Almost Back

It seems I should have spent my over thirty-six hours of travel writing blog posts about my trip.  Unfortunately I spent most of that time watching inflight movies and reading.  Shameful I know.  Guess I just felt the need to clear my brain for a while.  After traveling, running on empty and going at full speed for nearly a month, a little down time was necessary.

Today and tonight I am dedicating a couple of hours to gather photos and stories from my travels to put on the blog.  I’ve already gotten a lot of stuff uploaded to flickr and hope to soon have a post up.

Meanwhile, here are two panoramas.  The first is a view of Paris from Basilique du Sacré-Cœur and the second from the private beach facility where my parents live in Saudi Arabia.

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Letter to United Airlines

I feel the need to open up about a few things on my flight from Washington DC to Paris.

First off, United. I know we’re in an economic crisis but if you could update your Boeing 777s, that would be great. Here are a few of my, why the hell, thoughts.

Why the hell…

  1. Don’t you have standard power outlets for everyone on the plane. I’ve ridden busses with more amenities.
  2. Don’t you have wifi on your airplanes. If a budget airline like Southwest and Virgin can handle it, I’m pretty sure and old, established and relatively premium outlook like you guys could swing it. Hell, for a flight this long I’d pay as much as $50 for access to high speed Internet access. I’m really only asking for 512kbps here.
  3. Do you have your seats so close together that if the person in front of my leans back, I can’t see my little video screen, use my food tray or even THINK of using my laptop comfortably.
  4. Are your headphone outputs boosted so much? I know I have high quality, high sensitivity Klipsch headphones but even my Sennheiser headphones with higher impedance could barely handle it.
  5. Did my video screen, audio, map, light, flight attendant call, volume, channel, brightness control module die? I’m stuck looking at a over bight map, playing way too loud pop music, in the dark.
  6. Did you make the aisles so thing, the space between chairs so narrow and the seats so flimsy? I know this is more of a Boeing and economics question but, seriously. If I can feel the every move of the people in front and behind me. If someone walking down the aisle means I get rammed into, we’ve got problems.
  7. Aren’t there rules on who gets to fly on these planes. I know this one is a little silly but if people can’t mind themselves, stay at home. If you feel the need to constantly move your chair up and down, talk loudly to no one in particular, go to the lavatory every thirty minutes or any other absurdly annoying habit… Stay at home. I don’t want to deal with your issues and France certainly doesn’t either.
  8. Aren’t there warm cookies?
  9. Would you choose these color schemes?
  10. Wouldn’t you tell me about the above so I could have known to fly Air France or British Airways?

Ah, but it isn’t all bed. My seat is comfortable, despite the seemingly epileptic person sitting in front of me. The person next to me keeps to himself. The cabin temperature is just perfect. Oh and best of all, my flight attendant is the definition of a beautiful French man. He’s very nice, attentive and fabulously dressed.

Oh, and thanks for creating Business Class so that most of that stuff above doesn’t pertain to me anymore.

Cheers!

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Packing My Bags, I’m Ready to Go!

In just an hour and thirty minutes the bus will pick me up to bring me to the airport in St Louis.  From there I’ll fly to Washington DC, then to Paris France!  I’ll meet up with the family in Paris for Christmas, travel around the country to various friends’ for celebration, fun and catching up.   Then I’ll be off to Bahrain for New Years!  Really excited about that.  After Bahrain I’ll be jetting off to Saudi Arabia, exploring around the country, making photos, having an awesome time.

I am all sorts of excited about the trip and hope to keep you all informed of my adventures here and on my Twitter. Wanna help?  Leave me some suggested sites to visit in the comments!

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