opus17
Mar 23, 02, 1:27 pm
March 14 – I had not been in an airplane, or even at an airport, since early September. This was my longest flying dry spell since – I’m not sure, probably some time since the early 70’s. It really had nothing to do with terrorism – my business travel has dropped to nothing, and I’ve been too busy at work to even take a weekend vacation.
I needed to fly to Cleveland to take care of some property I own. The trip was going to be a tax deduction anyway, so I booked a first class ticket and took advantage of a number of Delta promotions that would yield me 20,144 status miles ( 27,752 total miles) for the trip, not counting hotel or credit card points.
I dutifully arrived 2 hours early for the flight. I had done my check-in on my home computer, so I didn’t have to wait in the 1-deep first class check-in line at SFO. I noticed that the security checkpoint was overwhelmed with two people waiting, so I went up to the Crown Room Club to renew my membership that lapsed when my Platinum status evaporated on March 1.
The agent at the CRC seemed convinced that Delta would extend the Platinum status for such a good customer, until she realized I made Gold by flying a total of 8 segments in 2001 (another clever use of promotions). She now realized that I was the type of scum that was destroying the industry, so she happily took my money.
After I killed about some time at the CRC, I made my way back down to the security checkpoint and its one waiting passenger. They had added a lot of equipment, and I was expecting at very least a full body cavity search (based on Media reports), but I wasn’t even asked to remove my shoes or even my underwear. A couple of National Guard troops stood at the ready to shoot Osama dead, if he dared to board with an extra carry-on item.
The trip to CVG was uneventful. I was curious if there was going to be any difference in any aspect of flying, since I dropped about $2800 on the ticket. The short answer is no. The long answer is the same as the short answer.
I surfed the net in the CVG CRC, then boarded the flight for Cleveland. Upon arrival at Cleveland, I boarded the rental card bus, eagerly anticipating what vehicle the Avis gods had bestowed upon me.
On my last trip into town, Avis had given me a Chevy Blazer (based on my preference for a compact car). It was some sort of truck/SUV thing. By their own twisted logic, they considered this a upgrade. (Upgrade. N. A vehicle where the customer must spend 3 times as much for gasoline, and be 3 times more likely to kill themselves or others.).
Fully expecting to receive either a school bus or a cement mixer, I was pleasantly surprised to be handed the keys to a Pontiac Sunfire. It’s an awful car, but at least it was a car. It had this snowboard thing on the back, I guess to make it look “sporty”. Hilarious.
A long-time friend of mine wanted to meet up for dinner. In my homage to Dear Abby, I won’t use her real name.
“Nancy” (not her real name) & I met at a Thai restaurant in downtown Cleveland. It was called something like “Siam Palace”. Being that it was the Midwest, the menu featured a lot of Chinese, Vietnamese and other dishes of unknown origin. ( I see a lot of restaurants in Cleveland with signs like “Chinese and American Food”. I guess it settles down the natives). “Nancy” & I ordered too much food (some of it good) and talked about what was going on in our lives.
After we parted, I checked into the Sheraton at the Cleveland Airport (I had a very early flight booked for Sunday, and didn’t want to deal with getting to the airport). I had booked the Club Room floor on the Sheraton website for $89/ night. When they saw that I was Starwood Gold, they dropped the rate to $69 /night.
Friday morning, I went to Kent to take care of my property business. Kent State was doing very well in the NCAA basketball tournament, but that didn’t seem to affect the town any. (Hmmm – I’ve now used the words “National Guard” and “Kent State” in this report, which means this trip report will probably come up In a Google search of some high school kid’s history assignment research). I don’t follow college basketball closely (I’m a baseball guy), but like all Americans, I need to feign interest around Final Four time so I can stand around the office pool sheet and pretend to know what I’m talking about. I heard that the Gorgonzola Blue Cheeses were eliminated in the first round, by the way.
After finishing up in Kent, I met “Stacey” (“Stacey” was known as “Nancy” earlier in this report, I changed her name because I like “Stacey” better) at Corky & Lenny’s for some deli food. This place is a pretend-NY deli, but it is better than the pretend NY deli’s in California. I ate a lot of pickles.
On Saturday, Stacey & I attended a play in a feminist workshop in the warehouse district. The play was attended by about 20 people, most of whom seem attached to the production. It was called “Cherchez Dave Robicheaux”, and it was about a not-too-bright Indiana housewife who runs away from her even-less-bright bowling husband to chase after a fictional Cajun detective. It was pretty good, and had more Cher jokes than any work of fiction in world history, It didn’t seem all that feminist to me.
The weather wasn’t all that good on Sunday morning. I decided to tempt fate and arrive at the airport only 90 minutes early. It took a whole 4 minutes to get through security, but I was pulled aside so that my briefcase could be swabbed for traces of laptops. I was given a good bill of health, and the urine test was waived.
