Category Archives: flying

On caprice

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It is summer, time for vacations and excursions, time for new experiences, getting away from home, meeting new people, trying new foods, exploring new landscapes, escaping the normal, the everyday, the humdrum, letting caprice carry you away. Yes, for all you rational empiricists, caprice is a naughty word associated with irrational and illogical behavior bordering on insanity. Caprice is about wanting things you shouldn’t want, doing things on the spur of the moment, letting go of the controlled life. For many people, caprice is childish and foolish. One should be able to live their whole life without being either spontaneous or unpredictable. All of life should be planned, logical, thought out, reasonable, predictable, and unsurprising. I know lots of people like this, and they are wonderful, if not a little boring. Caprice, on the other hand, can lead to all sorts of trouble: one might eat too much chocolate or ice cream, or heaven forbid, to much chocolate ice cream. No one needs chocolate ice cream for any reason whatsoever, so it is a caprice. Caprice might mean staying up too late to watch an old movie about good guys and bad guys, beautiful dangerous women, whiskey, big cars and palatial estates where some old guy grows orchids he hates. Nobody needs any of that. Caprice might mean eating that lobster as opposed to watching it swim in its aquarium. Nobody needs lobster, and besides, eating lobster usually leads to drinking white wine with someone you love, and of course, love only leads to rack and ruin, so lobster is a caprice. Life’s caprices will ruin your heavily structured, well-toned life of predictable and good behavior. Caprice is almost always about being bad, wanting something that is not good for you, getting something that is bad for you. Jetting off to Paris is a caprice because no one really needs to go to Paris when they have everything they really need in the United States, probably at the mall just down the street, or maybe even closer in that big box retailer on the corner near your house. And heaven forbid you should go to Madrid, which is full of caprices: lobster, flamenco, bull-fighting, the Prado, tapas, red wine, terraces, handsome people, wild night life, and chocolate ice cream. You might as well throw in the towel if you go there because you will be assaulted on all sides by unwelcome caprice of all kinds. You might lose control of your well-tailored life, of your managed respectability, of your over-sculpted identity. Caprice is a bad thing, no question about it. Stay at home and eat rice cakes. Drive a four-door, respectable, good-mileage sedan with an automatic transmission. Caprice can have nothing to do with your well-run life. Please stay away from other people, roses, fast cars, jazz, art museums (all sorts), bars, restaurants that offer lobster and/or chocolate ice cream, and airports, which only leads to flying and before you know it, you’re eating lobster on some beach where half-nude people are sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them. Don’t be tempted. Stay away from caprice and live your life.

On caprice

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It is summer, time for vacations and excursions, time for new experiences, getting away from home, meeting new people, trying new foods, exploring new landscapes, escaping the normal, the everyday, the humdrum, letting caprice carry you away. Yes, for all you rational empiricists, caprice is a naughty word associated with irrational and illogical behavior bordering on insanity. Caprice is about wanting things you shouldn’t want, doing things on the spur of the moment, letting go of the controlled life. For many people, caprice is childish and foolish. One should be able to live their whole life without being either spontaneous or unpredictable. All of life should be planned, logical, thought out, reasonable, predictable, and unsurprising. I know lots of people like this, and they are wonderful, if not a little boring. Caprice, on the other hand, can lead to all sorts of trouble: one might eat too much chocolate or ice cream, or heaven forbid, to much chocolate ice cream. No one needs chocolate ice cream for any reason whatsoever, so it is a caprice. Caprice might mean staying up too late to watch an old movie about good guys and bad guys, beautiful dangerous women, whiskey, big cars and palatial estates where some old guy grows orchids he hates. Nobody needs any of that. Caprice might mean eating that lobster as opposed to watching it swim in its aquarium. Nobody needs lobster, and besides, eating lobster usually leads to drinking white wine with someone you love, and of course, love only leads to rack and ruin, so lobster is a caprice. Life’s caprices will ruin your heavily structured, well-toned life of predictable and good behavior. Caprice is almost always about being bad, wanting something that is not good for you, getting something that is bad for you. Jetting off to Paris is a caprice because no one really needs to go to Paris when they have everything they really need in the United States, probably at the mall just down the street, or maybe even closer in that big box retailer on the corner near your house. And heaven forbid you should go to Madrid, which is full of caprices: lobster, flamenco, bull-fighting, the Prado, tapas, red wine, terraces, handsome people, wild night life, and chocolate ice cream. You might as well throw in the towel if you go there because you will be assaulted on all sides by unwelcome caprice of all kinds. You might lose control of your well-tailored life, of your managed respectability, of your over-sculpted identity. Caprice is a bad thing, no question about it. Stay at home and eat rice cakes. Drive a four-door, respectable, good-mileage sedan with an automatic transmission. Caprice can have nothing to do with your well-run life. Please stay away from other people, roses, fast cars, jazz, art museums (all sorts), bars, restaurants that offer lobster and/or chocolate ice cream, and airports, which only leads to flying and before you know it, you’re eating lobster on some beach where half-nude people are sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them. Don’t be tempted. Stay away from caprice and live your life.

