Airplane!

It's been a busy quarter, so we're gonna do a mid-quarter update since about 3 times the normal amount of material has happened in my life during Q3 2010. We'll start with a summary of the 14-hour plane ride.

Stage 1 - I hate Toronto
Pearson airport tried to kill me at the start of my journey. I got to Pearson with all of my stuff (~ 50 lbs total weight), looked at the little baggage carts, and said "I don't need a baggage cart - I'm just going to check in, dump my bags on the conveyor (like every other airport in the world), and will only have to carry/drag them for 20 minutes tops."

BIG MISTAKE. Apparently if you fly to the US, you need to carry/drag your bags through check-in, customs, 2nd customs, then security before you get rid of them. My 20 minutes turned into 2.5 hours, and my back was killing me as I boarded a 5 hour flight to San Francisco (to be followed by a 14 hour flight to Auckland). Thanks, Toronto - I hate you too.

Stage 2 - Run!
The flight from Toronto was an hour late getting in, so Air Canada very nicely arranged to have someone meet us at the gate and take us directly to the next gate. In all, we have about 10 minutes to spare before the Auckland flight took off, so that was good. Not as Amazing Race-y as it could have been, but it worked out.

Stage 3 - Overseas
Three awesome things happened overseas. First, we hit really nasty turbulence at around Hour 11. When this happens, I instinctively did the following:
- check the Airline radar to see where we're going to crash-land if it comes to that. It told me that Fiji was 1500 miles off, Nauru about 1200, and Auckland about 2500.
- based on this, I concluded that we were basically going to die, so if the plane was going to drop I needed to make sure my last 15 minutes were good
- I changed the channel on the in-flight entertainment to Glee. I figured I might as well go down Like A Virgin.

Second, in my experience, the flight attendants on most airlines tend to be tall-ish blonde women with great smiles. The attendants for my section of the flight were male, and looked like either bouncers or retired rugby players. I don't think ANYBODY asked for a 2nd glass of wine on that flight, and I thought it was kind of neat.

Third, the plane sat 9 across and I had an empty seat between myself and this 50-ish American dude who worked in the geothermal energy business. I'm a nosy Nelly, so on long flights I fairly frequently look around to see what other people are watching on their screens. This man, God bless him, watched what I think was 7 consecutive episodes of Glee!