Not Going to Aruba

I'm going to start the story of my trip at the end, because it was the least fun day and why not get that out of the way?

The family friends I was visiting made me blueberry pancakes, so the day started well! If early. And we didn't have much trouble getting to the airport: some traffic backup, but nothing too bad, and I got there in plenty of time.

I should mention that first thing in the morning, JetBlue said the flight was on time. Then it said it would be 20 minutes late. Then it was back to on time. Then over an hour late. Then 10 minutes late. 

By this time, I had gotten through security (TSA Pre-check for the win, that thing is awesome, so much easier), and I spent a little of the "they said it would be an hour late" waiting time down by an empty gate, where it was peaceful and much quieter, and I could take off my mask and have a snack without feeling I was being too risky. But when we were back to not-very-late, I went back to the very crowded gate to wait.

With the rest of the 200 passengers who were expecting to board starting at 11.

Until, at 10:57, they announced a gate change.

Now, you wouldn't think that gate C6 was going to be that far from gate C15, but let me show you:

Quite a hike! For 200 people to make. Ahem.

The plane was there, but the gate was not set up for us when I got there, and it took a while for them to get the personnel there and get the boarding process started. Finally it did, and I was on the plane not so terribly late.

But after everyone else was on, we kept sitting there.

And in a bit, the pilot announced that because of the gate change/because of the plane change, there had been an error and they loaded the plane with enough fuel to get to Aruba, an extra two hours beyond where we were going, so we were going to have to wait while they removed some of the extra. Oops.

(Which, seriously: They couldn't have done that before we boarded? I wouldn't have been happy to be sitting at the gate for another hour, but it would have been FAR more comfortable.) (Maybe they didn't realize it until we were on already. But still.)

So, on top of the roughly four hours to be crammed into the little plane seat, we got an extra hour. Which I spent wishing that the two giggling teenage girls sitting behind me would just shut up already (spoiler: they did not). 

On top of that, the man next to me--and let me say, being in the middle seat is miserable, I have every sympathy, yes you can have my arm rest and I will lean the other way as much as possible--but sir? You keep leaning on the controls for my TV. I know, it is terrible design, but they are right there, on top of the arm rest, and you keep leaning your elbow on them and changing my settings (I was just watching the map when suddenly the screen was dancing around all the other options, and I wasn't listening to the radio but I could see it was changing stations), and he turned it off entirely no less than SEVEN times by the time we landed.

Dude.

And yes, I did point it out to him. Apologetically the first time. The second time he turned it back on almost at once, apparently without realizing he was doing anything. The third time, I asked again if he could watch out for that, sympathizing with it being such bad design. And yet he just kept doing it.

Before you ask, I did pull the arm rest between us in the first place for a reason, which was that his elbow kept bumping into my side. No, sir. You can have the arm rest, but you can't come into my airspace like that.

Sigh. I got there eventually. I got home safely. And the delay would have been much more annoying at the start of the trip than at the end.

But it wasn't much fun, so let's just get that part of the story out of the way. And end with a cat picture from this morning.

Purr.