I, and whoever else is doomed to fly with me, have the worst flying luck. I am not saying that every plane I am on goes down, knock on wood, but they get delayed or canceled. This trip, the god whose name must have been drawn from the hat for airplane delays, must have Loki. Our flights go as follows: We arrive at our hometown airport and check in, La Duchess leaves and we wait for 45 minutes for the security check point to open, then our flight to Dallas is delayed 35 minutes, then as we are about to land in Dallas we take off again because we have not used enough fuel and are too heavy to land, this adds another 15 minutes to that flight. Due to the late departure time and the flying around to burn fuel, we have enough time to get to our connecting flight, but not to eat lunch. We board the plane to Philly, they close the doors and then inform us that due to inclement weather in New England and other planes need of our jet bridge, we will have to sit on the tarmac for an hour or so and wait for permission to take off from Philly’s airport, that clearance comes only moments after the first announcement, much to our delight, and we take off. We fly for about 2 hours when the announcement comes that due to weather in New York and New Jersey, flights destined for those airports are being rerouted to Philly, thus clogging their airport. Therefore, we have to fly in a “holding pattern” over Virginia for an hour. We finally get permission to arrive in Philly and so we start the final hour of flying. We land in Philly and are then informed that lightning has struck “the ramp” and that it is protocol if lightning strikes that ground crew go inside and wait for someone to say it is okay for them to come back outside again. So, we sit on the tarmac and wait for at least half an hour. Then their parents, seeing that there was no more lightning, said it was okay for the ground crew to come out to play. In the course of the flight, I read the entirety of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Keep in mind that I am a very slow reader. At some point, due to no food and sitting still, I became very tired. Luckily they had started the “beverage service” on the flight. I remembered that I had a small bag of cookies in my bag and I ate them with my soda. I was so inspired by McCarthy’s writing or so groggy from the flight that I made a note in my notebook after consuming my snack. “Harvesting the empty nutrients, and glucose, and caffeine from Bite-Size Vienna Cremes and a Coca-Cola. Like taking communion. The body and blood of our gods, Corn and Soy.” Wow. It was an intense flying experience. Thankfully the baby and child that were behind us only screamed some of the time. While we were waiting for the ground crew to come back out, the entire passenger body did things in unison. First, they talked on their cell phones. Then, they read the on-board magazine.  They even sighed collectively when the pilot announce that we were about to deboard. To keep me entertained, whilst all of this waiting was happening, were two things. My nagging desires to pee and then eat a cheeseburger and this young bald guy who was a math teacher. He was talking very loudly and excitedly about mathematics and the problems facing mathematics teachers. It was quite enthralling. That is how I fly. At some point, I tried to start reading The Teacher’s Funeral, but could not get into it and instead switched to The Giver. It is pretty good so far. Well, we arrived and ate cheeseburgers. And then slept. We ate our complimentary breakfast and it is currently almost 9:00am and we are stuck twiddling our thumbs until 1:00pm when they open the show floor for setup. I might go doing some photograph taking. Looking out of the window in our room I see a building with sign language on it. I am very rusty, but I think it says UXK. I don’t know what the top right word is. Somebody back me up.

I am sure it reads "This space for rent".

More soon. ~SC