There'll never be another like it as far as I can see

[austin_dern]

Now on to a fresh trip report: bunny_hugger visited me over New Year's, and I do want to talk about that, now that the maybe excessively long report of a con and my visit to her are amply described.

She was scheduled to arrive Wednesday night, at about 8 pm, so I started out the day thinking that I'd just have to miss yoga, which usually lets out between 6:30 and 6:45. But my mother pointed out I'd have plenty of time between the end of the class and bunny_hugger's arrival for me to get to the airport, and after a while thinking this over I realized yes, there was plenty of time. So I went to yoga after all.

On getting out of class I realized, after I'd started the car but before I left the parking lot, that it would be a good thing to check my phone and see if anything had changed her anticipated arrival time. It's a good thing it had: she'd left a message about her being late. Her flight was overbooked, and they'd begun offering bribes to people willing to be bumped to a later flight. When the offer for a later flight moved up to a juicy enough price --- an upgrade to first class, for one, and a nice bit in travel vouchers --- she decided to take it, and hoped that I'd understand.

As I was listening to the message, my phone rang: it was skylerbunny. He was calling with much of the same information on the reasonable grounds that in case I failed to check my messages, and I haven't been very reliable about doing that so far, I'd have a better chance of picking up the actually ringing phone. Good thinking, although since I was deep in the voice-mail menu as the call came in I realized that I didn't know how to make my phone stop fussing with the voice mail and answer the specific local voice message. I'm not sure how I got in touch with skylerbunny, whether I got out of voice mail and picked up that call, or whether I called him back right away; but I got the news from him.

It was also during this call that I first heard, from him, the report that argon_centaurhad died. There's probably not a good place to get that kind of news, but the parking lot outside the yoga center and CVS and restaurants I never go to wasn't a good place either. Given the sketchy background detail of the first report the effort to get better information would be a little theme of the next several days.

But with the several extra hours now I had the unexpected time to ... I didn't know what. So I went home, and did some WiiFit exercise and showered and that, remarkably, took up about the right amount of time to drive up for her.

Last time we went to Newark Airport, bunny_hugger and I had this little hide-and-seek where they kept changing the terminal we should be at, both at her arrival and her departure. They didn't do any such late changes of terminal this time, although when I arrived I managed to not be able to fidn where her flight was getting in. The problem is I couldn't find a bank of monitors reporting arrival information, just the departures, which that time of night were all scheduled for the next morning. I'd figured I could get to the appropriate baggage return for her flight, even though she wasn't checking any luggage, but without that information or even an exact time her flight actually touched down I didn't have anywhere particular to go. I did end up walking over a lot of airport looking for information.

Eventually, I found the correct baggage return, which will not surprise anyone by turning out to be just about the first carousel I passed as I walked into the terminal. And near midnight she arrived, and called to confirm just where we'd meet --- she had figured on the baggage return too, showing just how similarly mathematics and philosophy people are trained --- and we were wonderfully happy holding one another together.

The drive home didn't have any really big surprises, apart from how tired both us night people were. I'd been going from about 6 am, after all, and she'd had that strange exhaustion which comes from flying and from spending more time than expected at the airport. So despite the joy of being back together, what we really wanted to do on getting to my parents' house well after midnight was to turn in. We could spend a lot of time looking at each other on the morning.

Trivia: Before the first cruise of the US Navy's Monitor no one had investigated whether the ship's propeller turned to the left or the right; as a result, a faulty valve setting resulted in the main engine turning the wrong direction and cutting the ship's forward speed to about three and a half knots, compared to the contract specification of eight. Source: Monitor: The Story Of The Legendary Civil War Ironclad And The Man Whose Invention Changed The Course Of History, Jams Tertius deKay.

Currently Reading: Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story, David Hitt, Owen K Garriott, Joseph P Kerwin.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I was sorry I arrived too late to have dinner with you (I grabbed what turned out to be a tepid slice of pizza at the airport) but the $350 in travel vouchers will be useful.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

That's a useful amount indeed. I just about always took flight-bumps when I could; and I would again for just about every non-working vacation.

