Departure Diary, part 2: Just Plane Amazing

Holy crap, that was a lot of girls.

Seriously. Imagine you are getting on a chartered flight to Europe with fifteen nubile young coeds. On the off chance that you are a rock star or Hugh Hefner, this is probably rote to you, but to me, even coming from Goucher College (60/40 women to men), I was amazed. They were all really nice and personable, even to me, the hulking, oafish male-creature. Okay, okay, there were a few other guys, but precious few. To give you an idea, I traded my window seat (next to a girl) to a different girl, and I wound up sitting in the middle section with, yep, three other girls.

Now, “chartered flight” probably makes you think of luxury, ample space, and a flight experience refreshingly free of the usual horde of assholes, morons, and unpleasant smells. Not so much. We were on a packed-to-capacity Swiss Air flight, jammed into economy class, and surrounded by the aforementioned assholes, morons, and unpleasant smells. In particular, the latter was provided by (and I say this not with malice, but as a simple statement of fact) the fattest, smelliest Orthodox Jew I have ever seen. Flying from New York, I wasn’t terribly surprised to find a large number of Jews on the plane, and none of them were any trouble except for this guy who, naturally, sat across the aisle from me. I mean, come on, does the Talmud have something against Right Guard, man?

The three girls I sat next to were Brittany, from Texas, Amanda, from Los Angeles, and The Girl Who Sat The Furthest Away From Me and I Never Caught Her Name, from Alpha Centauri. We wiled away the hours chatting about this and that, like the time when Amanda was living in Germany and one of her housemates broke the toilet by flushing a whole ear of corn down it. We tried sleeping, and I personally failed, which always frustrates me. I can fall asleep in the barrel of a moving cement truck, but for some reason I can’t fall asleep on planes. So I sat around reading some of the fifty-five million Chris Millar articles I had queued up on my computer before I brought it on the plane and lost Internet access. I also read some of the books I had brought, and at one point I looked over and realized something. My choice of reading materials consisted of “The History of Hell” and “A Field Guide to Demons.” The girl next to me? Pocket Bible. D'oh!

I also played the in-flight video game system, which was stocked with only the finest in 1987-era technology. I mostly played the trivia game (news flash: I’m a nerd!) and the in-flight video game version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” Unfortunately, the version they had was cruelly stacked against me, as it was apparently based on the British version of the show and all the questions were nonsensical British claptrap. I managed to bluff my way through “What’s the bobbin’s jackstrap on the ruddy bunting, then, ey?” by using a 50/50 Lifeline and guessing “C: Bob’s yer uncle, bally crumpets all about!” However, I lost my shot at £2000, incorrectly identifying what colour knickers the left midfielder for Morton of the second division was wearing when they won the division title in 1897. And yes, it was the third-easiest question. I pulled the hell out.

Then unpleasantness occurred. I could tell you about what happened when I accidentally left my boarding pass and passport behind on the plane when I got off in Zurich, but, to borrow a phrase, that story would be very sad and not at all interesting. Suffice it to say everything worked out fine, although the stress has probably shortened my lifespan by several years.

However, that unpleasantness was quickly replaced with a flight in a two-prop plane over the Swiss Alps. I had never flown on a small plane like that, especially not over the most beautiful snow-covered mountains I had ever seen. I really wish I had taken pictures, but sadly my camera was buried in the checked baggage.

But fear not! That camera has been exhumed from the bowels of my luggage, and it’s been a-blazin’ all over the beautiful Swiss countryside! Next: Photo-Dump!