To be fair to myself, however, I did sit down this afternoon to write. Instead of working on this post though, I had an idea for an erotic fantasy that I could post online. 90 minutes and 2500 words later, the little idea was an erotic short story. I was both delighted and angry. Delighted because I wrote an idea out from beginning to end, and angry because it wasn't something I could show off. I don't want to be a writer of porn.
Anyway, 2500 words is a lot of writing, and I can only hope that I've been re-charging my creative batteries since finishing the story earlier.
I believe I left off a few posts ago by saying that I decided to stay up all night and wait for the shuttle to pick me up. In retrospect, despite my previous doubt, this worked out well. The shuttle showed up at least 20 minutes earlier, just after 3:30 AM, and I was off.
The Ontario airport is a dreary place from 4 AM to 6 AM. My flight didn't board until 6 AM so I got to enjoy quite a bit of time in the airport. I am thankful that the TSA in Ontario has softened quite a bit over the last few years. It used to be that the agents would yell at we the passengers like drill sergeants yelling new recruits through an obstacle course. Of course, I always rankled at this because officious authority really gets under my skin. Even when other bigger, busier, and more important airports were already settled into routine, things stayed hardcore at Ontario. Now, though, it's a much nicer atmosphere, and one can actually speak with and make jokes to the agents. I had plenty of opportunity to do this as my carry-on bag got flagged for personal inspection. It seems some of my many electronic devices confused the scanner. But, the TSA agent did little more than open the flaps of my bag and peer inside in order to satisfy his curiosity.
So many other airports have 24-hour vendors or at least early-morning vendors open to service the initial fliers of each day. Not so Ontario. I found one coffee stall doling out joe at $2 a cup. I passed on this, relying on my earlier caffeine at home to get me through the morning and on to the plane.
This first leg of the trip was the least comfortable leg as I had a middle seat for 3½ hours. As you'll discover later in this travelogue, it was not the most annoying leg of my flights. The woman sitting to my right, next to the window was quite pleasant and we spent the final hour of the flight chatting about jobs and the economy. Looking ahead from the first half of the flight, however, I wouldn't have bet that we'd make it that far. As soon as the captain turned off the seatbelt sign, an elderly woman sitting immediately behind me got up and headed off to the bathroom about 15 feet in front of me. (The plane was designed so that all the first-class passengers sat ahead of the boarding door. There was also a bathroom at this intersection.) She was in the bathroom about 15 minutes when I noticed a man stick his head in. By this time I'd forgotten the woman was in there. He pulled his head out and looked around immediately for a flight attendant. One came back with him, and a minute later after she emerged from the doorway, she got on the plane's intercom and asked if there was a doctor or nurse among the passengers. The elderly woman, it seems was having trouble breathing.
Sad to say, my first impulse was one of pessimism, assuming that our plane was about to be diverted to a nearby airport where the woman could be hustled off and out to a hospital. Don't get me wrong, I did feel bad for the woman... but it was not my first reaction. Sorry.
Anyway, three doctors and a nurse immediately came forward. The woman was gotten out of the bathroom and placed into one of the front row of seats in the Coach section.There was room for all the doctors, the nurse, and a few flight attendants to hover around her, but one of the doctors took off right away. The second stayed about ten minutes, talking in hushed tones with the third doctor several times. Eventually an oxygen tank was fetched and the woman was put on air. She stayed in that front seat for about an hour while the doctor and nurse looked after her. Eventually the flight attendant who was working with them asked if the woman could be gotten back to her own seat so the passenger who was usurped could be re-seated. It was decided that that the nurse would switch seats with the guy who was sitting next to the woman's original seat so the nurse could watch after the ailing woman for the duration of the flight. From this point on I got to hear the rest of the story because they were sitting immediately behind me.
During all this time, the captain was placing a call through from the cockpit to the closest airport to the Pittsburgh hospital where the woman's doctor worked. The on-board doctor wanted to know what medications the elderly woman was on so he'd have a better idea how to proceed. Her doctor was never reached, but the woman's daughter, on the ground, was tracked down. It was at this time made known that the woman was traveling with a bag full of her medications. In her confusion while checking in, however, that bag got checked and was currently in the cargo hold. She was by this time thoroughly addled by the situation, and the doctor was having a hard time getting answers out of her. If written out and placed in the mouths of actors, the conversation would have been quite comical, and I had to push back some smiles at the woman's answers. One moment she was fine and breathing OK, and then when the doctor asked again to be sure, she'd answer completely oppositely. I can say on his behalf that despite her wildly oscillating answers, the doctor never grew short with her. He was the kind of doctor one always hopes to find.
A second tank of air came into play, and that tank lasted through the end of the flight. When we landed, the flight attendant asked if we would all remain seated so the woman could be gotten off immediately and into the hands of emergency personnel standing by. However, after the door was unsealed and we waited half a minute or so, she then announced that the expected first responders were not there and we could deplane normally. As I said earlier, the first-class passengers were ahead of us, unseen throughout the flight. As they were de-planing, I looked up and saw that I had shared my flight with Bob Einstein, otherwise known as Super Dave Osborne!
This was how I got to Atlanta. The connecting flight from Atlanta to Philadelphia was much less dramatic, and I got to move over to my customary window seat. As if to scare us, the captain kept announcing the time and temperature in Philadelphia as we made our way. Honest to Gawd, the temperature varied only by a few degrees the entire time and never went above 25. I was glad there was a heavy jacket in my bag!
Well, I'll cut this off now for tonight. Expect Part 2 tomorrow.
Until next time.
"Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo."— Al Gore
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