I was listening to Channel 9 on flt 168 - yesterday. And as we were getting pushed off from the gate, and headed to taxi. The pilot is on the horn with ground control, stating his route, ATC says one route, the pilot confirms another, and ATC reponds, okay "if you want" or somthing like that, and the pilot confirms it, then I hear "Taking the scenic route" from ATC..
I'm laughing...

As far as I could tell we pushed off, went to the eastern side of the south runway, and took off over the ocean. Then turned around and headed south of palmdale, south of Las Vegas (with a nice view of the lights at night, thanks to the captain for the view, although he didn't point it out over the comm, but I could imagine that people would rather sleep), and then to Boston.

I think the "long way" was referring to the taxi-ing at LAX, that we could have turned off somewhere earlier, rather than the actual flight. Am I wrong?

Another obsessive Channel 9 listener.