Honestly truly overheard on Delta 844

Passenger in 1D (first class) is lucky enough to be the only person to get a pre-flight drink, as the pilots were apparently trying to hustle us out of PIT to avoid ground delays in ATL. Woman in her 50s or 60s, somewhere between obese and morbidly obese, orders “a vodka with just a tiny splash of orange juice.” It's almost 6 in the evening, so nothing too surprising so far.

Woman gets her drink, and begins slurping it down like she just walked out of the Sonoran desert and missed the drive-through liquor stores in the Arizona stretch.

Somehow the conversation with the (amazingly friendly) flight attendant turns to this (paraphrased, but pretty darn close):

Flight attendant: You should watch it, because alcohol affects you double in the air than it does on the ground.

Editor's note:(A marginally dubious claim, which I'm unable to find primary evidence to support or disprove. The best indications are that the added intensity of alcohol consumption in flight is really rooted in dehydration, so you mostly need to be sure to consume a lot of water. A more profound impact than on the ground? Maybe. Double? There is zero evidence i can find for this. But I digress.)

Woman: Really? I have never, ever heard that, and I fly all the time.

Flight attendant: Oh yeah, absolutely, no question about it.

Woman Who Flies All The Time:Wow -- I have never heard that. I'll be fine, though: I can sit here and drink a fifth of vodka straight and not even feel it.

Flight attendant: Oh wow, well, you won't be getting that tonight. (It's an hour and a half flight, incidentally.)

Fifth of Vodka Woman: Oh yeah, I can drink anyone, and I mean anyone, under the table in about three minutes! Any man, any woman!

(inaudible conversation, brief pause as the flight attendant goes and does some other stuff)

Woman Who Can Drink Any Man, Any Woman, Under The Table In About Three Minutes: Say, do you sell these little bottles on board?

Flight attendant: No, sorry, we don't.

Woman Who Wants To Give The Idea Of Buy On Board A Whole New Meaning:That's too bad, 'cause I've been taking care of my mother who is 91 all week, and she has a whole line of them on her shelf, and I thought I'd take her a couple. (That she is apparently heading the wrong direction for such a gift is part of the nature of the Folk Process, with apologies to Dry Branch Fire Squad.)

Flight attendant: Well, you know you can buy them at any liquor store?

Woman Who Wants To Give Her 91 Year Old Mother A Couple Shooter Bottles of Cheap Vodka As A Gift To Add To Mother's Collection: Really? I never heard of that! Never saw them!

Flight attendant: Sure, every liquor store sells them.

Woman Who Can Drink A Fifth of Vodka In About Three Minutes And Not Even Feel It And Can Drink Any Man Or Woman Under The Table In About Three Minutes But Doesn't Know Liquor Stores Sell Small Shooter Bottles Of Cheap Vodka: Well, I'll just have to look for that!

A few minutes go by, we continue the pre-flight process, and next thing I hear is the flight attendant leaning in close and telling the woman kindly, but firmly and repeatedly, that she needs to behave herself. Gosh, can't imagine why.

Balcony garden: late September 2009

Here is what happens when you fly around to five states, through seven airports, in two weeks. Your plants miss you:


This is an overall of the plants. I could probably blame some of their sad appearance on the intense thunderstorms they've had to endurse in the last two weeks, which some are saying resulted in epic, 500-year flooding, but that's probably a cop-out. Really, I've just been a bad plant parent.


Here's a closeup of the Bonnie tomatoes, which are still producing. I ate one just before leaving for Pittsburgh, and it was pretty darn tasty. The leaves look like shit, but the tomatoes themselves look pretty decent.


Here's the Bush Goliath, looking much the same: the tomatoes are looking pretty decent, while the leaves and plant is looking pretty dire.


The herg garden is looking so-so; I'll probably start to harvest quite a bit of it soon.


Here's a closeup of the sage in the herb garden, which is a pretty mixed bag: some of it is clearly curling and dying off, while other parts are doing fine.


And the stand-alone basil planting, which is struggling, but putting up a game fight.

Of plants and protests.

Since I have plenty of entertaining stories about providing legal support for the protestors at the over the last few days, I'll instead post pictures about my balcony garden. Okay, okay: a few summary thoughts, with more to come.

The police response was properly described by one activist as a "bumbling and violent police action."

The cops did a whole lot of arbitrary shutting down of streets with rows of riot-clad cops, when zero protestors were anywhere nearby. In this picture, at Liberty Ave & S. Millvale Ave near Western Pennsylvania Hospital, the cops had watched the protest march continue down the street. They were about a third of a mile away when i took this picture (I had to hotfoot it to catch up.)

And as usual when the police engage in the overwhelming show of force, shock-and-awe style repression of dissent that has been popularized since Seattle, the cops did some pretty stupid stuff, and beat down some people who had nothing to do with the protests. This included University of Pittsburgh students who happened to have the nerve to try to walk through their campus, and deploying of tear gas and peper spray on narrow residential streets.

Police outnumbered protestors approximately five to one, or six to one.

