Tuesday, September 6, 2005

I'm the one who chose the 6 am flight over the 9 pm flight. My heart was in the right place -- I wanted to get down and start helping as soon as possible. But my good intentions drowned out my good sense. Six am is not so early in itself, but to make that flight, you have to get up at 3 am. And who wants to get up at 3 am after a night of packing for a yearlong trip? And then there's all the puking.

Michael thinks it's the early flights that do it. But I think it's just a coincidence that I threw up at Newark airport at 5 am last Christmas and then it happened again today. I mean, I'm always vomiting. And rarely I might add, is it in the comfort and privacy of my own home. That's just how it is for me. I'm a champion vomiter, by the way. I never leave a mess for someone else to clean up. I think one of the things that initially attracted Michael to me was my ability to gracefully vomit out of a taxi window while speeding along the highway.

Anyway, I hoped I had gotten it out of my system at the Simons', but I felt awful all the way to the airport and had sit on the floor while waiting to check in. The security line was unbelievable. Michael immediately insisted we were going to miss our flight. But if I always throw up before early morning flights, he always thinks we're going to miss our plane (and we never miss it).

When I was certain it would happen again, I made Michael empty the snacks his mother had bought for us out of their plastic bag into his carryon bag. I then took the bag and ducked under the rope to go throw up in a corner. Apparently I caused quite a scene. Poor Michael must have looked like a real jerk for not coming to my aid, but after Newark he knows better than to give up our place in line; I'm fully capable of vomiting without assistance.

Then we got "selected" for the deluxe search. We blinked and opened our mouths to breathe, prompting the guy to snap that it wasn't TSA's decision to search us, it was Delta's, and if we had a problem, we could take it up with them. Ok, I don't even know what TSA is. Michael mentioned to the X-Ray lady that we would miss our plane and she said we should have gotten there earlier. He told her calmly that he wasn't laying blame, he was just saying we would miss our plane. That probably disappointed her -- now what's she going to rant about in the staff room? I should have let her inspect my bag of vomit.

It was after 5:40 am. Not looking good. On the bright side, I felt much better and was able to run to our gate. We got to the plane with ten minutes to spare, which honestly does not seem like that close of a call to me, but then I'm not the one who always thinks we're going to miss flights.

My seat was in row 13. Michael's was in row 14. We both had middle seats. And I was sitting next to one of those guys who has to spread his legs as wide as possible. And I threw up again (in an airsick bag, which I had gotten ahold of well in advance). And we had to transfer in Atlanta.

The flight attendant's thank-you-and-goodbye speech included the mention of five firefighters and some Red Cross volunteers on the flight, on their way down to the Gulf Coast and there was a round of applause. Oh, right. Katrina. Time to put the lousy flight into perspective, I guess. I would like to stop vomiting long enough to do something to earn that applause.

An interesting note: The Atlanta airport has iPod shuffles available for purchase out of vending machines.

Our flight to Montgomery is boarding.

 

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