Monday, November 22, 2010

The Friendly Skies

I'm back in Washington, D.C. again. Although I worried myself sick to point of throwing up about porno-scanners and enhanced pat-downs, my admin's decision for me to fly out of Long Beach airport on Jet Blue meant that I had the opportunity to
a)Observe a 1950s terminal in person
b)Have the friendliest baggage check I've ever had, including one of the TSA staff chuckling at my red bag next to my red computer and saying, "I think I've guessed your favorite color."
c)Amble across the tarmac like a sixties celeb to the sky stairs.
d)Try to hump my baggage up sky stairs which are actually stairs you have to climb, despite a really bad knee, trick hip and generally decrepit body. (I guess if your definition of carry-on luggage is "luggage the passenger can carry, upstairs if necessary, and place in the overhead cabin" then maybe I didn't have carry-on luggage at all and I should just give up flying.)

JetBlue seem more human than many airlines. At the terminal (yes, my flight was delayed), the JetBlue guy called for someone to check in.
"Yao Ling, Yao Ling, to the middle desk area please."

Nothing happened. Five minutes later:

"Yao Ling, Yao Ling to the middle desk area. I promise it's nothing bad."

And the captain made some sort of joke on the way, too.

I'm not looking forward to the flight back, from a tight-arsed port like Dulles, but we'll see. I've read many a horror story about the TSA, but I flew out from there only three weeks ago. Let's see if they've turned into Nazis since then.

3 comments:

Casey said...

You still around? Got caught up w/in-laws. Drop a line at casey.contrarianATgmail if you are...

Lyle Hopwood said...

Alas no, I'm back in freezing sunny so cal. I'll write you.

Mike said...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/dec/01/jack-white-ebay-auctions

I've learnt to hate limited edition runs over the years. Limited edition CDs were used to kick-start sales of a new release. Vinyl has been released in limited edition (1,000 off) through lack of market. But where there's a market, I'm sure more money is to be made from dropping the price and upping the numbers sold.

One argument for file-sharing is providing access to limited edition CD/DVDs, that are otherwise unobtainable. Artists/labels don't profit from second-hand sales (as far as I know).

(Two dozen attempts needed to get past the type-word thingy. It was personal. What's that? Not worth it?)

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