Leavin' on a Jet Plane

It seems that most of the times we meet in the blogging world I end up sharing an experience about flying somewhere. However, rest assure that this story does not involve the functionally retarded who seem to favor air travel.

Last week I flew back to Clinton, IA for by best friend Tavis' wedding. On my flight from Salt Lake City to Dallas, everything went better than expected. I was bumped up to first class for free! I learned two things there:

1) Wearing a sweatshirt and jeans really clashes with the "suit and tie" decor of the cabin.

2) They give you the whole can of soda for a beverage. That's right...the WHOLE can. Now that's luxury.

The plane lands in Dallas and the trip is off to a wonderful start. Then I get on the plane that flies from Dallas to Moline, IL. For those of you who have never been to this airport, it has one runway and only 3 planes there don't have propellers on them.

So my little plane takes off to make the longest trip of its life. It was here that I learned 2 more things:

1) The pilot only needed to lean from side to side to steer it.

2) If a bird sneezed in passing, the turbulence was enough to cause a premature birth.

If you don't know me very well, I get motion sick...alot...easily. About 30 minutes into this epic flight, last night's dinner decides to make an encore appearance. I have no idea if this bicycle with wings had a bathroom or not, so I was forced to resort to the air sick bag in the seat pocket. Luckily, I was sitting alone which cut down on the embarrassment. Now here's something that they never tell you about those air sick bags, what do you do with them when they are full? I can't tell you how long I had to think about this. The one flight attendant on board had passed me handing out drinks. So what do you do? Ring the call button and ask a perfect stranger to come pick up your bag of vomit? Slip it back into the pocket and hope no one notices? Seriously, there are no instructions for disposal on the bag. I looked. I consider that to be a rather large over site in air travel. I considered holding it inside my sweater and try to find the bathroom, but then figured that holding my hand inside the breast pocket of my zip-up sweatshirt may cause me to be beaten to death as a terrorist. In the end, I held the bag for about 20 minutes and then slipped it into the garbage as the attendant walked by again. And so I learned 2 more things:

1) Always have a disposal plan ready

2) If you need to go from Dallas to Moline, walk.