dirty old man: where are you headed today?
rough trade chick: i am going to sweden
Dom: my friend over here went to norway
Rtc: we speak the same language, swedish is simple, not as simple as english
Dom: but you speak english good
I am stuck at fairly posh Miami airport, in a sprawling crowd waiting for my delayed flight to Chicago. It's a huge surprise that the ancient 1988 Boeing 767-300 with two classes of service has a pressure leak in the cockpit window. Hey, at least AA repainted the aircraft so it looks new on the outside.
I knew the flight was going to be late when I checked my three 23kg bags at the curb for a $5 tip. The skycaps will always check a ton of luggage for you if you treat them nicely and you have status. That gave me an hour to try to get into the Admiral's Club. American shockingly does not admit pax to the club if they have first class tickets except on JFK-LAX now, dropping the JFK-SFO first class pax, this year. What are they thinking? Looks like a downward spiral for the airline, with fewer and fewer reasons to fly them.
I was keen to eat more local fish so I didnt work my Qantas Club angle, which I could get away with without lying, but I didn't want it that badly. No, I want fresh Florida fish, and I won't be getting that the Admirals' Club anyway.
I got my wish: one of the world's best airport restaurants, Japanese-style sushi with unbelievably fresh Florida fish with a typical Japanese salad, miso soup and a sake. I was in heaven for an hour, until I resigned myself to wait at the gate.
Not pictured to the left at the top pic is another working girl, but way over-tanned and dressed in stretchy black. She's a bit fat. Two other dirty old men have heard this weasel chatting up Miss Sweden, and they move in to see if they can get a piece. A large fat black man is obviously military, bragging about all of the places he has been, but getting the facts wrong. I am stuck in the middle and wish I had my earplugs from the airboat yesterday, but I need to be next to the iphone charging station since this trip has been about obsessing over power and wifi for my tech.
I get up and ask the American Airlines gate agent if their 767 has power ports in first class, and she hummed and hawwed, yes, she thinks. A crazy-looking latina passenger in line behind me, warns excitedly, no they are the plug in kind!! I decide to do my charging before the flight.
I come back to my charging area, and an old latino man has taken my seat and is leaning forward to capture every essense of his blonde prey. I glare at him and he scampers off.
The darkish girl sitting next to the Swede has now jockeyed to get her story in. She brags:
I am going to Chicago, too, (duh! we're all waiting for a flight to Chicago) and have to connect to Berlin and Ibiza, for a shoot, so we might have to run.
I consider explaining to her that the airline will automatically route them to their destination without charge if they mess up her connection, but i don't want to be part of the fray.
No one bites on her delicous news, so she reiterates:
.. for work.
That was a such Great lead. Smart girl. The latin troll leans forward and asks:
troll: And what do YOU do?
dark girl: I model.
That is SO Miami, and she isn't even cute, though she's provided these trolls a great fantasy counterbalance to the Swedish factory worker. (They had asked the Swede her job, too, of course: Hourly-paid warehouse stacker.)
I finally got onboard and away from the South Florida sleaze scene and was pleasantly surprised the plane has nice nearly-flat-lying international seats. I must have done excellent pre-planning to get on this flight. A fat man boards and finds his seat next to me in the middle section, putting his bag of fried food in the middle ledge between our seats. Dreadful, oh no. I say hello, no response,
Hello, sir. How are you today... sir!?
Oh, hi.
As soon as the aircraft doors close, I grab my stuffed cheetah and we move to the empty row in front of us.
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