On trying to sleep at 37,000 feet

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Many of you have had a similar experience: you are flying coach to Europe and you are spending about ten hours hanging in the sky. The flight traverses the night, and you are fighting with your seat to find that one comfortable position where you might be able to sleep. This is, of course, a futile undertaking. There are no comfortable seats or positions in coach during a ten-hour flight. This is a torture to be endured, not enjoyed. I find that putting the seat back the little bit you can is an illusion that only adds to the pain. It’s like a cold glass of water seen in the hallucinations of someone walking miles in the blazing sun–a mirage. The airlines would like everyone in coach to think that those seats are comfortable, but they would be wrong. I usually make it about six hours into the flight–way past the point of no-return–before I start getting grouchy and annoyed and irked with the way my butt and back feel. It could be worse. It could involve water-boarding. Oh, wait, they do serve some “food” in coach, but the airlines have a very broad idea of what constitutes food. The few people who get to ride in first class and business are riding in relative comfort. They have enough space to turn around, nobody has leaned back their chair into their face and their legs are not in danger of ceasing to function. I think the best part of riding up front is the space: they have space to continue being people. Back in coach the worst thing is not the uncomfortable seats, it’s the total lack of space to even stretch decently a time or two without punching out the person sitting next to you, who, by the way, is only trying to do exactly the same thing and maintain a little dignity. And no I don’t want to hear the toilet flush one more time. And you lose stuff: Ipod, phone, water bottle, snacks, blanket, pillow, computer. Or worse, all of these items tend to pile up in your seat pocket or your seat. Then, where are you supposed to sit? And sleeping sitting up is not sleeping at all. If you can’t put your feet up, it’s not sleeping. You might call it fitful dozing, a troubled sleep that only gives the illusion of rest, but does not give rest. So there you hang at 37,000 feet, traveling at just under the speed of sound, heading back to the old country, yawning and wondering when the next time you can put up your feet might be.

On trying to sleep at 37,000 feet

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Many of you have had a similar experience: you are flying coach to Europe and you are spending about ten hours hanging in the sky. The flight traverses the night, and you are fighting with your seat to find that one comfortable position where you might be able to sleep. This is, of course, a futile undertaking. There are no comfortable seats or positions in coach during a ten-hour flight. This is a torture to be endured, not enjoyed. I find that putting the seat back the little bit you can is an illusion that only adds to the pain. It’s like a cold glass of water seen in the hallucinations of someone walking miles in the blazing sun–a mirage. The airlines would like everyone in coach to think that those seats are comfortable, but they would be wrong. I usually make it about six hours into the flight–way past the point of no-return–before I start getting grouchy and annoyed and irked with the way my butt and back feel. It could be worse. It could involve water-boarding. Oh, wait, they do serve some “food” in coach, but the airlines have a very broad idea of what constitutes food. The few people who get to ride in first class and business are riding in relative comfort. They have enough space to turn around, nobody has leaned back their chair into their face and their legs are not in danger of ceasing to function. I think the best part of riding up front is the space: they have space to continue being people. Back in coach the worst thing is not the uncomfortable seats, it’s the total lack of space to even stretch decently a time or two without punching out the person sitting next to you, who, by the way, is only trying to do exactly the same thing and maintain a little dignity. And no I don’t want to hear the toilet flush one more time. And you lose stuff: Ipod, phone, water bottle, snacks, blanket, pillow, computer. Or worse, all of these items tend to pile up in your seat pocket or your seat. Then, where are you supposed to sit? And sleeping sitting up is not sleeping at all. If you can’t put your feet up, it’s not sleeping. You might call it fitful dozing, a troubled sleep that only gives the illusion of rest, but does not give rest. So there you hang at 37,000 feet, traveling at just under the speed of sound, heading back to the old country, yawning and wondering when the next time you can put up your feet might be.

On airline time

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I think that airlines keep their own time, their own clocks, their own schedules with which normal human beings have nothing in common. A large group of my students are flying today, and my carefully planned chart is already a mess with two students left behind because of cancelled flights, and everyone else is late. The main flight getting off almost two hours late. Yes, I know that planes are mechanical and that they break down in unpredictable ways, which means cancellations and delays. I know the weather does not always cooperate, which means delays and cancellations. I know that air traffic is affected by a thousand little things from catering, refueling, bags, grumpy travelers, capricious air traffic controllers to over-full planes, slow passengers, scheduling mix-ups and just pure strangeness. Some delays and cancellations seem innocuous enough, but if you slow down traffic in Chicago, you can cause delays from San Diego to New York. A plane stuck in a gate for refueling can cause the next plane to arrive late, making all of those passengers late for their next flights. Call it the “butterfly effect” or call it bad dumb luck, but delays in the system will have a ripple effect throughout the entire system of scheduled airline flights. Of course, Murphy’s Law of Delayed Flights (and all ancillary corollaries) says that your delays are inversely proportional to how important the trip is: vacation–you’re screwed; a business meeting the next day–depends; going to a weird cousin’s wedding–right on time. If you are in a hurry to make connections, you are totally screwed. If it doesn’t matter whether you arrive today or tomorrow, you will arrive ahead of time. If you still have appointments that day, you will never make it. I know a complex system with that many moving parts is going to be unpredictably chaotic, but sometimes I think they could try harder.

