Early Mileage Run

The fateful day had finally arrived for the long-awaited trip to Tampa to eat at the fabled Bern’s Steak House. The day began with a call from an Internet store at 6:45 a.m. to confirm an order I had placed the night before. I confirmed the order and suggested they call people on the west coast a little later in the morning in the future. Then 10 minutes later my cell-phone pager went off because I had entered the wrong flight number into United flight paging and it was telling me that the flight to Dulles was leaving at 8 a.m. This was not good because we were on the 1 p.m. flight, so I went to the website and fixed the problem.

I picked Hunnybear up in Fife, Wash., where she was paying the piper on her current assignment, and drove us to the MasterPark. Their service was flawless as usual and we were dropped off at Island 2 so that we could try out the United/Alaska curbside luggage check-in and check in for our flights at the 1K room with our friends the angels. It was not to be, though, as the curbside valet had closed for some reason at 11:45 a.m. on a Friday. So we went to the 1K/Full Fare First Class line instead and checked in with Laney, who is one of the nicest agents there. She chatted with us about our mission on this trip, less in disbelief that we would be going to Tampa for miles as that we would be going to Tampa for dinner.

We hit the RCC to up- and download, then popped into the 1K room to bid angel Missy a fond farewell, it being her last day of work before retirement. It was indeed a sad occasion for her many admiring fans, as evidenced by piles of candy, doughnuts, and flowers scattered around her desk. She performed one more angelic service for us before retirement, calling the gate to see why they had neither boarded nor changed the flight status by 1 p.m., the scheduled departure. It turned out they were changing a seat cushion.

We finally boarded flight 218, the Airbus 320 to Dulles. Surprise! This plane had some kind of funky turquoise color scheme on all the seats. Boy was it ugly. It didn’t seem like United—maybe it was a recently purchased aircraft from another airline and they hadn’t had time to reupholster. I certainly hope they don’t plan to outfit the whole fleet like this. Other than the color, the seats were the normal A320 type with adjustable headrests and non-functioning power outlets. Coats were hung behind row 3, reducing the recline significantly. Audio on my seat was intermittent, a very frequent problem on all United planes. Not only that, the reading light went out halfway through the flight and went crazy, flashing wildly, when I tried to turn it back on. It did finally behave.

Of the two flight attendants serving first class, one was pleasant enough but the other was an aging schoolteacher type who didn’t crack a smile the whole trip. We did get a preflight drink service, unusual in a delay situation. I told the schoolteacher I appreciated the preflight drink. She walked away without acknowledging me. We took off 35 minutes late and the service began with mixed nuts and menus.

We had seats 3A and B again because row 2 was taken when we booked. Of the 12 FC passengers, five were 1K, so there was only one couple who didn’t get their meal order taken ahead of time, so we were asked next-to-last. The Jacques Pepin menu showed a prosciutto appetizer and a choice of pork, crabcake, or boneless chicken breast for entrée. Fortunately we both still got our choice. I had had good luck with pork, so I ordered the last one of those, and Hunnybear took the crabcake. The ham was tasty and smoky and came with an interesting artichoke preparation. Salad was garnished with croutons and baby mozzarella. Wine was Amberhill Chardonnay or the perennial Louis Martini Cabernet. There was another cabernet listed on the menu, but the schoolteacher rapped my knuckles when I asked about it.

Then the entrees arrived. Hunnybear’s crabcake was excellent, but the pork arrived so overcooked that I needed to saw the knife through it six or seven times to cut it. I told the nice flight attendant that I couldn’t eat it and asked if there was anything else. She went to check and then the schoolteacher came back and told me there was a chicken left. I asked for it if it wasn’t too much trouble. She went away, then returned with the chicken and told me it was only available because the man across the aisle didn’t order anything. OK. It was good, but she took my fork away with the pork and I had to ask the nice stewardess to get me another one.

The movie on this flight was Anywhere but Here with Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman. It was watchable, with good acting, but I thought the plot wandered toward the end. Or maybe it was I who was wandering due to the effect of the gin I was drinking. Hunnybear liked it.

After dinner they came around with Ben & Jerry’s sundaes, Mrs. Fields cookies, and a little chocolate tartlet all at once, rather than save the cookies for just before landing like they’re supposed to. It all worked out, though, because it provided more time for them to sit down in their jumpseats and read magazines for the remainder of the flight instead of refilling my coffee and water. Heaven forbid they work five hours in a row to take care of 12 passengers. If I had to commute to Dulles, I would be really unhappy with United. This transcontinental nonstop should have superb service and enough FC seats to accommodate the people who want to upgrade. As it was, there were three 1Ks and 11 Premier Executives in coach and the crew on this flight really didn’t make an effort.

We landed about 40 minutes late and gate C21. Fortunately we had plenty of time to make our connection to Tampa at gate D1. I always feel comfortable on a 727, especially in seats 1A and B which we had. We arrived to late to hear the stewardess smash up the ice, but we got a nice preflight drink and she even closed the galley curtain, which I think shows respect for the passengers. A bunch of passengers from an oversold Ft. Myers flight came on at the last minute.

Unbelievably, there was no food at all, even in first class, on this two-hour flight! I suppose it was the lateness of the hour, but really, it’s prime dinnertime if you’re connecting from the west coast. I think any flight this long should have a meal in FC.

I tried using the $1.99/minute GTE Airphone to make a data call, but it didn’t work. My modem didn’t respond to the unusual dial tone and I couldn’t get it to dial, even after unchecking the “wait for dial tone” box in the modem settings.

We landed at a minute after midnight, four minutes late, in Tampa. We went to the Hertz counter (they didn’t seem to have Gold service here) and picked up our car. As the agent handed me the keys, I heard myself being paged! Believe it or not, this is the first time I have ever been paged in an airport. It was Catman, so I picked up the vaunted white courtesy phone and got his cell number, which I called to find that he, Punki, and Essxjay were all having drinks at the Hilton. I told him we’d check in at the Sheraton and then meet him.

We were assigned a Ford Contour and asked if we could get a Taurus instead. It wasn’t a problem but the Taurus didn’t have Neverlost, so we raced back downstairs and got the keys to our original red Contour. The passenger seatbelt was jammed. As usual the hotel list was out of date and I had to guess that the Sheraton Grand was now a Wyndham and the Westin Suites was now the Sheraton Suites. That turned out to get us to the right place. We checked in with Ray, a very nice agent, who gave us a room on the eighth (top) floor. There was no Platinum amenity box in the room, so I called down and asked about it. They had never heard of such a thing.

We drive two minutes to the Hilton and were delighted to see Catman with two beautiful women in the lobby bar. We laughed and sang for a couple hours and made plans to meet the next morning at 11 for Krispy Kreme.