UA 652 ORD BOS 1203 1517 320 2D Ch9^ Empower
On this flight we had poker-faced but reasonably attentive
FAs, both of which traits please me: I'm not in favor of
20-somethings with IQs the temperature of dishwater who
prance and dance and smile and get my order wrong, no
matter what their other endowments may be.
Warm nuts, cold Courvoisier.
As it was a noon flight, there was no way even United could
deny a meal, but it could deny a choice. So everyone got
"cream of corn" soup - this tasted heavily cumined but had
little other flavor and just a few dried-up kernels swimming
around; not bad for that;
a chicken breast (large, very dry) on salad consisting of
lettuce, yellow and red peppers, olives, canned Mandarin
orange segments, almonds, and edamame, with Conway's
altogether too familiar sesame ginger dressing;
Vita Vigor breadsticks; and the expected and welcome
chocolate chip cookie.
Random notes: In the chatter I discovered that a rather
hard blonde FA had been in the air on 9/11/01. There's a
new show on the IFE: House.
We landed on time, maybe early, and I alit to a nice autumn
day, a nip in the air. Boston has free wi-fi, so I checked
Hotwire for an airport hotel, as all the regular channels
reported back horrid prices. I ended up with the Red Roof
Inn, Saugus, okay but hard to get to, with neither public
trans nor airport shuttle. It's sort of Hamptonish, but a
little lower-class. The oddest thing was there was this
rather spooky guy in the lobby when I checked in at 5 pm;
at 5 am checkout he was still there, pacing around.
The best thing about the place is that it's next door to
the Midwest Grill. I didn't feel like the whole AYCE
churrascaria thing, so I asked the very pleasant waitress
for just picanha and rice: $8.95 for a pound of meat,
$3.95 for rice, $4.50 for a Sam, and I was happy.
UA 897 BOS IAD 0933 1116 320 1D Ch9
Empower
Had a preternaturally jolly agent checking docs. The line
was short, as it usually is here. After the rapescan, a TSA
lady, unable to find a justification for manhandling me,
did so to my passport instead, folding it almost double and
wrinkling heck out of it (which it survived; the last time
this particular event had happened it had been done by a
very grumpy German border official about 5 years ago.
RCC new list of freebies:
Jim Beam white
Seagram's 7 Crown
Dewar's white
Smirnoff
Gilbey's
Sauza Extra Gold
Cruzan white
triple sec
dry & sweet vermouth
promo cards:
Red Stag (a cherry-infused Beam it looks like)
Republic of Tea products
I chatted with the club staff about the blending of the UA
and CO cultures; they were somewhat upbeat except for the
possibility of losing some jobs in the merger. During the
conversation the question came up - was DL ever in Star? I
didn't think so, though it had a codeshare agreement with UA
back in the '90s; but one of the longtime agents swore up
and down that DL had been part of Star.
I don't know how I got the worst first seat in the fleet,
but there I was. Got the purser, a pleasant and energetic
Hispanic guy, to give me the makings of a hot toddy, as I
was getting a bit phlegmmy. Courvoisier goes well in toddy.
Four snack services on an hour flight: the basket, augmented
with big navel oranges; blueberry muffins; the basket again;
then rather large red packages of trail mix.
Toddled to the RCC to complete my investigation of the red
wine situation only to find that the IAD selections were
completely different from the ORD ones:
a Matchbook Lake County Malbec that was the most syrupy,
Jell-Oish wine I've encountered lately;
Wild Rock Pinot Noir (Central Otago) 08 - pretty standard,
low concentration, bright fruit, okay;
Joseph Carr Cabernet (Napa) 07 - rather nice, dark and
musty, bramble fruit, the one most to my taste of the lot;
Hewitson "Ned & Henry's" Shiraz (Barossa) 07 - good standard
issue wine, a little sweet, so the black raspberry milkshake
effect went well with cheese.
Hopped the 5A bus - it now costs $6! - to Rosslyn and
transferred to the Georgetown bus, as I wanted to visit
either Old Glory or Bistro Francais for lunch. I don't
recall what tipped the balance, but French it was.
Started with a roasted corn soup that bore a strong
resemblance to the cream of corn I'd had on the plane -
sort of disappointing just for that reason, though not
bad food; followed by kidneys in a cream-enriched
red-wine demi. These had that same core issue that I
periodically fuss about, so at the end of the course
I had a little pile of ugly white things on my plate.
Almond tart was rather austere but tasted pretty good.
Chateau Haut La Pereyre (Entre-deux-Mers) (05 I think)
was a pretty elegant glass, classically cassis and pepper,
but a little light for the kidneys, especially not quite
clean ones.