You’ve heard it said for years that the destination is secondary to the journey? Fly to the West coast with seventy pounds of photo equipment, enough clothes to last for twelve days…and don’t forget the crying baby from Old Testament Job: “That which I greatly feared has befallen me.”
There was a time when flying by air was not only efficient, and convenient, but something you actually dressed for.
Who doesn’t remember those old Eastern Airline and TWA ads on television that showed men dressed in suits and ties and women wearing their Sunday best for a flight to Miami or Palm Springs?
When flying was a luxury, and you went about it accordingly. You pee’d before takeoff and once you got in your seat you sat there like Lincoln in his memorial. You looked good, smelled good…and no one had toddlers with issues. If you did, you either left them at the gate or sedated them. No one ever risked the sanctity of the aircraft cabin. There was a standard to keep.
Publisher and editor Sonny Fulks writes the Buckeyes for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Not anymore.
Now, there’s no room, no quiet, no standards, and actually…very little service with commercial airline travel. And the four-hour flight from Columbus to Phoenix I took Thursday reminded me of what my dad loved to say. “You come to a point where you appreciate the value of staying home.”
Wherever I go to cover sports there’s the ubiquitous issue of security for cameras and lenses. You plan for it by putting them in airline-approved luggage designed for photo equipment, sized appropriately for the overhead bins. Because, the last thing you want to do is put cameras under the plane where they’re subject to impact damage or damage from temperature and humidity. But it’s a good bet that 50% of the time someone at the gate is going to look at that camera case and tell you, “That won’t go in the bin. You have to check it.”
Or, they tell you, “There’s no room left. This flight is full.”
Or, what I think a lot of them think, but don’t say, is, “I’m having a bad day and I don’t care if I take it out on you.” But I’m learning.
And what I’ve learned is something I observed two years ago waiting for a flight from Florida to Dayton. A man limped up to the desk an hour before departure and kindly asked, “I just had a hip replacement, and I wondered if when you boarded the wheelchairs and old people early (who need more time) if I could board with them? I just want to get out of people’s way.”
Voila’. Worked like a charm, and when I got on behind him I stopped to ask. “How’s your hip?” He winked at me, and I knew.
Now, I’ve had so many hip replacements that the gate agents think I’m the Bionic Man.
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I’ve been on hundreds of flights over the years, from my days in baseball, and days of covering baseball, and I’m fortunate to confess that there have been very few incidents in the air. Everything has been smooth – no tales of rough air and the plane dropping a few hundred feet – of people singing How Great Thou Art at 30,000 feet.
Sitting in 19C, Thursday was the rare occasion when the flight wasn’t oversold and full. There was an old lady sitting by the window, but no one between her and me. In the seat directly behind there was a woman with two hands full of a two-year-old – the terrible twos – whose litany of issues was far greater than my hip replacement.
You remember that it was very windy yesterday. The pilots cautioned people on the plane that it was going to be bumpy out of Columbus, and perhaps as far as the St. Louis vicinity. Keep your seatbelts buckled.
Flying into a strong headwind we immediately got buffeted upwards just as the landing gear went up. I looked at the old lady by the window and her face looked colorless. At about 5,000 feet we hit more turbulence and this time people around me began to murmur. Everyone who flies is prepared for rough air, but this felt like the plane was actually losing momentum and altitude.
The pilot again came on and explained that everything was soon to be fine…to keep the seat belts tightened…but he was hard to hear for all the sudden hymn singing. In the meantime the toddler behind me was in full Tazmanian Devil, and kicking the back of my seat like a jackhammer. I was reminded of the well-known verse from Old Testament Job: “That which I have greatly feared has befallen me.”
True to the pilot’s words, after forty five minutes we got above and beyond the rough air. I turned to the lady by the window and asked if she was better now?
“Yes, but would you be so kind as to buy me a cocktail?” she asked, a first in all my years in the friendly skies. “All of my cards are in my bag and they made me check it at the gate.”
To be kind, she looked like she needed one, and had had her share on previous flights.
“I’d like a Jack, a double if they have them,” she answered without hesitation. “Just something to soothe.”
And when the cart finally came up the aisle I set her up.
She took the two bottles, dumped them on top of a few pieces of ice, and gulped it like a wolf would a pound a meatloaf. She then asked, “Are you having anything?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said, trying my best not to laugh.
She sat quietly for the duration of the flight. While in the meantime the woman behind me was engaged in mixed martial arts with Tommy. When they finally took the seat belt light off she got up and tried to carry him up and down the aisle. He was having none of that. All it accomplished was positive identity for people in the back of the plane…who wondered which kid was raisin’ hell up front.
“He’s getting some teeth,” she told those concerned to ask. But baby sharks do, too, and they don’t carry on like that.
We finally touched down in Phoenix, on time, and a credit to the pilots and the staff on the plane. People scattered quickly as soon as they opened the door, all except me. I took my time to further sell my hip replacement.
When I got out in the terminal I turned left towards baggage claim and passed a watering hole between gates. There she sat…the woman by the window and as I passed I heard her giving her pitch to a guy at an adjacent high table waiting to catch a flight to Los Angeles.
“Would you be so kind as to buy….” I heard her as I passed out of earshot and into the noisy crowd rushing to get their luggage.
Glad to be on the ground – glad to be in Phoenix to write baseball – the destination, this time, was technically better than the journey.
I hope it’s as memorable.
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