random thoughts on traveling - part two, the travel

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but airports and planes have to be the most horrible soul sucking part of travel. I obviously love people or I wouldn't be on the road interviewing for psychology internships in the first place. (well I guess it might not be obvious by the time I finish this rant...) But if there is anything that makes me hate humanity, it is airports and planes. Let me begin by sharing the worst of my airport/plane situations.

In Minneapolis, they have Super Shuttles. Mike was renting a car while we were there, so all I had to do was get myself from the airport to the hotel and back. A round trip ride in the Super Shuttle was going to be cheaper than one way in a cab so it seemed obvious that the shuttle was the way to go. Well, the crappy thing about the Super Shuttles is that they make you sign up for a pick up time that is ridiculously earlier than you would leave otherwise. Generally though, that's not a big deal because the shuttles have to go around picking up other people that also need to go to the airport, which can eat up some time. I was picked up at my hotel two hours and forty-five minutes before I had to get on my plane. They pick me up and drive straight to the airport, and we get there in about fifteen minutes. And I know you are thinking to yourself, "well, they must have picked her up last." Except they totally didn't! They just picked me up and drove me straight to the airport as if I had called a cab to get me to the airport with hours to spare. That part of the story is really just the table setter though, compared to what happened next.

I get through security and am sitting at my gate with two hours before we're going to go anywhere. Needless to say, by the time we were boarding the plane, I was more than ready to get the f out of there. I board, and there is a woman changing her baby's diaper in my seat. Already I'm annoyed cause I am thinking, "if that is my seat, than the aisle must be her seat, so why is she changing her poopy baby in my seat?!?” After ignoring my presence for another five minutes, as the plane is filling up, and flight attendants are doing their thing, she turns to me and says, “Oh, is this your seat? The flight attendant told me I could sit with my baby because I wasn’t sitting with my baby and that we could switch if you said yes?” Well, I’m not about to be THAT girl. That girl that actually tells the woman, no you can’t sit with your BABY, cause I mean, still in diapers and everything. So, I ask for where she was supposed to be sitting and it was a middle seat, the horror of all horrors. Now, if this had been the plane from Las Vegas to LA, that would have been one thing, but this was the plane from Minneapolis to LA. This was no short flight. I had this glorious plan of sitting in my pretty window seat and sleeping through the whole ordeal. Sadly, I ended up squished between some lady and some dude, and was completely uncomfortable. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep at all, although, I did watch almost all of Benjamin Button. Thanks Chris! Really, the only thing that saved this leg from making me question my will to live was the fact that I ended up in LA with Shana.

I really find the airports and planes to be the worst part due to all the alone time you have. Not that the hotel alone time is any better really. I’ve been lucky in that I have either stayed with friends, stayed at hotels with friends, or made single-serving friends for most of my stops. This has cut down on a lot of excessive alone time. But the airports and plane trips are the time when I have to really entertain myself, and I am bored of me! Especially since the majority of my thoughts are about how to rank these sites and trying to make possibly huge life decisions with such crappy information. Rank places I want to live regardless of neuro? Rank neuro places regardless of potential city hate? The time for flip-flopping is up! And I am terrible at making decisions! Torture!