Sometimes things just go wrong
Trip Start
Sep 18, 2007
1
30
Trip End
Ongoing
New York City,
New York,
United States
Thursday, April 3, 2008
It all started on the flight from San Jose. After checking in and paying my leaving tax of 26 dollars i eventually made it on to the plane and settled down for the 4 hour flight to charlotte where i'd then transfer for the connecting flight to New York. The plane was slightly delayed because of winds and a few of the passengers, mainly loud Americans, started getting a bit irate. it was only a 30 minute delay but even so this made the chances of catching the connection pretty slim.
About half way through this waiting period i hear a little noise to my right (im on the left aisle seat) and turn my head in just enough time to catch some rather drunk and over weight girl do a projectile vomit all the way up the side of the airplane and up the window side where she was sitting! She liter tally just half covered her mouth and it shot up the side of the plane. Everything went a bit nuts from here on. First of all her friend and the other random next to her jump up and start going mental and calling her all sorts of horrible names, the girl at this point is looking around a bit dazed and generally acting like the stupid cow she would later turn out to be. Her friend ignores her plea to 'hang around and look after her', calls her a stupid bitch and the legs it to the back of the plane with the other random to get the last 2 spare seats, leaving her friend just sitting there with puke all over the place.
Then all of a sudden the stewardesses are all over the situation, got her to move to the aisle seat (right next to me!), and sprinkled white power over all the chunks. At this point a guy in front of the puke girl jumps up exclaiming he can't take it any more and runs to the back to empty the contents of his own stomach and then one of the stewards also has to run to the front to do the same, leaving just one left, who at this point is throwing ground coffee all up and down the aisle to calm the smell, all the while instructing us not to 'put our fingers in and try eating it' - of course not! My plan was to get down on all fours like a dog and lick it off the carpet silly. And actually, seeing as they had confiscated my water and my mouth was dryer than a nun on Christmas day, the thought of a nice mouthful of coffee and saliva didn't seem to unappealing. Never the less i refrained.
The thing that amazed me was the girl wasn't even trying to help. Maybe she was that drunk that she could do anything, even so she just sat there with all this going on around her, looking stupid and covered in her own puke, then after things calmed down a little bit, just rolled onto the now free seats to her right, and passed out........ in her own chunks. Lovely.
By this point the plane is getting ready to take off and we all have to put our seat belts on, which everyone has done apart from the puke girl. So the stewardess wakes her up pretty harshly and tells her to put it on, which she doesn't do. In fact she just kind sits there with this look of contempt on her face like shes been mistreated and wont comply just to prove a point. I'm finding this all faugly amusing in a detached sort of way but the couple to my right are getting pissed off. They seemed like the kind of people you'd get in a grad school movie, always hollering abuse from the back of the class and making bitchy comments about people. They went into over drive and the puke girl was the source of much ridicule for the whole flight, when she was awake and trying to move anyway. She lent over once and the couple busted out with "My god that a large ass!!!" - the puke girl didn't put on her belt in the end, the stewardess had to come and do it for her, chaos! - Im sure you get the picture. The only time the couple didn't have digs at puke girl was when they were lamenting over the family just behind us! My god. not that i blame them. If you can picture the worst family, with 3 kids, ever, then your close. The kids were running the aisles, pounding the seats, screaming "i want's:" and "Give me's" the whole flight whole the parents did pretty much nothing other than the occasional "please sit down honey" - which was obviously ignored. When the kid tried to use me as a climbing frame it was almost too much, but i'd already decided at the beginning of this trip that i would use this as a good test to see how much stress i could take without letting it effect me, i think i managed quite well and by the end of the flight i still felt surprisingly relaxed..... even though the connecting flight was about to leave in 30 minutes. I only just made it, which is more than i can say for my bag..........
The connection to New York only took an hour and twenty minutes, but that seems like a long time when you have an overweight man elbowing you in the side as he snores his way into another twitching dream state. I'd only just made it onto the flight, and when i got off at the other side i had a pretty strong intuition that my bag wouldn't be coming out of the conveyor belt, unless the baggage people ran as fast as me to get it there. So when it didnt arrive i wasn't to surprised and went through the routine of logging the bag and getting my codes to track it the next day.
"Any unique items in the bag" the chap asks me.
"Errmmm, a 2 foot machete from Honduras" is what i didn't say.
So luckily i met a guy who lives near the place i was going to check into, and its also lucky that i decided to crash on his sofa last night. All the hostels seem to be full! I said good bye to Ian the piano player and his room mates and left off in search of the place i was originally going to check into. In the 6 months i've been traveling i've never turned up to a hostel that has been full before, theres always at least ONE dorm bed for a night. But like i said; events are conspiring against me. So i've been walking around new york for 3 1/2 hours in my board shorts (its damn cold here!) and my pair of odd socks (i didnt think i'd be in them for this long!) trying unsuccessfully to find a place to stay, and at the same time trying to recover my bag. The problem is i need an address to get the bag delivered to when i phone up in half an hour to find out if it came on the latest flight. It's coming to the moment of truth! One of the hostels said phone at 2 and they might have a cancellation so soon my situation will be revealed to me, hopefully in a good way. The funny thing is that nobody gives a shivering guy in board shorts, odd socks, and a panama hat a second glance here. In Fact i'm still more normally then a lot of the crazy's. Now theres a scary thought, and possibly something that should be remedied in the event of my bags not turning up and all the hostels being full.
Wish me luck.
Karl