--Chi

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

It's almost enough to get me to Newark and back twice, if I hit on a good deal. >:) Also, they flew me first class on the later flight, something I've never done before and may never do again. The only bad thing is that they didn't tell me that the later flight had a connection. The part of flying that is the most intensely terrifying for me is takeoff, so I always fly direct if at all practical.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It's a very good deal overall, particularly with the taste of first class. Business or first are the really good ways to fly.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

First Class is rather enjoyable. I've flown it a handful of times and enjoyed, though I generally don't like to bother paying for it. Most of my times on airplanes since college have been opportunities for the sleep I didn't get when packing to make the 6am flight. (I don't get to take long vacations as a rule of thumb. I get to take a few days where rapid travel time is of the utmost essence.)


--Chi

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

In this case it really just meant a bigger seat. It was a half hour and an hour flight and neither really gave time for first class to show whatever it is that makes it so great besides, well, a big seat.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It really pays off the longer the flight, both because there's more hip room, and leg room, and the seat is movable into many more comfortable configurations including one that's almost reclined enough to pass for a bed. And then there's real actual food with substance (including a menu you select items from, like it was one of those promotional films of how cool flying was in the Fifties). And warm towels for cleaning up.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I didn't get any food except a bag of Sun Chips. >:(

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Ah, but think of the poor people in Regular Flying. They just had little bags of peanuts waved near them, taunting.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

That's the downside. The cost differential is too much for me to pay for, but back in the days when I was flying regularly extremely long distances my frequent flier status was awesome enough that United would often bump me into Business or First for at least something. I felt like such an interloper flying while in shorts and rubber sandals while all these people around me were dressed in Business Stuff, but my powers of remaining oblivious to everybody else were strong and useful.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Oh, a some of that handful of times my Aunt who works for United has managed to get me into First Class, she's said 'Dress nicely." I did, and felt quite kingly.

Of course, I wore my suit on the redeye flight for my Uncle's wedding in Michigan for one reason only: My arrival time was two hours before the wedding started, and I avoided having to #1 pack it #2 change.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

If I'd had any warning that I was going to be bumped into First Class I ... well, actually, there's not much I could have done. Flying to just get home, either parents or my individual home, and sometime around midnight after eighteen hours of flight time make it hard to want to dress up or see how it could possibly help my appearance when that was all done.

But I would be hard-pressed to overcome my natural obliviousness past kind of dimly noticing when the flight was over that I was underdressed.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I don't think I've ever had the prospect of being bumped on a flight. It would've been a little inconvenient flying back from Singapore to get an extra couple hours added on to it (I'd have to e-mail my parents), and much less inconvenient flying to Singapore (as I just got a taxi there anytime), but the problem never came up.

Of course, flying to and from southeast Asia at the start and at the height of the SARS crisis meant I enjoyed some astoundingly empty flights.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Dinner would have been sweet to have, although I'm not sure I would have been awake enough for it either. By midnight I'd had eighteen hours awake or feigning wakedness at the office, and ... getting to bed was as tempting as French toast would be.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

If the propeller was turning backwards, how did the ship make any forward progress at all?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm not able to get quite clear on it --- deKay's book doesn't get into that much detail, and the obvious keywords are too generic for the Internet to handle --- but I believe what it comes to is a gear mismatch, like if your car mixed up the forward- and backward-directions and only let you go forward at the low speed that's appropriate for reverse.

What I think's really remarkable is just their setting sail, even if it was for what amounted to the first very basic testing cruise, while having what would seem to be an important part of the engineering not made clear to the people working the engines. It makes stuff like the Enterprise leaving spacedock with only one-third of all systems working sound plausible, even given the mitigating circumstances.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

...she had figured on the baggage return too, showing just how similarly mathematics and philosophy people are trained

An outgrowth of the 1958 NDEA? ;o)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It's all something propositional, I tell you. We speak compatible languages of upside-down A's and backwards E's.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

There exists some x such that x is a Michigander and x loves austin_dern.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'd never noticed x looking quite so happy before.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

For all x, if x is a Michigander and x loves austin_dern, then x is happy.

(This may be false, if it turns out there are any Michiganders who love you and are unhappy. But I do not know of anyone who would fit that description.)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I don't know of any either, and I like the feeling of universality that proposition offers. Thank you.

(It turns out there's a Lansing-area person from another Usenet group I'm in that I know, although I don't believe our relationship could possibly rise to the level of 'love'. More like 'will swap puns and group in-jokes easily'.)