Praying for immunity

This morning I flew from my home to Philly, had a layover, and then flew on to New York, there to take a taxi to a grocery store, load up on fresh greens, and head to HAWSEPIPER's Afloat Global HQ/Sensory Deprivation Chamber.

 Flying out of south Florida in the cool season is an exercise in patience. Average age of he passengers is about 60. For every 40ish person, there's an 80-ish person. When they call for people who need extra help or time to get on board, usually that's about 15-20% of the passengers, so being in an early boarding group courtesy of being a regular on a particular airline, I can expect to not sit around in the queue from April-October, but the rest of the year, I've got to jump to it in order to be sure I can get my damn carry-on bag into a bin. And there are ALWAYS idiots who bring a steamer trunk on wheels as a carry-on. Usually hipsters. Today, and this is no shit, a fuckhead tried to bring a hardshell case for his guitar as a carryon, and the retarded staff at the gate actually let him get past so that the stewardesses had to be the heavies and tell him to get his giant dildo (I'm assuming. 50/50 bet on whether it was a collection of traffic-cone sized dildos or a guitar) checked along with all the other non-special snowflakes.  I thought maybe the guy bought a seat to keep his guitar in climate control. I saw someone do that with a cello once.

   Anyhow, we got loaded, left the gate late, of course, and sailed off to the smell of warm Depends and Sanka breath.


 From Philly onward, everyone was sick. It was gross. Seriously, my connecting flight was a flying leper colony, and the passengers just luuuuvvvved to broadcast cough their pestilence everywhere. Arab guy at the sink next to me in the shithouse at Laguardia hawked up a giant lung clam into the sink and walked away from it. I admit that I'm already nervous around arabs at an airport, but that was over the top enough to elicit a fairly loud 'fucking savage' from myself, which got me a dirty look, and for which I had the good grace to be temporarily ashamed of having let slip out. Temporarily.

 I'm not a germophobe, but I could certainly feel the nastiness. It continued on.


 I really hope I don't pick anything up. I'd forgotten how gross airplanes can be.

 Anyhow, it's like 78-80 and sunny at home today. It was 47 and raining heavily when I got out of the taxi and threw my shit up on deck and zipped up the ladder.

 Complaining aside, it was a nice time home, and I arrived to a clean, warm, and dry HQ.