My blog for March 9, 2012 Adventure in Flying

I have no idea how many people were on the plane from Atlanta to San Diego yesterday.  It took seven hours to get here through Phoenix, where I had a layover of 1.5 hours.  I remember that we flew for 7 hours to get to London several years ago.  The actual domestic direct flight is 4 hours, but most air carriers don't do direct flights for some reason.  Usually I can sit still for four hours without too much squirming, even being afflicted with ADD.  Seven hours push my limit.  It has to do with my rear end being somewhat larger than it used to be, I think.  On this particular flight, with my back against the seat and my knees actually touching the seat in front of me, I wondered if I had grown overnight--if I, like Alice, somehow managed to drink a magic potion making my femurs six inches longer than they used to be.  I must remember to measure myself before my next flight.  I also seem to be wider through my shoulders.  With a big guy sitting on my right as I lucked into an aisle seat, I tried to keep my elbow off the arm rest so he could have somewhere to let his arms fall from his shoulders.  But I nearly lost my left arm when a stewardess careened her cart up the aisle and locked her brake next to my seat where she stayed for a half hour.  The stewardess cart rose to my eyebrow level on my left, forming a wall of slick steel. I had nowhere to put my arm!  I considered holding it up over my head, but instead held my breath and slumped my shoulders forward with my elbows on my tray table.  She stayed a remarkably long time for not serving anybody food.   That's when the man in the seat in front of me decided to relax and lean his seat back.  The tray table jammed into my ribs and tilted upward due to my legs being under it.  In fact, I'm not really sure why tray tables exist any longer.  Anyway, the man in front of me stretched his arms up to the ceiling and hit me on the head when he brought his hands back down.  I remember having more room in my motorcycle helmet than I had when his seat was no longer in its upright position.   Then the man on the window seat of my row decided he needed to use the restroom.  The stewardess was forced to move her cart backward but I had to tell her to move further up the aisle so I and the guy next to me could have standing room for the window seat guy to pass by us on his way the other direction to the two restrooms toward the back of the cabin allocated for the three hundred or so people trapped in there with us.

Sardines have no arms or legs, but are shaped like a green bean.  Their fins retract, though their tails I think are perhaps more stationary than my feet, which can be pointed like a toe dancer's.  I really don't think a sardine of comparable weight to myself would fit on an airplane.  It was not possible for me to lean over enough to get my pen out of my purse which was on the floor, because my feet were entirely too large to move them anywhere.  A sardine tin is not square like an airline seat space.  Maybe if people were not so round they could be inserted into planes like crackers in a stack.  But I have no idea where they'd put their feet.