I'm going to break up these posts and do the gardening pics separately...

Snippets from the G-20 protests in Pittsburgh

Context: this is several miles away from any protest activity at a road closure near Shendley Park. Literally three activists are standing near, doing nothing after being told they can't enter the park for their permitted event. There are approximately ten police, including at least Pennsylvania State Police, Pittsburgh PD, and Cleveland PD.

Pittsburgh PD to activist: "Quit being such a fucking smartass. Get the fuck out of here. I will fucking shoot you."

Cleveland Police Department officer to attorney: "Get out of here. Move. Go away." (I ignored him and turned my attention to the homicidal Pittsburgh PD, as Cleveland cop wasn't even remotely in charge of the area. He was an out of town, deputized rentacop who was essentially relegated to traffic management. He had his uniform shirt unbuttoned low enough to show the hair just above his bellybutton. He had a lot of it.)

More after-reports to come. (Confidential to anyone who might worry: I'm perfectly safe and being careful.)

People I don't understand

1) People who launch themselves out of their seats on the airplane, so they can occupy the aisle for the several minutes it takes the ground crew and flight crew to get the door open. Then it turns out the (specific jerk in question) needs to wait at planeside for his gate-checked bag to come out, just like the people he was jockeying to get in front of.

2) People who rush to the televisions in the airport to see the football game. (Confidential to football fans: the game won't change because you're watching it, and the ten minutes you see of grown men smashing into one another will be much more interesting without all the pap and filler when you watch it tomorrow on Sportscenter.)

3) People who don't tip, or even worse, tip badly. Examples: too numerous to mention. You know who you are.

4) Self-important TSA officers, who seem to think their scowl and facially insincere grunt of "how are you" somehow imparts some sort of gravitas or authority. Confidential to TSA: you're largely incompetent rentacops that 98% of the regular-traveling public despises. Oh, and suspiciously sneering at me when you look at the x-ray of my carryon isn't intimidating: it's just silly.

Boarding soon for segment five of nine in two weeks, so I should get my stuff together.

Dateline: Montana

At the tail end of a week+ of excellent mountain biking in Montana. I hope to upload some of the 120+ pictures I took sometime this week, but for now, you'll have to settle for numbers:

~275: total miles ridden
38.6: average miles per day (including off-route grocery/beer stops)
32.4 mph: max speed
51.18: max daily miles

Wildlife: a bunch of white tail deer, one pesky red fox near Fatty Creek (on two different nights), a ton of cicada, crickets, and beetles, and assorted smaller animals.

The people, on the whole, were fantastic. Truly nice, accommodating, pleasant, and fun to talk to.

The roads, well, I could take or leave them. Much of the Great Divide Route is on Forest Service roads, which range from flat and brutally maintained to singletrack, technical, and moderately unpleasant.

Some shoutouts to some particularly wonderful local businesses:

The Grateful Bread, Bigfork, MT. Great bread and sandwiches, solid espresso drinks, amazing people, and great vegetarian and vegan (ask!) options. Went twice in two days.

Glacier Cyclery , Whitefish, MT. Fantastic people, decent bikes, great location.

Markus Foods , Whitefish, MT. Solid grocery store with a nice little deli and excellent beer selection.

The store at Swan Lake Trading Post, Swan Lake, MT. They have a nice little grocery, and a great take one, leave one paperback book section.

More to come. Now back to flying! Tonight FCA-SLC-SMF.

Insert: deep, loud, irritated sigh

The asshattery here in the LAX Delta Skyclub gets more intense by the minute. Not only does it sound like a junior high school cafeteria, both in volume and content, but this fucking nitwit is standing next to me, immediately in front of the "QUIET AREA" sign with a cell phone crossed out in a circle, with his cell phone plugged in right behind it, talking on it. There are literally dozens of electrical outlets spread throughout the room. Idiot.

Now the moron has left his cell phone plugged in while he wanders around. I'm tempted to pour my margarita on it, but the margarita tastes too good.

More calories, please

I decided that it's not really worth the walk to browse more overpriced food in other terminals, so I needed to get some more calories here. Fortunately, the bar makes a surprisingly good margarita. (Hey! It's almost noon, okay?)

Airports and etc.

After a frenzy to get packed and ready for the bike trip, I'm finally en route.

The morning flight from ATL to LAX was pleasant due to an upgrade, but unpleasant due to none of the reading lights working. The flight attendants were apologetic about this, but still didn't seem to think it worth leaving the overhead lights on, and the always helpful fellow passengers all closed their windows so they could watch The Fast and the Furious, and bad romcom. I got a little reading done until it started to really strain my eyes, and then I did some more eye-straining reading on my netbook.

Now in the Delta Skyclub in the crappy, run-down Terminal 5 at LAX. The lounge is nice enough, if quite crowded and loud. I'm actually listening to music (Gomez: Get Miles, appropriate in so many ways) which I almost never do in the airport or lounges. This is to drown out the woman who has been prattling nonstop with her companion since she came in. Well, not truly non-stop: she takes breaks to prattle loudly on her cell phone, too. All while she keeps her feet up on the chair. She's a teacher, but apparently hasn't learned Inside Voice.

