Tag Archives: Transportation

Letter to United Airlines

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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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What Can Go Wrong…

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Ryan and I had this plan.  The plan was that we would have a couple of friends join us to St. Louis where Six Flags was “celebrating” GLBT Day.  The idea was, two hotel rooms, one car, four friends driving, having drinks with mutual and new friends Saturday night, waking up Sunday and picking up Jenny and going to the park for a fun filled day of rides and expensive bottles of water.

Well damn!

My car broke down.  A recalled part landed my car in the shop.  Coincidentally, that recalled part cost me money to get fixed…

Ryan’s car was too small for four people and the air conditioner is on the fritz so we investigated a rental car.  Every dealer was sold out.

Jeremy’s cousin volunteered to drive us, quite nice of her.  A few problems there.  That made a total of five people driving up in a car made for four people.  Never mind picking up Jenny the next day, never mind that we wouldn’t have a way to see our friends for drinks that night.  Never mind that the other three in the car would be under 21 and thus unable to go out with us.

We get about ten miles outside of town when I get a phone call from my dad that he has managed to get us a rental car.  Our driver reluctantly turns the car around.  (Not so secretly, I was thankful to get out of the car.  Between the packed backseat to the driving skills of our 17 year old driver… I was ready to get the hell out of there).

The car rental place does indeed have a car for us.  It’s a 2008 Ford Mustang GT.

You’ve got to be kidding.

$75 a day, 14-20mpg and you have to be 25 to rent it.  I’m 23.  Reluctantly, again, our driver brings us back to the condo.  Ryan and I decide we will just take his mustang.  It was really the only choice.  So we go inside the condo to pick up a few things… and notice the fabulous trail of chocolate tracked in by my flip flops.

For real?  OMG.

We work hard to clean up the mess, it was actually a bit fun, thanks mostly to Ryan’s eternally positive attitude.

So we clean up the floor, pick up our things, get some gas, buy a few drinks and drive.  We have fun in the car because… well we always have fun together.  If left on an otherwise deserted island and given the option to bring one thing with me, it would be Ryan.

He makes me laugh, he makes me see the brighter side of things.  He makes me feel whole.

Ryan would bring hydrogen peroxide.  He isn’t as romantic as I am in times like these.  wink wink

We make it to the hotel, we get dinner, and ultimately decide that driving 40 minutes to meet our already partially drunk friends at a bar and then have to find our way home would be a bad idea.  Plus our other three people are under 21.

After about an hour of talking to each other about me allowing myself to be trampled on by my friends and my exes, we head downstairs to the bar.  Ryan charms the bartender, I drink my vodka and Sprite.  It was tasty.  We again, have a wonderful time together.

We wake up, head to Jenny’s, get lost… get lost some more.  Get bagels, cheat the system at Panera, get to Jenny’s, eat said bagels, meet her roommate, meet her roommate’s boyfriend and his friend, head to Six Flags.  We forget the camera.  Holy shit.

About the park later.

After the day at the park, we went back to Jenny’s, took a nap, took a shower, and headed out to see Geoffrey for dinner.  Got lost, then we got really lost.  Then we made it.

This weekend has convinced me that Ryan and I have to get a Garmin, or at the least, I’ll definitely have to get the new iPhone 3G with built in GPS.  Holy hell.

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