1. It's apparently only 16 minutes from my apartment to JFK. There was no traffic, but still, I seriously thought it was like three times that.
2. The televisions in cabs? Yeah, no thanks. It's just a big advertisement for NBC with old news scrolling along the bottom. (It told me that Sprint Cup race was postponed, even though my boy Carl won it yesterday afternoon. It claimed the PATH was free today, even though that happened yesterday.) It also seemed a bit obsessed with violence, often of the nonsensical variety. By which I do not mean little old ladies getting mugged. I mean nonsensical quite literally. Like, "Robber attacks man with plan." Did the robber use a plan to attack a man? Or did the man who was attacked by the robber have a plan? Or was it just a typo? These are the things I thought about on the Van Wyck at 7a.m. this morning.
1. We've all been to JFK before, and we all know it generally ain't pretty. It's like the Ellis Island of the generation that only boards boats for luxury purposes (unless they're going to
Yeah well. If you want to escape all that, head to the Virgin America gate in the International Terminal. I don't know that I've ever seen a collection of so many generally young, generally very hip looking, and clearly very wealthy people gathered together anywhere, let alone at an airport. Given what I know of Sir Richard Branson, I'm assuming this was his goal here, and uh yeah, smashing success.
2. Well, except that there ain't a whole lot of people on this plane. Which is just fine by me. I've got the whole row to myself, and I've somehow managed to spread my crap out pretty well across the whole damn thing. I'm seriously going to have to start cleaning up after myself somewhere around
3. So here's what happened with this flight: Virgin America has it's own gate in the international terminal at JFK, and it appears that it only had two flights going anywhere this morning. The plane was already at the gate when I arrived excessively early (thanks to my 16 minute cab ride to JFK), so they took a "get on whenever the hell you want" approach to boarding us. Which meant that we were all very much ensconced when it was time to go – no flight attendants rushing about slamming overhead bins closed and generally stressing out the whole damn plane. Which was nice. We push back from the gate, we drive, like, rightoverthere, hang a left onto the runway, and take off without even stopping. Let me say that again in case you were breezing a little too quickly through this post. We push back, drive for a minute, hang a left, and take off without even stopping. At JFK. I'm used to being 25th in line for take-off. Flight attendants handing out water because we've been sitting on the runway so darn long. I read that something like 70% of all the delayed flights in
3. This plane has mood lighting – purple lights along the ceiling and pink lights closer to the windows. It looks a bit like a club on
4. We could do better on the food offerings. I'm a little hungry, but neither the "Strawberry Fruit Leather" nor the $12 "Fruit and Cheese Plate" sound particularly appetizing. People complain about "airplane food" but I'd kind of give my left arm right now for a turkey sandwich on white bread with a squeezy pack of mayo. I *love* however that you can order drinks (even the free stuff – water and coffee and soda and juice) from your seat! This has got to be a nightmare for the flight attendants on a crowded flight, but when there's just the 20 of us hurtling through the sky, it's fantastic!
5. Entertainment offerings are okay. Not as many TV channels as Jet Blue, but the movie offerings are a nice option, and they even have Nikki Sixx's new video as an on-demand music video choice. Surprisingly, the song didn't sound that bad. The lyrics were *very* silly, and I'm sure the album is excruciatingly annoying. (According to the information provided with the video, it's a concept album called something like The Heroin Diaries. Puh-leeese.) But the song sounded good if you weren't really paying attention too much and/or if you didn't know that Nikki Sixx is a bombastic idiot. I also watched the video for Wyclef Jean's "The Sweetest Girl," which I still think is about strippers even though the video was about illegal immigrants.
6. And if the TV and movies and music isn't enough to keep you entertained, our pilot is hilarious. We had the worst turbulence I've ever experienced in my life at the beginning of this flight. It was starting to feel a little Almost Famous on this plane for awhile there. I was literally holding the window jamb at one point to help brace myself and prevent my head from slamming into the side of the plane. So we're tossing all over the place, and the pilot comes over the airwaves all calm like, "If ya'll can just hang on a little longer, we're going to descend back down to the smoother air where we were before. We got some news that it would be better up here, but clearly *that's* not the case." He said it all emphasized like that. Made me feel a little less like death might be imminent.
Synopsis: I didn't pay more to fly this airline, but I would. Even if I wasn't on the company's dime!
What's Ahead for Me Today:
But yeah, then to the hotel. I'm hoping they have a good bed there so I can figure out whether the bed in my apartment is crap or whether my back is just crap. I'd believe either at this point in my life, and I tend to think that the truth of the matter is somewhere in the middle. Then a meeting from 4-5:30p.m. Then a cocktail reception at 7p.m. and then dinner with clients at 8p.m.. This day is just a little too long, I think!
Oh, and the
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