On checkout, it turned out that the hotel's computer
system was munged, and when they got it working again,
it had miraculously charged up my abortive reservation
call as long distance.

The Paradise bus is a great way to get to the airport
from the Hilton, and I transformed myself (attitudinally
mostly, the appearance not so changed) from exalted
Diamond to working grunt on public transport. You get
dropped off at the Morlocks level and then find your way
upward by degrees. The multi-airline chickens couldn't
find my reservation, so I had to face a real person, who
had a bit of trouble retrieving my record and chid me
because I was on a United ticket, and that was the problem.

Security was over in a jiffy, and I had plenty of time to
while away, computerless, in the uninviting waiting area.
Wheel! of! Fortune!!!

US1550 LAS PHX 1235 1344 321 3F

Boarding was an amusing menagerie of the peculiar behaviors
we have all come to know and love. I was pretty far ahead in
the line and was surprised to find a fellow elbowing his way
forward with some vigor. I looked at him and said, "pardon?"
whereupon he said that he was in first class. I got to use
the classic line, so are the rest of us. He looked somewhat
abashed and concocted some story about how sometimes they
board zone 1 with first class, and sometimes they don't, and
he flies so often he forgets the procedures, at which the
person behind me dissolved into giggles. Mr. elbows turned
out to be sitting catty-corner from me, so I got to hear
his phone conversation - "I've got to go now, I'm sitting
in FIRST CLASS on a PLANE, and they may take my phone away
from me ... ." The appropriateness of the snack struck me:
an abundance of Kettle potato chips (the regular kind, not
the extremely salty sea-salt-and-cracked-black-pepper ones
that they have taken to serve in the club).

A perfectly fine flight, with Glenlivet, except that the 321
has the most cramped feeling of any first-class cabin I've
ever been in. The pitch, I swear, is worse than what I used
to enjoy in coach on Eastern Airlines (back when flying was
flying), and the 2x2 vs. 3x3 issue isn't so important to me
as my butt hasn't gotten too enormous over the last 50 years
- I sleep better in 3x3 anyway. Had nearly an hour in the
club, as both flights were within spitting distance of it
and each other. Munched on various kinds of cookies from
the cookie box, enjoyed the cheap (free) Merlot, and
reminisced with other patrons about an ancient beverage
(from around those Eastern Airlines days) called the Moscow
Mule, of which we all had fond feelings.

US 46 PHX DCA 1445 2159 320 2C

Boarding was less of a zoo. The flight was fine - I passed
on the alcohol, deciding to give my liver a rest - and we
came in a bit late, not enough to bother me. I believe that
there was not a meal on this flight, or else I slept through
it.

I enlisted some assistance from my friends in the biz, who
swapped out hard disks, reinstalled Windows, got all the
drivers back (difficult with no Internet access, but I
cleverly was carrying a 4G thumb drive and a portable
hard disk just in case). The thing isn't working right yet,
but it's working.