On airline time

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I think that airlines keep their own time, their own clocks, their own schedules with which normal human beings have nothing in common. A large group of my students are flying today, and my carefully planned chart is already a mess with two students left behind because of cancelled flights, and everyone else is late. The main flight getting off almost two hours late. Yes, I know that planes are mechanical and that they break down in unpredictable ways, which means cancellations and delays. I know the weather does not always cooperate, which means delays and cancellations. I know that air traffic is affected by a thousand little things from catering, refueling, bags, grumpy travelers, capricious air traffic controllers to over-full planes, slow passengers, scheduling mix-ups and just pure strangeness. Some delays and cancellations seem innocuous enough, but if you slow down traffic in Chicago, you can cause delays from San Diego to New York. A plane stuck in a gate for refueling can cause the next plane to arrive late, making all of those passengers late for their next flights. Call it the “butterfly effect” or call it bad dumb luck, but delays in the system will have a ripple effect throughout the entire system of scheduled airline flights. Of course, Murphy’s Law of Delayed Flights (and all ancillary corollaries) says that your delays are inversely proportional to how important the trip is: vacation–you’re screwed; a business meeting the next day–depends; going to a weird cousin’s wedding–right on time. If you are in a hurry to make connections, you are totally screwed. If it doesn’t matter whether you arrive today or tomorrow, you will arrive ahead of time. If you still have appointments that day, you will never make it. I know a complex system with that many moving parts is going to be unpredictably chaotic, but sometimes I think they could try harder.

On doughnuts

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I don’t eat doughnuts because they have eggs in them, but until I found out that I had an allergy to eggs, I ate plenty of them. Doughnuts are wonderful because they are the perfect vehicle for transporting fat and sugar into the human digestive system. But doughnuts are serendipitously wonderful because of their highly suggestive, if not original, shape–a round pastry with a hole in the middle. Who would have ever invented a pastry that is defined by emptiness, by nothingness, by what is missing? You can see the other side of the room by looking through the doughnut hole. So how do you eat a doughnut? Do you bite it in the middle and work your way around? How do you decide where the middle is exactly since doughnuts are almost always symmetrical no matter how you fold them? As a three-dimensional conundrum, the doughnut is a map-maker’s nightmare, a labyrinth designer’s dream, and a pastry chef’s canvass. You can do a lot with a doughnut. I always preferred them with lots of chocolate frosting, although my grandmother fried them in lard and those doughnuts didn’t need any extra help. They melted in your mouth, but the cholesterol factor was pretty high. The very curves of the doughnut give it erotic overtones that cannot be ignored. The doughnut is nothing but curves–voluptuous, exotic, full, suggestive, fatal. How can you not look at a doughnut and not think of sex? How does the saying go, there are no dirty doughnuts, just dirty minds? Yet I would suggest that the doughnut’s ongoing appeal has less to do with chocolate, sugar, and fat (three out of five major food groups–missing caffeine and salt, but no food is perfect), and everything to do with its curves. Curves have always been more appealing than straight lines, which are cold and impersonal. The doughnut is warm and moist, engaged in continuous curves that shape its identity and give it a “come hither” look. Nobody says “no” to a doughnut–hungry or full, it doesn’t matter. Glazed, iced, with sprinkles, with powder sugar, or just plain, the doughnut is a mysterious bit of food that has no earthly reason to exist. Nobody needs doughnuts–not little kids, nor policemen, nor college professors, nor housewives, nor anyone else you might imagine. So, why do people line up twenty-deep in their SUV’s every Sunday morning to buy them?

