; I resist the urge to scratch my head.
I wonder why the cabin crew hasn’t brought around drinks. It’s been two and an half hours. My water bottle is long empty. I feel like licking my lips. Maybe, if I make smacking noises, someone will get the hint. But I don’t have the guts. I’m a wuss. I am often a wuss. Instead of speaking up, I marvel at the human body’s capacity to sweat and thirst at the same time. Perhaps this is the answer. Consider: drinking—or licking—sweat replaces lost fluid (literally), and ends thirst. Bonus—blow on skin after drinking for a refreshing cool change.
Alternatively, die of dehydration.
I call Joe. Tell him what’s happened. Ask him to call about my shuttle. There’s still no wor—not since that first announcement—from the captain. I, in a stroke of very delayed conventional thinking, call the operator and ask to be patched through to the airline. Then I wait on hold.
And wait.
And wait.
“New Yorkers wouldn’t take this sitting down.” The Passenger Representative begins to stand. The woman beside him pulls him down. So much for New Yorkers.
“In the interests of customer service, this call will be monitored. If you do not wish your call to be recorded, please tell the representative. Connecting…connecting.” I want my call monitored, my ire recorded. I say nothing.
“Hello, thank you for calling. My name is Jack. How can I help you?”
“Can you move my plane?” Idiot. Start from the beginning.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Could you say that again?”
“Hi, my name’s Peta, and I’m on a flight from Phoenix to Utah. It was supposed to leave nearly three hours ago, but we’re still sitting on the tarmac, and they haven’t told us what’s happening. Can you help?”
“Phoenix to Utah…Phoenix to Utah. Hmm, well, I can get you on another flight that leaves in half an hour, if that would be okay?”
“That’d be great, if you could get me off this plane.”
A pause. A longer pause. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand, could you say that again?”
I repeat myself, emphasising the time we’ve waited, adding a bit about sweat, smells, New York riots (“Yea! New Yorkers would riot!), and missed shuttles.
A pause. A longer pause. “So another flight wouldn’t help?”
“No.”
“What flight number is it again? Yes, yes, right…it just says maintenance problems, but your expected departure is 2:45, so you should be in the air soon.”
“It’s 2:55.”
“Oh, is it? Well, let me just refresh that…” Is the airline check-in system based Firefox or IE? I roll my eyes. Probably IE. Everything that breaks is Microsoft (not that Apple has the best hardware record, Mr. Jobs). “It’s still saying 2:45.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me? It’s been a long time, and we’re hot, and we want to get moving.” My voice cracks, and I cough—the cabin is silent, and the sound reverberates, tickling my ears, embarrassing me. A flush (possibly imagined) spreads over my face and neck.
“I understand, but there’s nothing I can do from here, unless you’d like me to change your flight? I’m really very sorry.”
“Perhaps you could organise a drinks cart?”
“That’s at the discretion of the cabin crew, though I will say it is very strange that they haven’t been around yet. Please don’t judge this airline based on this particular crew.”
Then what should I base my judgment on? The poor, barking hydraulics? The delays? The lack of infomation? The impression that the crew think I may so moronic that I can’t find my seat?
Oozing niceties, Jack hangs up. A couple of guys behind me lean forward. “What’d he say?”
“Nothing useful.”
And so we wait. And we’re waiting here still…
Around 3:30—three and an half hours late, we take off. As before, the hydraulics are Baskervillian, and I huddle in my seat. I dislike most noise at the best of times, but woofing hydraulics on an aeroplane, well, they engender a special kind of hatred (and fear).
Drinks come around. No food, of course, despite the fact that we’ve been on the plane for three and an half hours already, and we’ll be on it for a few more. Several people buy alcohol, food. My stomach rumbles, but I ignore it. I’m not giving this airline any more money on principle, I decide. After all, it’s not like they use it on useful things like upgrading shonky planes.
Come 10:00, I get to my hotel, fall into bed, and wish for home...
First I want to apologise for my lackadaisical posting of late. I’ve been without reliable internet since the 15th of June, when I flew to Utah. I haven’t forgotten “The Twa Sisters”, though, and I’ll put a commentary up soon. So, where have I been exactly? Well…
I flew into Australia on Tuesday morning, after a week in Utah (I’ll post more soon), and a couple of days in L.A. And I had a great time, for the most part—the conference at Brigham Young was excellent, the couple of days relaxing in L.A. were exactly what I needed, and it was wonderful to come home. Except…
Yes, that’s right. Except. There’s always an except.
