The longest day (Thursday August 30, 2007)

My airport shuttle was to arrive at 4:15am Thursday. Which was enough to make me question the wisdom of booking a 7am flight out of San Francisco. In the best of circumstances, I’d get to bed at 10pm & get about 5 hours of sleep. Realistically, if I got to bed the night before a trip by midnight, I was doing pretty well. As it turned out, I was ready to go to bed at 3am. Leaving me time for a 45 minute nap. Which certainly beats the alternative of NOT being ready to leave by 3am. As it turned out, I wasn’t really all that tired (perhaps a bit wired from all the pre-travel activity) & only spent 30 minutes in bed (none of which were in slumber).

I’ve always had some trouble with procrastinating. This trip, I thought I had things well-enough organized that I wouldn’t have last-minute panic. I had very comprehensive “to do lists”, and started working on them very early. Yet, that wasn’t nearly enough. Especially around a couple of items from work (including preparing a report that has been my own personal albatross). Perhaps it was the knowledge that I was taking a laptop on this trip that kept me from getting those items done?

At 4:10am, my shuttle arrived. Thankfully, I was actually ready to go a few minutes early. On the way over, we found a traffic jam in San Francisco at 4:40am…they are doing construction on an overpass & taking Highway 101 down to a single lane. It’s at this time I have some gratitude that I wasn’t driving myself & parking (as I probably would fallen asleep or gone postal in that much stop & go).

I’m glad that I had arrived at the airport 2 hours before my scheduled departure, as Delta’s check-in line took about 75 minutes. I just don’t usually see that end of things, as I almost always travel domestically, don’t check a bag & check-in on-line (and get very testy when the on-line check-in isn’t working correctly). Thankfully, the security line took all of about 3 minutes, so I didn’t have any trouble making my flight.

I had carefully selected my seat for the SFO-JFK segment, such that there was a person on the aisle (where I selected the window), increasing the chances of an empty middle seat. Unfortunately, there was someone in the middle seat (obviously trying to sit as close as possible to his wife (sitting by the window one row ahead). I swapped seats with her & still ended up sitting next to a couple. Or at least until the door closed & I made a bee-line for the window seat one row further up (with an empty middle seat). This probably annoyed the French guy sitting on the aisle. Yet that annoyance didn’t keep him from long periods of slumber (in some of the more odd sleeping positions I’ve seen on airplanes).

The highlight of the flight was playing an interactive trivia game (against several of my fellow passengers…glad that my unit wasn’t suffering the same fate as a unit in front of me that was continuously rebooting Linux throughout the flight). I actually wasn’t doing very well during the early part of the flight. But…I finally found some of those dormant brain cells & jump-started them for some late victories. By the time we landed, I had amassed the high point total for a single round of 20 questions (16 of which I got correct). Sadly, they didn’t offer me any appropriate compensation, such as a free flight, a million frequent flier miles or something of that ilk.

I had taken similar precautions to maximize middle-seat emptiness for the JFK to Budapest segment, unfortunately to no avail. A woman (about my age) & her mother (or more likely her mother-in-law) awaited me. The mother-in-law (who only spoke Hungarian) was in the process of moving from her middle seat to my seat. When I arrived, she suggested I should sit in the middle seat. While I think I have relatively good manner & occasionally take part in chivalrous acts, this was more than I was willing to do. Thankfully, the aisle seat ahead of the daughter opened up & the “mother” moved out of the middle seat.

I was surprised at the population of the flight being predominantly Hungarian (seemingly returning from holiday in the US). I would have thought that on an American carrier, Americans would have been in the majority. Then again, as business in Hungary apparently shuts down for the month of August, I guess it all makes sense.

The in-flight movie had to be restarted about a half dozen times & audio had serious volume problems (not to mention it was the old-style overhead video, rather than the cool in-seat entertainment unit I had for the domestic leg). Making me very glad that I had my trusty 60GB iPod filled with music & several DVDs loaded onto my new laptop.