The food at Delta Skyclubs pretty much always stinks, with a few exceptions (JFK terminal 2 has some really good snacks and appetizers at certain hours.) I'm hungry, and the food options in Terminal 5 mostly suck, so I was pleased to see them roll out a cart of food when they took away the breakfast foods. What was it? Some sort of caramel-fudge-flourless-chocolate cake thing. At 10:30 in the morning. Yes, really. My favorite response to this (well, the only response other than mine so far) came from a friend via e-mail: "turtle fudge cake? gross. i wouldn't eat that at any time of day."

It does appear that GrossCake(tm) is going to be the only option, so I'll be sticking with pretzels and beer. (Hey, it's now after 11!) I mean, c'mon: you can't even bring out some soft, wilted celery and carrots with grayish/white caking?

In other travel (news), my travels in the next month and a week will have me in the following airports: ATL, LAX, SLC, FCA, SMF, SFO, PIT, JFK, SEA. Woo.

Maybe I'll go hunt down better food, since I still have an hour and a half. A little web searching did indicate that it's possible to walk from Terminal 5 to Terminals 6, 7, and 8. Yay informationsuperinfobahn!

Bicycling and more bicycling! (oh, and some traveling)

Yesterday J and I both rode in an organized ride. We did the first ~31 miles together at a relatively slower pace, then J cut off to do the metric century (~62 miles, which with some difficulties due to the cue sheet, map, and course markings, ended up being ~70.) I sped off to continue the century, which ended up being 93 miles due to needing to cut off a distance loop at the end as they were beginning to close down rest stops and SAG support.

Numbers:

93.07 miles
6:12:01 total riding time
34 mph max speed
15.0 avg speed
135 max RPM
72 avg RPM

I also did a good turn by a fellow rider which took a long time and slowed my average speed somewhat, but which isn't something I'll blog about. Lovely weather all day, overcast and a slight breeze in the morning, and hotter, more direct sunlight in the afternoon. None of the torrential downpour stuff from last weekend.

Now I'm finalizing my packing list for self-supported backcountry mountain bike touring in Montana later this week, followed by a whirlwind tour of northern California. (Y'all know who you are.) As with many such trips, it'll require trips to several local stores for food and gear, which is likely to gobble up much of the rest of my day.

Then PIT. Then NYC. Then SEA. And maybe more ATL sometime: who knows?

Big times! Lots of fun! Very poor carbon footprint!

A Nervous. Fucking. Breakdown.

Is what I'm about to have. In the condo next door to the north, for the second day in a row, they are replacing flooring and otherwise making such an astonishing amount of noise that it's like having a dance party inside a 747 engine. On our floor to ceiling windows to the south and east, the window washers dangling from ropes are slamming around. (They also make a surprisingly massive amount of noise.) They are allegedly cleaning the windows.

I'm going to go read new urbanism at a coffeehouse. In the not-very-amusing irony department, I'm going to have to ride my bike to get to one, since there really isn't a good one within a five minute walking distance (consistent with NU principles.)

Before I go, here are a few pictures from the 65 mile (~metric century) ride I did with a friend on Sunday, mentioned in the previous post. We'll call this friend J2, to distinguish him from J. As mentioned, the first two thirds of the ride were fantastic: rolling hills, and quiet back roads in central Georgia.


Here is the obligatory bucolic country road, with white picket fence, and cyclists approaching the second rest stop image:



Here is the obligatory condom-icecube-in-the-portapotty urinal picture. Yes, really. (This is at that same rest stop):

It was a lovely rest stop, complete with a friendly volunteer mechanic who fixed J2's rubbing front derailleur. In other news, J2 had never heard of the idea of a condom icecube?!? Consider this a request for a Highly Scientific poll of my readership: please leave a comment if you knew this fantastic utilization for condoms.


Remember, dear reader, how I said that the first two thirds of the ride was fantastic? Well, after the last rest stop it rapidly got marginally less fantastic, as the last twenty miles was in apocalyptic-quality rain, thunder, and lightning. Here is the obligatory standing-water-in-my-shoes at the end of the ride picture:


We had great conversation the whole time, including shouting to be heard over the thunder and rain about whose bike was more likely to be struck by the lightning that was blasting at nearly the exact same time as the thunder boomed: my friend's steel frame urban commuter style bike with slightly wider tires, or my aluminum frame road bike with super skinny tires. My friend maintained that his bike and person was less likely to be struck down due to the wider tires (because the lightning would have to go farther to get to ground.) I maintained that my aluminum frame was less attractive, period, and still believe the lightning wouldn't be doing the endgame analysis when it decided who to strike down for their wicked ways.

Of course, in the wicked ways analysis, I definitely lose. (Incidentally, when I described this to J later, she agreed that the steel frame was far more susceptible to lightning strikage. And she's Really Really Smart about such things.) Sorry, J2.