On the flight from CVG, the pilot was warning about “moderate to heavy” turbulence for the first half-hour, but the warning wasn’t accurate, and the service began soon after takeoff. The scheduled movie was “Behind Enemy Lines”, but there were technical problems, so they gave out free headphones to the coachies, and showed 2 movies, instead. (On the SFO-CVG flight, there was no movies, just the Delta “Entertainment” Network) (not its real name).
My seatmate was an interesting character. We started talking, and eventually the subject came around to Flyertalk. It turns out he had read some of my trip reports.
“Tell me”, he said, “do you ever give in to the temptation to liven up some dull trip report by making things up?”.
“No!”, I said, “I would never do that! What do you mean?”
“Oh, let’s say you decide to invent a seatmate and have an imaginary conversation with him, as a literary means to inject some more lame jokes in an otherwise boring report? “
“But that would be…. Wrong”.
We were having a good time. The meal came and he insisted we order some wine. I told him I don’t normally drink when I fly, especially on Sunday mornings. He said “Life is a Cabernet, my friend, come have a Cabernet”. I couldn’t argue with that logic.
The Delta featured Red, Purple or Pinkish wine of the month, screw-cap variety, was called Goofy Grape (or something like that).
The miles passed and the Goofy Grape continued to flow. “Stacy” (not his real name) told me he had some dark secret about Flyertalk that almost no one knows.
“I’ll tell you if you keep it secret”, he said.
“Well, I’ll put it in my trip report”.
“Oh, that’s OK”.
He then recounted this tale that took my breath away!
“Back in the early days of Flyertalk, there was very little traffic on the board. Randy was getting desperate. He needed some regular posters with good personalities to give continuity to the board. So he hired a few college guys to create some ‘virtual posters’ – little programs that simulated some actual posters, complete with personality quirks of their own. This worked great! The site grew and grew”.
He then told me who some of these posters were.
“You have got to be kidding! And I’ve met some of these posters – they are real people, not computer simulations”, I said.
“That’s where it got tricky. Once there started to be Flyertalk get-togethers, Randy had to hire some actors to play these posters.”
“This makes no sense. I don’t believe it”.
He continued. “One of the college kids wanted some more money, so Randy got rid of him. The kid then sabotaged one of the posting programs. He took off the governor on posting, so it posted all the time. Since it ran out of things to say, he had the program look through news web sites and copy and paste stuff. He also broke the governor that limited how many smiley faces it could post at a time. He named it “Defiler of Copyrights” and said it was his vengeance on Randy.”
At this point, I was pretty sure it was the Goofy Grape, of this guy was pulling my leg. But we were close to landing, and I needed to put my seat in the full and upright position and wipe the purple mustache from my face.
I’m not sure when I’ll fly again, but when I do, you know I will post the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
[This message has been edited by opus17 (edited 03-28-2002).]
I needed to fly to Cleveland to take care of some property I own. The trip was going to be a tax deduction anyway, so I booked a first class ticket and took advantage of a number of Delta promotions that would yield me 20,144 status miles ( 27,752 total miles) for the trip, not counting hotel or credit card points.
I dutifully arrived 2 hours early for the flight. I had done my check-in on my home computer, so I didn’t have to wait in the 1-deep first class check-in line at SFO. I noticed that the security checkpoint was overwhelmed with two people waiting, so I went up to the Crown Room Club to renew my membership that lapsed when my Platinum status evaporated on March 1.
The agent at the CRC seemed convinced that Delta would extend the Platinum status for such a good customer, until she realized I made Gold by flying a total of 8 segments in 2001 (another clever use of promotions). She now realized that I was the type of scum that was destroying the industry, so she happily took my money.
After I killed about some time at the CRC, I made my way back down to the security checkpoint and its one waiting passenger. They had added a lot of equipment, and I was expecting at very least a full body cavity search (based on Media reports), but I wasn’t even asked to remove my shoes or even my underwear. A couple of National Guard troops stood at the ready to shoot Osama dead, if he dared to board with an extra carry-on item.
The trip to CVG was uneventful. I was curious if there was going to be any difference in any aspect of flying, since I dropped about $2800 on the ticket. The short answer is no. The long answer is the same as the short answer.
I surfed the net in the CVG CRC, then boarded the flight for Cleveland. Upon arrival at Cleveland, I boarded the rental card bus, eagerly anticipating what vehicle the Avis gods had bestowed upon me.
On my last trip into town, Avis had given me a Chevy Blazer (based on my preference for a compact car). It was some sort of truck/SUV thing. By their own twisted logic, they considered this a upgrade. (Upgrade. N. A vehicle where the customer must spend 3 times as much for gasoline, and be 3 times more likely to kill themselves or others.).
Fully expecting to receive either a school bus or a cement mixer, I was pleasantly surprised to be handed the keys to a Pontiac Sunfire. It’s an awful car, but at least it was a car. It had this snowboard thing on the back, I guess to make it look “sporty”. Hilarious.
A long-time friend of mine wanted to meet up for dinner. In my homage to Dear Abby, I won’t use her real name.