On flying standby

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I am flying standby this morning because I’m on my way home and I don’t want to spend the entire day in the airport.  I have to cross the entire country from north to south, and I have to make two connections if I get on this flight.  It’s all very uncertain, but kind of exciting.  Will the wheels of good fortune turn my way and let me on this flight, or will the Fates keep me here until 3:30 when my regularly scheduled flight will leave?  The Spinners are working overtime today, and I am completely at the mercy of Fortune.  How wonderfully medieval.  To not know the outcome, to gamble as it were, to trust an outcome to the serendipitous nature of a complex and chaotic world.  Will I get on the flight because someone cancels their trip, or decides to fly later today?  Flying standby is about knowing nothing, controlling nothing, waiting will everyone else boards the plane, waiting for the gate attendant to give me a new boarding pass with a seat number.  There is something deliciously out of control about the whole situation.  We live in a world in which we think we can control everything, but that, of course, is an illusion.  Boarding passes with seat numbers are an illusion of control.  In all honesty, most of life is about careening out of control around blind corners down dark alleys and into the abyss of life.  You cannot avoid life no matter how hard you try.  The best laid plans of mice and men too often come to naught, and most discourse is the sound and the fury with no meaning.  Barraged by television, by the internet, by billboards and announcements of all kinds, the Fates set us to dance in a never ending, whirling maelstrom of input that drives us mad with desire for things, for people, for money, for control.  In the end, we are all flying standby whether we like it or not.  I am going to finish this now so that I keep you in suspence.  I still don’t know if I am leaving in an hour or not, and it’s a wonderful feeling.

On canceled

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If there is a sorrier or sadder word in the English anguish than “canceled,” I don’t know what it might be. So yesterday, in the chaos of a hail/lightening/tornado storm at the DFW airport, they canceled five hundred flights, affecting thousands of passengers, and I was one of them. All these cancellations collapsed the airline’s ability to rebook anyone in any kind of orderly fashion. I received a sad little text message letting me know that my flight was canceled, but they would be back to me soon with re-booking information. Well, that was yesterday, and they still haven’t contacted me. My friends in Admissions, a very resourceful group, re-grouped, made a new plan, Stan, and we made it back to Waco this morning with the help of a very kind admissions counselor who got up this morning at 5:30 to retrieve us from the DFW area. As of this moment, I have heard nothing about rebooking, although, paradoxically, I did get my suitcase back this evening, and they even brought it out to my house. What sweethearts! Yet, sitting there in the airport with all hell breaking loose, with nowhere to go, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, with pressing appointments back home, I had no hope of making it home on time for anything. Ironically, I had made it on the plane to return home, only to be kicked off of the plane by the cabin crew. The weather went dark, the wind came up, the rain started to fall, and before we knew it, we had a full-fledged hail storm pounding the airport, the planes, the cars, the people. Canceled. They canceled everything in sight: the only things moving on the ramps were nickle-sized pieces of hail that were pelting everyone and everything. I went to a hotel for the night, knowing that I would be retrieved in the morning, which made the delay and cancellation a little more bearable. I couldn’t blame the airline. They didn’t order hail and tornadoes for the early afternoon. Many of planes took hail damage, so there was no getting out of DFW by air. Our contingency plan was the only effective way of resolving our castaway condition. We all work for a pretty good organization, and they were not about to let us stay stranded and unloved in the Metroplex. We rolled into Waco about 10 am, went to the airport to do the paperwork on our lost bags, and headed to work. So we were canceled, stranded, castaway, and abandoned by our carrier, but it’s all good, thanks to the kind generosity and sharp ingenuity of all those involved. My only regret was having to use the same clothes for two days straight. My spare change of clothing, you ask? In my lost suitcase, of course!

On airports

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Oh, how I love going to the airport. I both love and hate airports at the same time. On the one hand, the aesthetics of airports are horrific at best, at worst they are cross between the Inquisitions dungeon and public courthouse designed by drunk engineers (why are there nothing but foyers in this building?). I am imagining that airports are hard to design because you have to be able to park airplanes outside the building, but you also must manage foot traffic to the tune of hundreds of thousands a day. These requirements are not compatible. So the architecture stinks, the chairs are not comfortable, the bathrooms are lousy, the restaurants, with a couple of exceptions, are awful and expensive, a beer costs twelve dollars, Micky D’s makes the hamburgers, the bookstores only have the latest bestsellers, the candy is overpriced and stale, and those little carts that run up and down the concourses are trying to run you down. Even going to Starbucks is of little comfort. And then there are the endless gate changes and waiting, the flat-screened televisions tuned to CNN, the crying babies, the announcements for other people’s flights. I swear if I didn’t know any better that this is the second ring of hell in Dante’s Inferno, right next to the hedonists and the gossips. All of this after you passed through security. And the dramas: airports are full of lost people, lonely people, sad people, crazy people, crazy business people, people who should be on meds, in a hurry people, passive people and strange people. And what about the first time flyers who think they have just landed in the middle of an insane video game with no way out? The cast of characters is almost inexhaustible, but if it exists, you will see it an airport. If I run into Captain Renault and Rick, I’ll take a picture. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, the problems of two people really don’t amount to a hill of beans. And the people carrying the family chihuahua in a neat little case? Finally, I will get in line, go through the gate, and get on my plane, and isn’t that the ultimate function of any airport? Get me where I’m going? Enough said