Flying - It's all about the line

An alarm at 4:30, is never good, even when signaling the beginning of a vacation.    The animals mill, confused...

The airport was already busy... Security trumps customer service...  Show your boarding pass to get in line to check bags... Wait inching slowly forward,   We get to the counter... They check documents, scan our passports, weigh the bags and decide that there is an issue, and send us to "special services", to wait in line again...  When we again reach the counter, they again check documents, again scan our passports, again, this time check our bags and send us on our way... To security, where they check your boarding pass before you enter the line, check it again half way through, sorting us by flight boarding time, before the TSA man checks boarding pass and passport, making notes and randomly circling some items, before sending to the line where you lose shoes and belts, hat & jacket and disassemble your carefully packed luggage into plastic bins for scanning.  The line for the body scanner was mercifully short.

Now, apparently vetted as safe, we regather our dispersed possessions, dress, grab a coffee (a line may have been involved) and locate our gate where boarding has not yet started, but lines are forming...

Announcements are made... But with 8 gates in close proximity, with one gate calling pre-boarding, while the next is calling group 2, confusion seems the order of the day.  They call "traveler C Hees, please see the gate agent" so she (the agent) can once again check passports, (thankfully without a line this time) and begins a lecture about showing passports when checking in...  (We had) checks them again and clears us to fly, or at least to stand in line where they would check boarding passes and join the line which extended from the plane and through the jetway...

We find our seats and sufficient overhead bin space... We settle in while the crew make repeated announcements imploring passengers to find their seats, get out of the aisle, stow luggage in the overhead bin wheels first...

Eventually the close the cabin doors, ask us to turn electronic devices to the O-F-F position, and we push back, so the plane can join the line of other jets awaiting its turn to take off...

Delta has changed it's safety video... Much like Virgin America's cartoon delta's new video is filled with humor, tiny suitcases, a passenger stowing his antique typewriter so he can close his tray table and passengers peering over setbacks looking for the nearest exit "which might be behind you"only to find an embarrassed man leaving the loo...

Now, above 10,000', Electronic devices again welcome,   I blog while The Sierra Nevada, then Nevada passes below... Dry hills with occasional circles of irrigated alfalfa.    We seem to be taking a northernly route...  North of lAke Tahoe and I-80, and eventually north of Salt Lake (both the lake and the City) We are seated on the left side of the plane, so there are few land marks to gauge progress.  We  now we are more than an hour into a 5 1/2 hour flight to JFK, where we will board a different plane for the 10 hour flight to Athens...  It's going to be a long day.

We pass Jackpot Nevada, on the Idaho border....  There are more farms, more trees on the mountains... We reach the Rockies at about two hours out...  Hit rough air and the fasten seat belt light comes on...  We fly over Bear Lake Idaho and the town of Monticello... Butch Cassidy and the hole in the wall gang robbed the bank there... The Tetons are visible beyond...  White peaks through the white clouds.

As we closed in on the Black Hills the clouds closed in... Somewhere below is I-90, The valley of Roosevelt's nose, Wall Drug and the Badlands but from 39,000' it is just white to the horizon.   We turn northward.   We are now north of I -90....   the clouds thin a bit...  We are crossing the Missouri River and the landscape changes from open range to farms...   We have left the west...  We turn north again... We are now nearly over North Dakota...  We have been airborne for 3 hours

Now turning southward... I am seated over the wing, and the shadow raising and falling on the engine serves as an inclinometer...  The little map on the back of the seat shows a different kind of line... a yellow line showing where we have been, following a stair step pattern turning northward, then eastward.  Then north again, then east again...  suspect the pilots are searching for clear air... Our course is carrying us further and further north.   With a green line showing us headed for JFK, a line that shows we will eventually need to turn south.

An hour out of JFK finds us over Canada, well north of Lake Erie... 50 minutes out while over Lake Ontario, the shadow on the engine disappears as we bank, turning sharply southward.   The cabin crew starts picking up trash...

As we drop below 10,000 I turn the IPad off...

We land a few minutes late, deplane and head for gate for the next flight...  They are starting the early boarding as we arrive... There is no time for foor or other diversions...  They start with wWheelchairs, people mobility issues or small children, then first class, business class, gold nap medallion members,  sky club member... It's a long list...  Only tThen do they allow the rest of us to board.  1st class and club members board in a lline with a blue carpet...  Steerage gets no carpet...  We are boarding group 3... It's airline speak for "no room in the overhead bin"...   Here at JFK the line is a concept which was not embraced...   instead the prefer to mob the gate, any attempt at order abandoned.  We board, find space for our bags and wait while everyone else looks for their seats.

This is a 9 hour flight... The previous was 5 1/2...  With the time change the trip  will take just over a day... Time to power down again...   Once off we reach 10,000' quickly...  I pad back on...

Now an hour plus into the flight...  International flights still include now mostly forgotten services including meals, complimentary beer  and wine...   a beer makes up for the hectic connection...   Outside the world is literally fading away...  From New York we neared northward,  across the Canadian maratimes...  The was a quick glimpse of shoreline a bit ago.  The sun is receding behind, the world outside tuning blue grey,  details lost as light fails.. . Ahead a full moon shines...

Randy

PS... I am posting this from our hotel in Athens... Compliments to the cabin crew on our Delta flight to Greece... Blogger offered me instructions in Greek with as so often said is Greek to me, but I have blundered through it.   Yesterday we wandered about Athens... today we will join our ship... there will be more blog posts...