Getting there is half the fun?

“Please make sure oversized passengers are stored safely in the first class cabin. And be careful when choosing your seats, as some passengers may become annoying during the flight.” ….. Useful announcements for trans-continental flights… announcements that I did not hear.

Frenchy, the slender fellow sitting next to me, and I were celebrating our good fortune. The doors were closed for departure and, in a plane filled to capacity, we had the good fortune of having an empty seat on our three person row. Oh happy days! I slid over to the window seat, and we exchanged knowing smiles as we piled our personal belongings into the center seat. The emergency door blocked most of the foot room of the window seat, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make in order to be the first screaming passenger out the door in the event of a water landing. (chivalry is overrated) I tried to prop my feet up on the door’s ledge, but quickly realized that the engineers were one step ahead of me when they put just enough slope on the surface to encourage your feet to return to where they belonged.

Just as I was beginning to realize my mistake, and ask my diminutive French buddy to switch seats with me, the flight attendant arrived. If she were alone, I would have been relived; if she were followed by an equally petite Korean patron, I would have been only slightly disappointed; but as the hulking beast of a Chinese man towered ominously over her shoulders, I may have muttered .. “f**k”

“Excuse me sir, this gentleman is having trouble fitting into his seat, and because this is an emergency aisle, would it be ok for him to have the center seat?”

Now I am not a small man, by any stretch, but as “Yao-ming” wedged his 6’5”, 260lb self into the center seat; I felt small. Any plans I had for using my armrest were quickly scuttled, as were any plans to sit completely upright. (If I could have convinced this gentleman to store his hands in the overhead bin, I might have had a chance) As the flight attendant strapped herself into the jump seat adjacent to us, I could swear I saw her laugh.

He was a nice enough sort; a sports science professor at the University of Florida if I remember correctly. He asked if I had a laptop, and rather than ask the most important question, “Why?” I said, “Yes.” His eyes lit up.

“I bought a present for my friend in Korea, but I want to open it now. It’s a DVD of the Florida championship football game. Can we watch it on your laptop?”

Thinking quickly, I informed him that my laptop batteries were useless so I couldn’t use the laptop with out plugging it in… (a convenient truth). “That’s not a problem, there’s a plug under your seat.” he said. And as soon as the seatbelt light went off, he hopped up, unceremoniously banging his head on the overhead bin, (unfortunately not hard enough to disable my laptop or himself) and retrieved my bag for me.

Now my laptop is not exactly travel friendly. It’s a desktop replacement unit that weighs over 8 lbs. The only way to hold the laptop so that we could see it was to wedge my feet onto the sloping door and set the unit on my legs. We couldn’t hear the play-by-play commentator, but that would prove unnecessary, as the gentleman had clearly seen the game enough times to ad-lib. Some 230hrs later, the game ended; the commentary did not.

Oh, here’s something else you might note about the emergency aisles of a 747 economy seat. Because there are no seats in front of you, the food tray is stored in the armrest. This of course means that the arm rests can not be raised and lowered, as they can elsewhere. This is really only a concern if you are putting a 40” waist into a 16” seat. In the right light, you can still see the buttons for the video entertainment device imprinted on my side.

And so it was I passed the longest flight of my life. 5 minutes sitting up straight, 5 minutes slouched in my seat with legs propped up and 30 minutes standing in the gallery. I continued this cycle until our landing approach some 16 hours later. By a conservative estimate I spent fewer than 4 hours of the flight in my seat. I’ve learned some valuable lessons, I’m sure… but I’ll be buggered if I know what they are.