Article: Travel Stories
 

This is a old article which some of you might get a lauch out of. It appeared on the IEEE (www.ieee.org) Computer Society magazine Computer about 12 months ago.


Travel Stories
Bob Colwell
DOI Bookmark: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2004.68
Abstract

Engineering is the name they give to the act of constantly being transported from one geographic location to another.

While dozing in my customary aisle seat on a customary airplane, I heard a child's voice. Speaking with enough volume and urgency to get my sleepy attention, the child said, "Hey mister. Mister!"

I warily opened one eye to see if I was the mister in question, hoping the answer was no. But it appeared that I was. I opened the other eye and blearily assessed the situation: The middle seat next to me was empty, and the window seat was occupied by a girl about 12 years old who was wearing an earnest, sober expression. She clearly wanted something.

"I'm bored. Let's play cards."

This was not what I wanted to hear. "I'm bored, so I'll be taking a nap, and I won't bother you during this entire flight" would have been a welcome message. Alternatively, "I'm bored, so excuse me while I let Harry Potter entertain me for the next two hours" was also okay. I tried to look polite, but disinterested. I'm not an actor, so I probably overdid it on the disinterested part, but it didn't seem to matter.

"I like poker. Do you like poker? Let's play poker. Here, I'll deal."

I tried to remember what unfortunate chain of events had led me to this predicament. Oh yeah, now I remembered. I'm an engineer. Engineering is the name they give to the act of constantly being transported from one geographic location to another. I know traveling salespeople and marketing folks will not be able to work up much sympathy, but under the circumstances, I felt entitled to a healthy dose of self-pity. Sleep or babysit someone else's kid—making that choice didn't take a lot of hand wringing.

I said, "Cards, huh? Aren't you a little young to know how to play poker?"

She arched her eyebrow just like Spock. I half expected her to say, "That is illogical." But instead, she said, "I can beat you."

I thought that was an interesting response, so I gave her one back. "You can undoubtedly dance better than I do, and you probably sing better too. So what? That doesn't mean you and I are about to give an impromptu performance for the other passengers."

She autodeleted that answer, and said, "C'mon. Don't be a chicken. Let's make it interesting. See that guy across the aisle? I bet you the sweater he's wearing I will win the first hand."

I considered this. It reminded me of a question a friend told me he'd been asked when he interviewed for a job at the CIA. The question went like this: "You are the commander of a garrison in the middle of a desert. Suddenly, an enemy submarine surfaces and begins shooting torpedoes at you. What do you do?"

My friend initially thought they were testing his sense of humor, but quickly rejected that initial hypothesis in favor of the obvious alternative—that the question was absurd and needed an absurd answer. He said, "I would immediately send my destroyer out there and sink that sub." The interviewer smiled. My friend had passed that test. He also passed on the job.

I thought to myself, I have a potential CIA officer here. Being nice is the safest course. So I said, "Okay, you're on. If I win, I get that guy's sweater. If you win, you get his shoes." She solemnly nodded and began shuffling the deck.

I won the hand—three aces against her pair of fours. But she was undaunted. "Again. This time, I bet you the service cart and all the diet Cokes you can drink. With ice." I said, "Okay, I bet the jewelry being worn by all the people on the left side of this airplane." She won this one.

I couldn't quit now; I was too deep in the hole. Think how upset the left-side people would be to find that my bad luck or ineptitude had parted them from their jewelry. The next hand, she bet all the luggage in the overhead bins, and I bet all the laptops currently being used on the plane for business purposes (both of them). I won.

And so the fortunes of our oblivious fellow passengers waxed and waned through a few more hands. Eventually, the plane's communications systems and flight control surfaces were in play.

My card-shark friend then said, "Since we've already bet important pieces of their aircraft, let's deal in the flight attendant and the pilot. It's only fair to give them a chance to win them back."

I pointed out that they had certain official duties to perform, such as keeping us airborne until the tires contacted the runway at the prearranged velocity. She thought for a moment, and then said, "I know—we'll deal them in and play their hands for them as best we can."

So we did. The pilot-in-absentia immediately blundered, betting the ailerons and one of the three engines on a rather poor hand. Worse, the flight attendant probably should not have bet Mt. Shasta on a pair of eights. By the time we were approaching our destination, the plane and most of the belongings on it, including some of the geographic features along the route, belonged to the 12-year-old in window seat 8F.

My opponent periodically updated the flight attendant on how she was faring along the way. The woman listened gravely each time, expressing confidence that her cards were being played fairly. Evidently, she also let the pilot know that he had been dealt into the game and was losing his shirt, because as we disembarked, he told the card player that it might take him some time to deliver the plane and asked if she would mind waiting until he could arrange it.

I shook the girl's hand and thanked her for a memorable flight. Precocious did not begin to describe this kid. I was half thinking I should have taught her some digital logic design and invited her to join my team.
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THE DARKER SIDE OF TRAVELING

Then there's the time my fully guaranteed, we'll-charge-your-card-if-you-don't-show-up, expensive San Jose hotel had overbooked and refused me entrance. The overbooking part had happened to me several times before, but usually all I had to do was call my corporate travel agent, hand the phone to the hotel manager, watch him blanch as the phone emitted amazing volumes of sound, and then check into my newly available room.

