Intricate Airport Story

Here's what Rhias and I did on Sunday at the Comic Convention: Nothing! Ha!

Actually, we hung out with my mother, an aunt, the uncle attached to her, and two adorable cousins. But before that, I borrowed my mom's car and drove us aimlessly around San Diego. We went to the beach for about a half hour, which was just enough to turn my skin bright red. Luckily, I am not yet in excruciating pain.

Anyway, then we went back to the hotel room, slept, and flew home the next day.

Hmm. That's not a very interesting anecdote. I think maybe I compressed time too much. So before I tell you about the books I read on the flight home, here's a complicated story about this blonde we eavesdropped on in the Salt Lake City airport on the way into San Diego.

But before that, it looks like we got out of San Diego just in time as the new interim mayor got convicted on his first business day in office of taking bribes from the owner of a strip club who wanted the no-touching law repealed. He owned Cheetah's in San Diego -- if his Vegas club is also Cheetah's, that means much of Showgirls takes place at his establishment. Classy!

Okay. Salt Lake City. We were sitting on the floor because the seats were all taken, and we had a lot of time to kill because our flight was delayed an hour. So I was allegedly teaching Rhias to play solitaire, but mostly we were listening to this blonde that I bet you thought I forgot about.

When we first noticed her, she was being talked to by an aspiring cartoonist. Actually, he was a professor at a junior college in . . . South Dakota? North Dakota? Utah? I don't remember. I remember that he was a professor "of composition", which I don't fully understand. He was attempting to impress the blonde by the fact that he was going to "the Comic Con International" so he could "instigate a career change." We're pretty sure he was using the word "instigate" wrong, incidentally. Anyway, he apparently does cartoons for free alternative weekly newspapers, so he was trying to get out of the composition-professor business. The blonde wasn't terribly impressed by this, but she paid enough attention to him to keep him talking nonstop.

Until Dennis showed up. See, the blonde had been at the Salt Lake City airport all day, trying to get to San Diego so she could meet up with her friends and, let me make sure I have this right, "hang out." She was hoping to get on the standby list for the flight Rhias and I were on, and Dennis showed up to help her out. She explained to the cartoonist (who was not at all happy to see her paying attention to someone else) that Dennis worked at an airport in Wyoming, so he had all the connections. And indeed, Dennis was very helpful; he provided a cellphone so the blonde could talk to her friends and then he actually got her a seat on the flight. It wasn't at all clear how he had done this; he was very vague. She asked if she should show her ID or something, and he answered, "No, that's not a problem. The boarding pass is all you need." Oh good!

At this point, the cartoonist had his arms and legs crossed and was pointedly staring away from the blonde-and-Dennis discussion. If I were an aspiring cartoonist, I would portray him with big angry jagged lines coming off him. Oh, he was not happy.

Okay. Now we jump forward in time. Rhias and I are on the plane. It's one of those smallish commuter deals. The cartoonist is across the aisle from us. The blonde was about eight rows behind us. The short declarative sentences threatened to overwhelm the paragraph.

Whew. Sorry about that. Anyway, here's the thing: after the skybridge walkway thing pulled away from the aircraft, they extended it again (like on The Amazing Race!). Then they retracted it. Then they extended it. It was kind of annoying, since we were already an hour behind schedule. Plus, it turns out that they ring a pretty loud alarm bell all the time they're rearranging the skybridge walkway thing. Then someone came out of the terminal on to the plane, walked to the blonde, and told her she needed to get off the plane.

She didn't entirely believe it, and who can blame her? Had Dennis sold her a bill of goods? A bum steer? A pig in a poke? 54-40 or fight? It turned out that the plane was slightly overweight, so the last standby passenger had to get back off. I didn't know that planes could be exactly 150 pounds over the safe limit. Heck, I didn't even know they were surreptitiously weighing the passengers during the boarding process. I'd assume she had heavy bags, but I don't think she had any luggage at all. Do you need a lot of equipment to hang out with your friends?

Okay. So she gets off the flight and, I assume, latches onto Dennis again. We last saw the cartoonist in the San Diego airport.

Tomorrow: the books I read on the way home!