Judging Flight 78

Usually flights from Dallas to Heathrow are full. This one was half empty. I suspect it was because so many flights from the midwest had been cancelled that the people who would normally be on the flight were still stuck in Iowa, Colorado, and other places. I'm sure the airline wasn't particularly happy but I liked it better. It doesn't take so long to board and you have more opportunities to stretch a bit. Not to mention that the crew doesn't feel so hassled and are more pleasant. On the plus side, we were told we'd arrive more than an hour early. Usually this doesn't make any difference because there's no place to land and no place to park and you end up circling around until it's your scheduled turn. But not this time, again probably due to all of the east coast flight cancellations - plenty of room. I judge that as good.

While we were waiting to board, I noticed a very tall young lady - (you automatically notice anyone that tall - even if they aren't wearing an orange hat.) She was wrangling a roller bag and a backpack. She seemed to be managing them just fine. She managed to wheel and carry them all the way over to the service desk and stood around tending them until her wheel chair arrived. Did you get that? Her wheel chair arrived. I've seen people try all sorts of stunts to get on the plane ahead of other people, but this one takes the cake. Seriously, the woman looked like an athlete. But, who am I to judge? She may have problems that can't be seen. She was sitting several rows ahead of us, so I thought I'd just see what she did when she got to Heathrow. She got her bags down from the overhead storage bin and proceeded to exit the plane. Then when she was off the plane, she stopped to wait for the wheelchair. She still looked perfectly healthy to me. But perhaps she has a less than visible health issue. Maybe she's just lazy. Who knows? I found it odd, but I'm probably not qualified to judge.

So let me judge the entertainment. I'm qualified for that. Robert Redford's All is Lost was playing. We'd intended to see it when it was in the theatre but missed it. Oh boy am I glad I didn't pay good money to see that. See under the title where it says Never Give Up? I couldn't help it, I gave up. I didn't get the ear buds until about 10 minutes into the film, but from the synopsis I knew that his boat had been hit by a whale. I left it on for the next 10 minutes. Paint drying would have been more interesting. No dialogue to speak of and all I saw in the 10 minutes I watched was Robert Redford patching his boat, eating beans from a can, getting rained on and patching his boat again. There was a time when just looking at Robert Redford would have been enough. Those days are gone. (At least for me.) I waited a few minutes for the next showing of Last Vegas. It had a fairly preposterous plot, but at least it had one. And it had dialogue. Nothing fantastic, but pleasant enough and it was pretty much the only other movie I hadn't already seen.

Let's judge the food. Airline food isn't known to be high quality. It's not so bad in first class and business, but in coach it can be pretty bad. Mark had chicken and rice that he tasted and left on his tray. I had lasagne that I tasted and pushed around the tray a bit. The salad had too many shredded carrots, the roll was cold. There was a cracker and some cheddar cheese that I opted to save for later. The brownie was nice. Back in the day they used to give you a late night snack of Toblerone candy and shortbread cookies. That must be what pushed American Airlines into bankruptcy. They no longer do that - in fact they haven't done it for years, which is why I save my cheese and cracker. Then there's breakfast. Orange juice from concentrate. At least it was 100% juice. Then there was some yogurt with fruit, or maybe fruit flavoring. There was a croissant and some "Fresh Buttery Taste Spread" and some strawberry jam. The Fresh Buttery Taste Spread was 48% vegetable oil spread. It made me wonder about the other 52%. Unfortunately it's not a secret; it's water, soybean oil, palm oil, palm kernel oil and contains less than 2% of salt and butter. The rest of it is that stuff that is difficult to pronounce - things like monoglycerides, sodium benzoate, palmitate - stuff that grandma never put in her food. I was sorry I looked. I thought I'd feel better about the strawberry jam. But it had High Fructose Corn Syrup AND sugar. (Why do you need both?) At least strawberries were the number one ingredient. I'm a big believer in better living through chemistry - but I don't want chemicals in my food. I've got to judge the food as bad.

I can hardly wait for the trip back home. No breakfast. We're always given a "pizza" an hour or so before we land. It is served in a bowl with an exceptionally thick and doughy crust. Mark can't eat it at all. I find that if you limit yourself to spooning out the sauce and pepperoni, it is palatable.