But on the occasion in question, even this didn't work. They sent me elsewhere, where the scene was repeated. And those folks sent me to a third hotel, which I methodically proved over a period of two hours was not located in either Milpitas or Santa Clara. Around 3:00 a.m., I realized I was near the San Jose airport, from which my 6:30 a.m. flight would soon leave. So I drove to the rental car parking lot, climbed into the backseat of my rental car, and slept for two hours.

A week later, I flew to San Jose again. I didn't notice anything unusual during the flight, but as I got off the plane, I observed that the pilot and a ground mechanic were engaged in a heated discussion. The pilot, his volume control set to 11, said, "If I ever find that you gave me an airplane that screwed up and dangerous to fly again, I will personally hunt you down." I quickly walked out of earshot, thinking that I did not need to know this. The pilot might not have been referring to the plane I just exited, but that possibility didn't make me feel any better.

Getting off the plane in Portland after one uneventful flight, I turned left to exit onto the Jetway, only to find that three of the passengers who had been sitting a few rows ahead of me were now spread-eagled on the floor, each with a Portland police officer's knee pressed into their back. I've occasionally seen people arrested after a flight for having sneaked into the lavatory to smoke a cigarette, but this must have been some kind of organized smoker's cabal with extra-large cigarettes. Or maybe they also smoked pipes and cigars. I sincerely hoped they had done something wrong because the alternative—that the Portland police were randomly selecting passengers for this special welcome—was unappealing.

The welcome I got when flying to New Zealand wasn't all that welcoming, come to think of it. We had just landed, and I was looking out the window when I noticed that we had stopped well away from the terminal. When I turned from the window, I saw that the flight attendants were donning little white surgical masks and one of them was opening the overhead bins.

The masked flight attendants walked down the aisles and, without warning, sprayed all the overhead bins and most of us with whatever was in those cans. Then they silently closed the bins and returned to their jump seats, and the plane taxied to the gate.

Later, I inquired as to the nature of the we're-so-glad-you-are-here aerosol and was told it was an insecticide so mild "it wouldn't hurt a fly." I asked the obvious question: Then why bother spraying it? The airline representative thought I was kidding and laughed heartily. I guess I'm just a funny guy.
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PASSENGER PARTICIPATION

In the 1980s, the New Haven, Conn., airport was tiny and only small planes serviced it. On one trip, I booked a flight on Pilgrim Airlines from LaGuardia to New Haven and, upon arriving at the gate, discovered that things were done differently on that carrier.

We lined up to get on the plane, and a representative from the airline walked slowly down the line, looking every passenger over carefully. He apparently was rating us somehow because, for each person, he wrote something down on his list. When he got to the end of the line, all was revealed when he said, "This plane will be too heavy with all of you and your luggage. We need someone to volunteer to stay behind."

Volunteerism is a good thing. But there are times when even Mother Theresa would probably have stared at her shoes and become temporarily incommunicado, and this was one such occasion. After a tense few minutes, when it became abundantly clear that none of us would "take one for the team," the airline rep—who turned out to be the pilot—sighed heavily and began removing bags from the checked luggage area.

This, as it turned out, was a clever stratagem, because one of the luggage owners cracked under the psychological pressure and rather crankily said, "Well, there's no sense in my going without my luggage." Eliminating that person's weight, plus his luggage, was enough to mollify the pilot. And, as our volunteer probably surmised, his sacrifice didn't generate much gratitude. As soon as the problem had been averted, everyone else promptly forgot the whole affair.

My friend Dave had a window seat for a turboprop flight on which an engine caught fire on takeoff. The pilot aborted the takeoff and informed the passengers they'd have to use the emergency exits. Dave said he got the door open and climbed out, but it was a long way to the ground. He thought he'd help the other passengers, so he stood under the emergency exit and waited.

Out the door flew briefcases, luggage, purses, and an occasional human. After everyone eventually exited the plane, some secondary concerns surfaced, such as it being January in upstate Wisconsin and that they were standing in the middle of a field.

If this had been a Bruce Willis movie, three armored cars with Rangers inside would have pulled up, fought a pitched battle with really bad people for a minute or two, and then saved all the passengers except the whiny politician and the TV newscaster. In Dave's case, 10 minutes went by before a battered old station wagon pulled up and the driver said, "Well, I can take three or four of you, and I'll come back for the rest. Looks like the fire put itself out, huh?"

A few years ago, when we were on the final approach for a landing, I glanced over at the guy sitting in the window seat, bulkhead row, and noticed that he had not "Turned Off All Electronic Devices in Preparation for Landing." In fact, he had a flight simulator running on his laptop and was landing a virtual plane. I then realized that when I looked past his laptop, out the window, the terrain changed to match what appeared on his computer screen.

Suddenly, something in one part of my brain jumped to a conclusion that the rest of my brain knew was wrong—this guy was flying the plane I was sitting in. The wrong-conclusion part of my brain screamed at my muscles to get up and guard that guy. Don't let anyone bump his arms! The rest of my brain sent concerned messages like, "What is wrong with you?"
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CONCLUSION

Sometimes someone asks me how my flight was. I usually say, "Really, really boring. Couldn't have been better."


Bob Colwell was Intel's chief IA32 architect through the Pentium II, III, and 4 microprocessors. He is now an independent consultant. Contact him at [email protected].