Daily Rant  Big Rants

Why United Airlines Sucks More Than a Leaf Blower Attached to a Chevy Big-Block V8 Recently I went on a business trip to LA. My employer sent me there to evaluate some software being written by a third-party contractor and therefore graciously paid for all my expenses. Unfortunately, they also waited until the last minute to make my flight plans, so I got stuck flying United. United... United... where shall I begin? First off, I board the plane for the first leg into Denver International Airport. I want to know how the hell an airport in the MIDDLE of the country can really be international, but hey... I did a deep etymological analysis of the word United and found that in certain native tribes in Brazil, United means "women with bad hair". Stewardess #1 looks like she's being viciously attacked by a rabid chocolate Danish. Honey I don't know much about hair, but I do know that a bun isn't supposed to look like a bloodthirsty pastry with teeth and a bad attitude. So I spent most of my first leg staring at this doughnut of doom and munching on my United brand trail mix. Who the hell got rid of honey roasted peanuts anyways? When I was a kid and flew with my family, we used to get 2 or 3 bags of honey roasted peanuts a piece!! Now I get a small shotglass full of cheese powder-covered stale bread with a tiny pretzel thrown in for color. Yum yum. I get off the plane in Denver and prepare for my THREE HOUR layover. Of course being the travel llama I am, I sprint all the way across the Denver terminal just in time to arrive at my gate and wait 2 hours and 50 minutes. Sigh. I entertain myself by watching all the business people with cell phones trying to get them to work in the terminal and then go pay $25 for 2 magazines to read. Along the way I managed to let myself get ripped off by this "fast" internet kiosk where for $5 you can surf for 15 minutes. Of course they didn't say that it would take 10 minutes for the damn thing to actually start working. Frustrated, I head back to the gate with my $25 copies of PC Gamer and Extreme Gamer and try to find the gold plated page that cost me so much. The plane finally arrives and I am off to the Burbank airport. The stewardesses had apparently beaten their hair into submission for this flight, no one was maimed or killed although I heard someone in first class was almost strangled to death by the head stewardesses' split ends. However, in nature there must be balance, and the good ol' universe decided that if it couldn't harass me with hair, it would seat me next to the most awful annoying little &^%# of a girl whose mother was either deaf, blind, dumb, or all of the above to not realize what a pain in the ass her daughter was being. First she decided she wanted to sit by the window and whined until mommy let her sit over there. Then she pulls out her complimentary headphones, plugs them into the jack on her seat, TAKES THEM OFF HER HEAD, turns it to the country station and proceeds to crank the volume to 11. (Yes, the headphones on United airplanes go to 11). Meanwhile, I am trying to gnaw my own ears off to save my brain while Waylon Jennings tells me that his dog died, his girl ran off with a circus midget, his truck was in detox for a drug problem and that his hair had made a pact with his nose and in exchange for safe haven in his nostrils, the hair would make sure that the insects couldn't get in. Finally the little girl gets sick of waiting for the Dixie Chicks to come on and spends the remainder of the flight humming the same 4 notes of some unknown song while plastering herself against the window. Landing. Those of you who have flown before know that landing is one of the most exciting and dangerous parts of a flight. Myself, I've flown so many times I start critiquing the pilot when the right wheels touch down before the left ones. But holy crap, I am almost dropped trow when we landed in (read: collided with) Burbank airport. Unbeknowst to me, Burbank Airport is one of the shortest in the US that is still legal to land full-size jets on. We come in for landing as normal, flaps extended and engines screaming, then the pilot drops (and I mean literally DROPS) the plane on the runway and then stands on the brakes. After removing my head from the seat in the front of me and picking small pieces of the plane cell phone from my teeth, I think "gee, that landing could have gone better". But I had survived and safely arrived in California. I grab my carry-ons and head out the front door of the airport, grab a shuttle service to the Burbank Hilton, and check in. The girl behind the counter kicked ass. After looking for my name, spelling it wrong, and then telling me I didn't have a reservation (and consequently seeing the nervous "I'm a Midwesterner in California without a place to stay" look) she apologized, found my reservation, and wished me good luck. About the time I walk into my room (its now 10:30pm local time) my stomach informs me that if it doesn't receive sustenance IMMEDIATELY that it will leap out of my throat and strangle me. Always one to listen to my GI tract when it threatens me with bodily harm, I head on down to the restaurant attached to the hotel. After shocking the waiter by being ready with my order when he came to the table the first time, I sat and waited for the arrival of my steak. Mmmmm.. beef... Not that I expected them to impress me with the quality of their steak, I mean it cost $25 but it can't possibly compete with a 40 ounce steak that only 4 hours ago was eating grass. You haven't tasted steak until you've raised it yourself and then cooked it yourself. Yeah-ah. (note: I am not a psychotic animal killer. I grew up on a beef farm in South Dakota. I am human. I am a carnivore. I eat meat. Deal.) In the end, I was rather impressed by the quality of the steak, not bad for a state full of vegetarians. I head back to my room (its now 11:30 local, which means 1:30 according to my internal clock) and have to check out the pay per view. Hilton must pay a boatload for its PPV service cause they had like 6 movies I wanted to see. Of course I had to check out the "Adult" section and laugh my ass off at the titles, I mean, who comes up with this stuff anyways? BoomerWang??? The next two days were boring. Meetings Meetings Meetings. Blah blah blah. 95 degrees outside. Ick. Mmm... Red Robin Bacon Cheeseburger..... mmmmmm....... Flying home woohoo!! One of the stewardesses looks like the lead singer of the Stray Cats (80s band whose lead had hair that looked like a tornado tipped on its side). But even she couldn't compete with the one fixing the first class meals in back. Imagine if you will a women who looks like Medusa after being beaten senseless with a weed whacker. You get the picture. More sickly looking yellow trail mix. No real meals because I have 2 hour flights and of course none of them land over the dinner hour. Land in Denver. Mock silly architects again. Depart Denver. Get bored. Decide to see how many cans of 7up I can drink in 2 hours. Drink the first one. Tell the stewardess that I think it got lost and that I need to send a second one in to look for it. Drink a third to make sure the second knew where to start looking. Fourth one to make sure the third got the message right and a fifth for moral support. Sixth one to find the last 3, gang together, beat the crap out of the second one for being lazy, and then head off in a herd for the first one. Plane lands. Depart plane. Spend 15 minutes in the airport bathroom peeing soda water. Go home. Sleep off the jet lag. Story Ends I'd like to thank Mr Douglas Adams for inpsiring the last bit of this rant. The world wept when he departed, but there's one thing I do know and that's he is one hoopy frood and he DEFINATELY knows where his towel is.