Back in the USA Baby!

Relatively uneventful trip home. Delta still sucks in every way imaginable. They did manage to make my connection in Atlanta stressful by sitting on the tarmac just outside our gate for 30 minutes. This was after a 12 hour flight, I should mention. I thought people were going to storm the cockpit and throttle the captain or beat the flight crew to death with their detachable seats that can also be used as a flotation device.

On a side note: One of the flights I was on began describing the floating flotilla of barely qualifying cushioning as per usual. Then they said something like only some of you have them. I think they meant first class customers did their floating differently (we can't bob up and down like a commoner), but I like to imagine that they only had so much money for flotation and therefore, to be as fair as possible, spread the seats randomly throughout the cabin. The lucky ones get the floating seats! The unlucky ones have seats filled with shark bait and cans of rusty nails!

Anyway, luckily for Delta our legs were all numb making us barely capable of rising, not to mention rioting. We did eventually get into the gate before beginning the 45 minute trek through immigration, customs, re-checkin, and re-screening. That left a good 15 minutes before the departure of my next flight. Fine. International flights, Terminal E. My flight, Terminal A. Yes they are arranged in alphabetical order. Sigh. But I did make it.

Now I know everyone with a thick Southern drawl is not stupid, but lord the guy who sat next to me on the way to LA pushed my preconceptions to the limit. The guy must have weighed 280 pounds, so of course he got the middle seat. He spent the flight reading a single SEC football preview magazine and talking the ear off of the lady next to him about, what else, football. I might also mention his insights into the game were not profound. I like to think of myself as fairly egalitarian. People are people, rich or poor, educated or not, rural or city. I might disagree with them on many important matters, but I am not any better than they are. This guy, however, managed to push all my secretly buried elitist, educated, upper class buttons.

And plus, he sweated on me the whole flight. The nerve of that commoner...