“Nancy” (not her real name) & I met at a Thai restaurant in downtown Cleveland. It was called something like “Siam Palace”. Being that it was the Midwest, the menu featured a lot of Chinese, Vietnamese and other dishes of unknown origin. ( I see a lot of restaurants in Cleveland with signs like “Chinese and American Food”. I guess it settles down the natives). “Nancy” & I ordered too much food (some of it good) and talked about what was going on in our lives.
After we parted, I checked into the Sheraton at the Cleveland Airport (I had a very early flight booked for Sunday, and didn’t want to deal with getting to the airport). I had booked the Club Room floor on the Sheraton website for $89/ night. When they saw that I was Starwood Gold, they dropped the rate to $69 /night.
Friday morning, I went to Kent to take care of my property business. Kent State was doing very well in the NCAA basketball tournament, but that didn’t seem to affect the town any. (Hmmm – I’ve now used the words “National Guard” and “Kent State” in this report, which means this trip report will probably come up In a Google search of some high school kid’s history assignment research). I don’t follow college basketball closely (I’m a baseball guy), but like all Americans, I need to feign interest around Final Four time so I can stand around the office pool sheet and pretend to know what I’m talking about. I heard that the Gorgonzola Blue Cheeses were eliminated in the first round, by the way.
After finishing up in Kent, I met “Stacey” (“Stacey” was known as “Nancy” earlier in this report, I changed her name because I like “Stacey” better) at Corky & Lenny’s for some deli food. This place is a pretend-NY deli, but it is better than the pretend NY deli’s in California. I ate a lot of pickles.
On Saturday, Stacey & I attended a play in a feminist workshop in the warehouse district. The play was attended by about 20 people, most of whom seem attached to the production. It was called “Cherchez Dave Robicheaux”, and it was about a not-too-bright Indiana housewife who runs away from her even-less-bright bowling husband to chase after a fictional Cajun detective. It was pretty good, and had more Cher jokes than any work of fiction in world history, It didn’t seem all that feminist to me.
The weather wasn’t all that good on Sunday morning. I decided to tempt fate and arrive at the airport only 90 minutes early. It took a whole 4 minutes to get through security, but I was pulled aside so that my briefcase could be swabbed for traces of laptops. I was given a good bill of health, and the urine test was waived.
On the flight from CVG, the pilot was warning about “moderate to heavy” turbulence for the first half-hour, but the warning wasn’t accurate, and the service began soon after takeoff. The scheduled movie was “Behind Enemy Lines”, but there were technical problems, so they gave out free headphones to the coachies, and showed 2 movies, instead. (On the SFO-CVG flight, there was no movies, just the Delta “Entertainment” Network) (not its real name).
My seatmate was an interesting character. We started talking, and eventually the subject came around to Flyertalk. It turns out he had read some of my trip reports.
“Tell me”, he said, “do you ever give in to the temptation to liven up some dull trip report by making things up?”.
“No!”, I said, “I would never do that! What do you mean?”
“Oh, let’s say you decide to invent a seatmate and have an imaginary conversation with him, as a literary means to inject some more lame jokes in an otherwise boring report? “
“But that would be…. Wrong”.
We were having a good time. The meal came and he insisted we order some wine. I told him I don’t normally drink when I fly, especially on Sunday mornings. He said “Life is a Cabernet, my friend, come have a Cabernet”. I couldn’t argue with that logic.
The Delta featured Red, Purple or Pinkish wine of the month, screw-cap variety, was called Goofy Grape (or something like that).
The miles passed and the Goofy Grape continued to flow. “Stacy” (not his real name) told me he had some dark secret about Flyertalk that almost no one knows.
“I’ll tell you if you keep it secret”, he said.
“Well, I’ll put it in my trip report”.
“Oh, that’s OK”.
He then recounted this tale that took my breath away!
“Back in the early days of Flyertalk, there was very little traffic on the board. Randy was getting desperate. He needed some regular posters with good personalities to give continuity to the board. So he hired a few college guys to create some ‘virtual posters’ – little programs that simulated some actual posters, complete with personality quirks of their own. This worked great! The site grew and grew”.
He then told me who some of these posters were.
“You have got to be kidding! And I’ve met some of these posters – they are real people, not computer simulations”, I said.
“That’s where it got tricky. Once there started to be Flyertalk get-togethers, Randy had to hire some actors to play these posters.”
“This makes no sense. I don’t believe it”.
He continued. “One of the college kids wanted some more money, so Randy got rid of him. The kid then sabotaged one of the posting programs. He took off the governor on posting, so it posted all the time. Since it ran out of things to say, he had the program look through news web sites and copy and paste stuff. He also broke the governor that limited how many smiley faces it could post at a time. He named it “Defiler of Copyrights” and said it was his vengeance on Randy.”
At this point, I was pretty sure it was the Goofy Grape, of this guy was pulling my leg. But we were close to landing, and I needed to put my seat in the full and upright position and wipe the purple mustache from my face.
I’m not sure when I’ll fly again, but when I do, you know I will post the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
[This message has been edited by opus17 (edited 03-28-2002).]