It was another of my regular trips out to the main plant in Shrewsbury, MA via BOS. The flight was the 12:30 flight 1200 rather than our usual flight 1200 near 10am.

The City of Denver, in their wisdom, placed DEN 25 miles out into the prairie northeast of Denver. I therefore have to leave my house two hours ahead of time to arrive with reasonable margin. Traffic was OK, so I arrived with ample time to spare. Park -- shuttlevan -- elevator to check in.

Peering in at the departure monitors I see the flight is on time. The trip is for a week and I don't like carrying on a bag that large. It's still too early in my frequent flying career to have made Premier with UA so I peruse the baggage check in line for us hoi polloi. As usual, it is "around the block." A quick trip back outside curbside and the greasing of a palm with a few greenbacks puts my bags into the tender care of the system.

Heading toward the north end of the terminal, I see over the railing down to the floor below that the line at terminal security is short that day. The decision is to go through there rather than take the skywalk security route. The scanner operator twigs on the collapsible umbrella packed in the bottom of my briefcase. Unload bag -- extract umbrella -- demonstrate negative explosive content -- repack. Embark on "Happy Fun Train" for the computer controlled trip out to Concourse B, the Land o' United.

Doors open, grab poll . . . ZOOM ... doors open and dash for the escalators. Up we go and then glide down the slidewalk to the west Red Carpet Club.

I digress now to pay homage to the ever generous PremEx for passing on the knowledge that exit rows are released for public consumption on the day of the flight. * Thank you * "Yes," the agent says, "there are exit row seats." I claim one of the precious jewels of steerage salvation then direct my steps towards the club bar. Fortified by a Becks and having chatted for a bit with my favorite bar tender, I am then gateward bound.

With the frontward positioned seat 8E I am in the last group of lambs herded into the aluminum pen. The abacus between my ears recalculates the number of miles until Premier and associated boarding perk.

Ahhh, it wasn't First, but it was good to stretch my legs (and not be reclined into.) I truly had been smiled upon since 8D was empty. Curiously, there were 23 empties on that flight. The FAs tell me that was anomalous and the flight is usually quite full.

The distance passed uneventfully with the exception of an incident back in the nether regions of coach. Some unfortunate child experienced a "digestive reverse" of the most recently consumed meal. This was followed by an astoundingly cheerful cleanup by the FAs. "Travel, See Exotic Places, Cleanup Organic Spills!" I suspect the FA hiring brochures are not worded quite that way ;-D

The usual arrival drill: restroom stop, baggage claim (prompt for a change), pick up Avis car (slow as usual.) I know not what it is about the Avis counter at BOS. They are always ssssslllllloooooooowwww. Compounding the tardiness, it seems they were all out of intermediate size cars, but will gladly let us have the next size smaller. For the inconvenience I am generously offered $8.00 total. When I point out that is somewhat chintzy for their mistake I receive a counter offer of $8.00 per day. Since I was arguing about the company's money and not mine, I took the second offer and did not try do beat them down further.

We launch off into Boston, but I use the term "launch" only metaphorically since it was really more of a plod. This was the worst trip out of Boston I've had yet. It was close to an hour from the airport until we were headed west on the Mass Turnpike. To be fair, that includes one navigational error on my part, but that was induced by poor freeway signage on this month's incarnation of the "Big Dig" project in central Boston.

Later that night . . . we arrive at the Embassy Suites in the central MA town of Westborough. The lovely Victoria checks us in, as usual. Of the various places we are put up, I like the Embassy the best. The rooms are nice and spacious and breakfast and early evening snacks are included.

The bulk of the week is filled with the tedious details of tape drive design. I will gloss over the week other than Wednesday dinner. The charming AnnaS was also in Boston. With a small flurry of e-mail we find an evening that works and manage a dinner meeting in the north suburbs of Boston. The conversation topic was: Travel. I am a mere beginner on these Boston trips compared to Anna who often gets there several times a month. Anyway, I had a lovely dinner and had a great time (Hi, Anna!)

Changing scene to Friday gives us Monday's performance played out in reverse. Drive back to Boston, turn in the rental, and shuttle to terminal C. United has around 25 domestic ticketing stations at BOS and typically they man about 4 of them (including the First/Premier station.) This time was no different. However, the line is very short so I opted to check my bag here and save a couple bucks.

[---Buzzzz--- Wrong answer, but thanks for playing!]

One of the difficulties of running so few stations is that a few slow/confused/heavily-laden passengers bring the entire check-in process to a halt. This was the situation that day until a supervisor noticed the bottleneck and opened two more stations. I say goodbye to my bag with the hope it will be Rising to Denver. An aisle exit row seat is scored!

(Thanks again, PremEx.)

I seat myself stretching my legs luxuriantly into the ample space in front of me. We are moments from pushback when my window seat companion and I smugly congratulate ourselves on winning the "Empty Middle Seat Lottery." This is just the sort of hubris the Sky Gods do not tolerate. A large gentleman lumbers down the aisle and pitches himself down the gravity well into the middle seat of my row. -- Sigh -- Oh well, at least my aisleward left shoulder wouldn't be cramped (I'm still working the cramps out of my right shoulder.)

That fact that I had headphones crammed in my ears was not enough to dissuade Mr. Middleseat from conversation. The movie was "Elizabeth." He asked me whether it was about the current English queen's mother. All of the horses, swords and total lack of 20th century technology were apparently insufficient clues. "Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to be inadequate seat companions." [to paraphrase Santayna]

There is little of note from here on out: land-taxi-dock-debouche-concourse-RCC [a brief libation]-escalator-train-escalator-baggage-elevator-shuttle-car-drive-home. [Phew] Well, that's my typical week at work in MA. This happens every two months or so, with my own amusing trips filling in between. It was a little more hectic this time since I just got back from the San Antonio FT Get Together the night before leaving for BOS. Future reports will be a bit briefer. You can presume what I don't mention goes pretty much like the above :-D

Happy Skies,
QuantumLeap