{"id":152,"date":"2004-12-22T21:15:50","date_gmt":"2004-12-22T21:15:50","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2006-04-08T12:50:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-08T18:50:00","slug":"holiday-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/?p=152","title":{"rendered":"holiday travel"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb_share_1\" style=\"clear:left; float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-top:10px;;width: 55px;\" name=\"fb_share\"><div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#appId=125029517579627&amp;xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/?p=152\" send=\"false\" layout=\"box_count\" width=\"55\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\"><\/fb:like><\/div><p>This time of the year we often get the<br \/>\nopportunity to travel with our family to see other members of our<br \/>\nfamily. For business travelers and us entertainment ner-do-wells this<br \/>\ntime gets the same name that hard drinkers and AA&#8217;s give New Years:<br \/>\n&#8220;Amateur Night&#8221;. It&#8217;s often the only time that some people travel and<br \/>\ncan be the first time for others. Why just the thought of taking Junior<br \/>\nto meet Granddad for the first time and him being parked behind me for<br \/>\nthe whole flight, kicking, screaming, vomiting&#8230;. I keep looking for<br \/>\nmy tour bus.<br \/>\nThere will be no empty seats or sky beds; flight<br \/>\nattendants will pack overhead bins like Bombay train station cops on<br \/>\ncrystal meth. Nearly everyone is carrying presents and breakables as<br \/>\ncarry-ons and those who are not will be returning with some on the way<br \/>\nback. The winter jackets are being thrown around like restaurant<br \/>\nrecommendations; like New Orleans at Mardi Gras, it resembles nothing<br \/>\nlike the regular day to day travel, just an exaggerated event that<br \/>\ngives a place a bad name.<br \/>\nI feel strangely calm though; it&#8217;s this wierd thing<br \/>\nthat comes over me when other people are miserable I feel like my job<br \/>\nis covered and I mellow out for once. For instance, our flight has been<br \/>\ndelayed and we will most likely miss our connection. Flying out of DFW<br \/>\nand having to de-ice shouldn&#8217;t be a problem. The de-icing truck broke<br \/>\ntwice and delayed us  two hours&#8230;whee. We&#8217;re connecting through<br \/>\nDenver (in December!) and you know that&#8217;s always a smooth thing.<br \/>\nWell, we&#8217;ll get to my Mom&#8217;s house when we get there.<br \/>\nOh, and though I&#8217;m mellow I&#8217;m tiring of the amount<br \/>\nof asses that have bounced off my left shoulder&#8230; I think we&#8217;re on the<br \/>\nother side of aisle for the next flight. I&#8217;m glad. I&#8217;m done with that<br \/>\nimage.<br \/>\nThis brings me to what I wanted to discuss in<br \/>\nthe first place; the adjustment. I&#8217;d love to get some feedback from you<br \/>\nreaders who travel a lot. This is not a man\/ woman thing or a<br \/>\nhusband\/wife thing as I see it. It&#8217;s not even a frequent traveller\/ not<br \/>\nso frequent traveller thing&#8230; or maybe it is.<br \/>\nI often get very wiggy when I travel with my wife<br \/>\nand I know it has everything to do with me. She travels very well; I<br \/>\nseem to lose my chops as soon as we leave the house. Though I&#8217;ve spent<br \/>\nthe past twenty years travelling in groups I really travel alone most<br \/>\nof the time. That atonomy of getting through security, getting my<br \/>\nbearings, finding coffee, an outlet, a free wi-fi connection, getting<br \/>\nmy seat, reading, writing, watching stuff on my laptop&#8230; whatever.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s that strange thing of being able to do what you want, where you<br \/>\nwant, when you want.<br \/>\nOK, I&#8217;ll admit it , I&#8217;m spoiled and I enjoy that<br \/>\ntime between here and there. It&#8217;s my time and that&#8217;s probably why when<br \/>\nthe now rare airline anomolies (&#8220;I&#8217;m sorry sir, you can&#8217;t use your<br \/>\nearplugs, you need to hear the screaming last wishes of the person next<br \/>\nto you if we go down&#8221;) send me far, far, FAR left.<br \/>\nWhen you travel with someone else you have to<br \/>\nconcider what they need to do. Sounds like something a selfish person<br \/>\nmight have trouble with. They have to do all the things you have to do;<br \/>\ngo to the bathroom, sit, eat, reorganize, move from place to place &#8230; and then<br \/>\nthey might want to do something you don&#8217;t! And it never happens exactly<br \/>\nat the time you want to, now does it?<br \/>\nI&#8217;ll probably get some flack for being such a baby<br \/>\nbut I&#8217;m trying to be honest here. Being alone in a public place,<br \/>\nlooking, watching the world go by, whether it&#8217;s DFW or a small town in<br \/>\nEurope, it&#8217;s one of my small pleasures in life. I&#8217;m a people<br \/>\nwatcher.  Now before you go and report me to the Stalker Police or<br \/>\nthe dirty ol&#8217; middle aged man authority, hear me out. The airport can<br \/>\nbe the scene of some really interesting behavior be you animal,<br \/>\nvegetable or mineral. It is a place that brings out the worst in<br \/>\npeople. You can see adults and infants act exactly the same way. If<br \/>\nyou&#8217;re socially retarded like I am you can see how other families and<br \/>\nrelationships work. You can blend into the backround and let it unfold<br \/>\nall around you.<br \/>\nYou can also wander where you want, eat what you<br \/>\nwant, browse, putter, vege out, nod out, crash completely, have too<br \/>\nmuch coffee, read, listen to music or do nothing at all.<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: bold\"><br \/>\nlater&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah, let&#8217;s hear it for the airlines&#8230; We<br \/>\nwere held at DFW for nearly two hours for De-icing and missed our<br \/>\nconnection in Denver. Luckily there were 3 more flights to Sacramento<br \/>\nand we got on stand by for the first one. They probably didin&#8217;t want to<br \/>\ndeal with us as they told people that the delay was weather related as<br \/>\nthey made them wait until tomorrow to fly again. The captain of the<br \/>\nfirst plane made it clear why we were delayed and we would have had<br \/>\nsome fun if they made us stay overnight without a voucher. Perhaps<br \/>\nasking them if God was reponsable for the maintainance of the de-icing<br \/>\ntruck would have opened an interesting theological discussion&#8230;I doubt<br \/>\nit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This time of the year we often get the opportunity to travel with our family to see other members of our family. For business travelers and us entertainment ner-do-wells this time gets the same name that hard drinkers and AA&#8217;s give New Years: &#8220;Amateur Night&#8221;. It&#8217;s often the only time that some people travel and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[19,13],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peNcU-2s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bittermancircle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}