There are some universal truths that hold true no matter where you are from and who you are, and one of these is that flying fuckin sucks. It is a given for it to suck, what varies from one flight to another is only the degree to which the suckage measures up to.
Recently on my trip back to the Orient, I added to a long list of craptastic aviation experiences on both legs of my trip. On my way out on Christmas Day, I spent a whole day in the LAX's Delta terminal, which can only be described as one of the most depressing places in the U.S. The place looked stuck in the 60s and looked like nothing has been updated in the last 50 years. The sad sack of a sundry store looked worse than a strip mall check advance store and had even less inventory than a HoJo's lobby store. With only one person working the international check-in counter on Christmas Day, I had spent 2 hrs waiting in line to be checked in, only to find out when I got to my gate that there is a mechanical problem with the plane and the flight will be delayed.
The crew decided to pacify angry customers by compensating us with food vouchers, requiring yet another 45 mins of queue time. It was good for up to $6 at any establishment in the terminal, which got me as far as a small pumpkin spice latte ($5.59). After two more delay announcements that they didn't know how much longer it would take to fix the problem, the plane was finally cleared to fly 4 hrs after the original scheduled departure time. Our relief was short-lived as this little bit of good news soon turned into a source of massive disappointment and rage as we were told that due to legal reasons, the crew are not able to continue to work and that the flight was cancelled. We were told to go down to baggage claim to pick up our stuff and to go to the counter to get our hotel vouchers.
What followed was another TWO hour queue! By this time I had already spent 8 fuckin hours in LAX and thoroughly exceeded my daily allowance of seizure meds. The seizure meds were prescribed for a back problem that completely debilitated me a few weeks prior to flight date. To add to the awful wait, the middle aged Chinese dude behind me tried to kill time by chatting with a very amiable fellow who was also in line. What made the chatter completely unbearable was the fact that this old Chinese guy could not stop throwing every stereotypical comment about black people in this poor fellow's face (young dude was black). These comments/questions about this guy and the whole black race's abilities in basketball, dancing and music. I am the first to admit that Chinese people are fuckin racist, but that doesn't mean that I'm not embarrassed by it.
The happy ending to this story is that while most people had to stay in the LAX Holiday Inn for the night and rescheduled on the following morning's flight out, the Delta rep was able to book me on the last flight out to HK that night on Cathay Pacific. But of course no flight story can ever be truly happy, as I found out after fetching my shit and hoofing it 2 terminals over to the international terminal, I was told at the Cathay counter that the Delta employee had forgotten to print me a ticket and Cathay was unable to let me on. This involved another foot race back to Delta and then a return cardio routine back to Cathay.
On the return flight back stateside, there were only minor delays, which would have been merely minor annoyances had the flight attendant noticed my sloping tray table when she set down my drink. The way flights work, of course she did not see that when she set it down, and the glass of ice water promptly landed square on my lap. I fashioned a makeshift sarong out of the Delta blanket and hung my jeans to dry. I was feeling pretty gross as this was only one hour into a 10 hr flight and I had an ice cold crotch for a good hour. However, I do count myself lucky that at least it was ice water and not hot coffee/tea. If the McDonald's lawsuit was any lesson, it's that scalding hot bev's in plastic/styrofoam cups will melt on to your vage area. As far as I know I am still fertile, not that I have any plans at all to conceive, but at least I'm not deformed/sterilized.
