Last Day of Roadtrip: Coming Home

No matter where you’ve been or how good a time you’ve had, it’s always nice to come home from vacation to your familiar environment. Your family, your cats, your own bed, your own shower.

However, it took me twice as long as it should have to actually arrive home.

My plane was delayed for 90 minutes due to bad weather in Dallas. Once airborne, things went fine until the pilot announced that we’d have to change the flight path and go way out of our way to avoid some bad weather. Then we flew in 300 mile diameter circles around Dallas for a while before turning around and heading to San Antonio to land, refuel, and wait out the storms in Dallas. Originally we were scheduled to arrive in Dallas at 5:30 p.m., and we didn’t get there until well after 9.

To add to the fun, a few minutes after landing in San Antonio the flight attendants announced that the bathrooms were “full” and would be closed until further notice. I had just taken advantage of the facilities and so I remained comfortable until we finally deplaned in Dallas, unlike some of the unluckier cross-legged passengers.

I guess this is not really that interesting of a story, other than to say I was on a plane for 8 hours instead of the normal 4, and also that airplane food is no longer free, which I find mildly insulting considering the rather dubious quality of said food in the first place. I strongly feel that when you pay anywhere from $250 to $1000 or more for a plane ticket, the least they can do is throw in a soggy turkey sandwich and dried out carrot sticks gratis.

And do you remember when airlines would charge you to rent a set of earphones? Doc notes that their little jacks were proprietary, utilising some sort of whooshing air-based sound transmission system of a horribly tinny quality, and if you owned your own set of earphones you were out of luck because they wouldn’t fit in the jacks.

Of course, that was also when in-flight entertainment was free (even if it was just nine channels of radio through the arms of your seats). Now you’re charged $10 to rent a little device that plays, on a 5″ screen, a select (read: crappy) set of films or television shows, chock full of advertisements.