My except comes in a couple of ways. First, and perhaps most frustrating, is my computer. About six hours before I was due to leave, it died. My OS went kaput. Fortunately, though, I did not get sad macced[see below], and the whole thing was salvageable—just. I’m still carrying most of my data around on an external drive, as I’m afraid to rely on this dying husk of a thing for too long. Second, and most time-consuming, were my flights.
I’m a fairly seasoned flyer—I’ve done the trip from Boston to Brisbane so many times I’ve lost count. I recognise most of the QF 176 flight crew. I know my way around LAX, right down to the good coffee place (in contrast to the bad coffee place, where everything smells stale). I always get an aisle seat, but not an exit row. I always eat before I fly, so I’m not left with a five dollar snack pack filled with one bag of chips and a bunch of stuff I don’t eat. I stop drinking caffeine at least three days before I fly.
I’m good at stopovers, too. I’ve waited out 6 hours in Heathrow, and 4 in Singapore. I’ve rushed from the international to the domestic terminal in Sydney, and cleared customs in LA in under half an hour. I have never, though, spent three hours on a tarmac in 120 F (~ C) heat with no airconditioning, no power at all, and no information. I’ve never been diverted to Albuquerque. I’ve never flown with hydraulics that sound like a dog with diarrhea. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so I’m going to take a cue from Julie Andrews, and start at the very beginning…
Despite my computer calamity, I made it to Logan with about ten minutes to spare. Check in was fast, and so was Joe—while I did the ticketing thing, he bought me a doughnut. (Our lives are unreasonably filled with doughnuts, but I don’t question it. I just eat them, hot, overflowing with jam.) The plane left, almost exactly on time. And I pulled out one of my many books.
About an hour in, there’s a rustle. Whispers of doctors, medications, and vomit rippled through the rows. I studiously kept my eyes on my book (a difficult task, as it’s atrocious, but I need to read it for work). Cabin crew bring around drinks, and try to sell us snacks.
Another hour passes; the people next to me call out to their family, handing around the portable dvd player and chatting about which grandkid is the favourite (no definitive consensus). Strange sounds from the front of the plane. A worried attendant flits up and down the aisles.
A third hour passes—we’re now about halfway to Phoenix. The family has settled down. The grandfather is watching “We are Marshall” (go team), while the grandmother and mother discuss “The Other Boleyn Girl” (not very good, that Henry was a bad man). The intercom crackles: Is anybody a doctor? A paramedic? Heads begin to crane. A woman behind me cracks her neck.
A call light pings; a man in a sweater vest is rushed up the aisle. “Acute appendictis” and “surgery” are overheard as they pass.
And then it falls, that which I had been dreading, “Hi folks, it’s the captain here. Look, we have a little girl up here who’s very sick, so we’re going to divert to Albuquerque. The good thing about Albuquerque is that it’s on the way.” Cough, cough. “If you could all just remain in your seats, we’ll be in and out in no time, no connections should be affected. The paramedics will meet us at the gate.”
There’s more whispering. I ask my row-mates about Albuquerque. It’s in New Mexico, apparently.
Moments later, the plane tilts, and I know we’re descending. Well, the tilting, and the horrible Baskervillian woofing the hydraulics make.
I don’t see much of the rescue. There’s a fire-engine-come-ambulance on the tarmac, a lot of low-voiced chatting, and a few white shirts, then the doors close. The captain tells us we’re on our way again, and the hydraulics start up their frightening song once more. The family looks a bit frightened, and I sympathise. But I don’t say anything. Never admit fear is my policy when travelling. Helplessness, yes—after all, I am dependent on airlines—but never fear, else I may start throwing up.
About seven minutes in, the plane levels off, and the noise stops. There’s a collective sigh of relief. We haven’t lost much time, either, so I feel okay. When we finally land, I take the opportunity to seek out food (overpriced fruit salad) and tea (iced, green). I have an hour before my next flight, and free (really free, not just unsecured) internet, so I spend my time pretending to work.
More tomorrow! I promise!
For non-mac users: the "sad mac" icon is a terrifying sight as it usually indicates serious damage or data loss. This image from Wikipedia is a sad mac indicating that an illegal error has occurred.Story:
Farmer Brown has a problem. His cows have a typewriter and they aren’t afraid to use it. When the cows get cold, they send Farmer Brown an ultimatum: if you want milk tomorrow, you’d better get us some electric blankets.
With cows that type, chickens on strike, and duck as an intermediary, Click Clack Moo is a unique take on civil disobedience, skilfully crafted, and never didactic.
Illustrations:
Lewin’s (Dooby, Dooby Moo; My Tooth Is About To Fall Out) simple watercolours are delightful, aptly showing Farmer Brown’s growing exasperation. Small details add to the excitement—keep an eye out for the very last page.
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