A guide to maintaining sanity during 20 hours of fight time (part 1)

12/25/2010

Dallas to London (9 hrs.):

·    Start with the in-flight movie: a safe bet, but only lasts 2hrs if attention is sustained (mine wasn’t: 1 hr)

·    Watch the flight attendants serve dinner (10 min)

·    Happily devour a questionable cheese enchilada and fiesta rice: the last “real” tex-mex to be consumed for 5 months, was that real? (45 min)

·    Sustain heavy glances from bysitters as you spread out over three vacant seats! No one showed up in your row. You think maybe it pays to travel alone as you inflate your pillow and span the entirety of 3 seats that miraculously fit your body to a tee! It’s a twin bed rocketing over the Atlantic (15 min)

·    Sleep uninterrupted! (4 hrs)

·    Wake to see a good Samaritan tucking you in with the staticy red blanket in your comfortable bed: who it was ill never know, my glassless eyes couldn’t focus on the figure (60 sec)

·    Back to bed (30 min)

·    First bathroom break: im always surprised by the magnitude of flushing power sustained in the air (10 min)

·    Watch people sleep (30 min)

·    Alternate flexion of separate butt cheeks to various musical tempos and rhythms (30 min)

·    Crossword action (1 hr)

12/26/2010

·    Watch the sunrise while listening to the American Airlines classical station “measure by measure” (40 min)

Miss the connection to Dubai. After long lines and the best croissant I have ever eaten, I rerouted my flight to Bangalore. 7 hr layover in London Heathrow.

London to Bangalore (9 hrs)

·    Personal movie screen on the back of seats!! Oh ya!!!! Watch Despicable Me!(1.5 hrs)

·    Receive an in-flight meal. It is yellow and brown and chunky. I recognize the chicken breast, and that’s about it. There is a package of seeds, and many tubes and canisters of spicy condiments. Try to decipher what the sludge is. (5 min)

·    Observe the man next to me with a pear-shaped face doctor up his food and try to emulate. Tally ho! Eat the food, enjoy the food! But this also could be due to the fact that my stomach was caving in. (30 min)

·    Enter a hyper-ADD state of: doze, gaze out the window, chit chat with my pear headed friend, watch part of a movie, repeat (5 hrs)