Usually, I don’t bother with a magazine when I’m waiting at the gate. Instead, I find a seat that lets me watch everyone at my gate and the surrounding ones and the people-watching is usually enough to keep me entertained.
And with the “passenger boarding bridges” (i.e., the Jetway), you could easily fly somewhere without ever seeing the outside of the plane. That’s wrong, which is why I always try to get a look at it from the terminal building.
Regarding all the chargers: If you visit www.igo.com you can buy a single charger (transformer) and multiple tips for all your devices. You can also get the tips at most RadioShacks and sometimes on eBay.
This allowed me to cut the weight of my baggage by a not-inconsiderable amount as I now only have the single transformer–which is the heaviest part of a recharger–to lug around. The downside is that you can’t plug in everything to charge at one time, but a little planning takes care of that for me.
Once, on a Paris–Chicago flight, a family of (forgive me, but they were, they were speaking Arabic) Arabs were sitting across the aisle from me. There was a mother and a teenage daughter in the mix. In the last hour before we landed, they beautified themselves with tons of makeup (lipstick way outside the lines of their lips, thick eyeshadow up to their eyebrows), manicure kits, nail polish, multiple perfumes, plastic pearls (like, the kind little kids play with), and tinsel tiaras. ???
I wonder to this day who they were and what their story was.
Yeah, I totally forgot to comment on that great point.
Keep in mind that the concept of being able to jet hundreds to thousands of miles in tens of minutes to several hours is something that is no less than magical. Getting all huffy that your San Francisco-New York flight is going to be 40 minutes late is unacceptable, given that such a trip would take days by any other mode of transportation.
If you start to feel all huffy about how the stewardess didn’t have a big enough smile on, get a grip and realize how lucky you are that there are airplanes at all.
But then you’re still bringing the clothes into the house! If you stand around naked in your local laundromat that’s open 24/7 so you can use it no matter when your plane comes in, I wanna know where it is!
As mentioned, I fly quite a bit (within the continental US) but don’t have any routines down for dealing with the airport. I just get there, check my bags, go through TSA and wait.
A few things that I do, however:
Put anything metal (coins, cell phone) in my carry on prior to going through TSA. My carry on is always my laptop, so it’s not a big deal to grab them when I need them.
Toss my car keys in my luggage.
Fvck travelling light - I’ve got 50 pounds to play with and books to read.
I got yelled at here for mentioning this in an earlier thread, but the reasoning was so specious I couldn’t help but roll my eyes…
As far as seat selection on the plane goes, I always do my damndest to be the last person to board… “This is the final call for flight 815 to Los Angeles, we will be closing the door soon”… that’s my signal to board the plane. And the reason is simple - I have my choice of empty seats to choose from. On the off chance that my assigned seat is the best of those remaining, I can still sit in it, but if I’m assigned seat 34D (right next to the engine) and there’s an empty seat at 7B (right next to the exit), I’m taking 7B every time.
Since my carry on always fits under the seat in front of me, not having any space in the bins is not a concern.
Just a WAG obviously, as I don’t know these people, but… possibly they were from a country where women aren’t normally permitted to make themselves up, and they saw this as a big moment of freedom?
