Back to it

Yesterday I flew back to HAWSEPIPER's Afloat Global HQ/Center for Excellence in Loneliness Studies. So today we're back at it, loading up for work.

    The flight from Margaritaville to Sodom on the Hudson was on the high end of the usual unpleasantness, but within parameters. February is high tourist season in south Florida, so my flight, usually pretty full anyhow, was jam packed. 6am flights up north are usually full of businesspeople and commuters like myself, with tourists filling out the bulk. I recognize familiar faces now, here and there.

  Yesterday was a bit more of a madhouse. It's usually a less than 5 minute delay in line to get to the rape-o-scan and getting finger-blasted by a 400lb guy named D'onte, the usual procedure, you know, to get to your gate. High tourist season, it's 20 minutes. Hardly troublesome, really, compared to urban hub airports, but the extra bodies, coupled with the age of my fellow travelers, means the air gets saturated with the smells of Sanka breath, damp Depends and nervous little dogs.

 Oh, yeah, there's an unusual proportion of women traveling with nervous little dogs on the plane. And what's up with that? What happens to folks who are allergic? Those little dogs belong in steerage with the cattle and the Irish. You know, as God intended. Those little dogs stink when they get nervous.

 Anyhow, I'm back at work, and it was 78 and sunny most of my vacation, I got sunburnt, had a great time, drove boats, shot guns and drank whisky and got to spend time with my family, so that can't help but send me north with a more positive attitude. It went from clear and about 75 degrees at 5 am to rainy and windy and 34 degrees in the course of my travel, which certainly was a literal splash of cold water on me, but after a suspiciously easy crew change (taxi dropped me off at the base of the ladder to the barge, which happens about once a year) and a quiet, restful evening, I'm ready to work.