The flight sucked...

“When I finally get a chance to lie down I’ll probably sleep for the next two days.”

Lies! I slept for four hours. Now it’s five am here and I can’t really do anything, so I’ll just vent a little about the horrible flight experience I had.

Can you ever really have a good experience when sitting in a cramped space for thirteen hours and then in a car for another seven? Probably not, but this trip was particularly frustrating. The morning of (and pretty much every day the two weeks before) I was already freaking out a bit, sad and very anxious about leaving, I was hoping that the least I could have a semi-painless flight. Lies.

The morning of, I was telling my mom that I just really hope I’m not sitting next to a lady with a baby; that would be the worst. “Don’t worry, you won’t sit next to a lady with a baby,” my mom assured me.

I got to my seat and there was a lady with a baby. A squirmy baby. And I had the window seat, so going to the bathroom would require quite a bit of gymnastics. To my luck, though, she ended up trading seats with some guy who looked to be in his late teens, and who seemed to have never seen a stick of deodorant.  

Please, boy in his late teens, go see a stick of deodorant.

And one weird thing about him I just can’t quite accept: he did not get up once during the ten-hours we were in the plane. Do you have some sort of bladder of steel, teenage boy with no deodorant?! Not a single time did this person get up to go. I have doubts he was fully human. After having awkwardly stuck my butt in his face while crawling over him twice, I tried on this rare occasion to be nice and wait for him to get up before I did. Never happened.

On the bright side I was able to get in about an hour and a half of sleep. First by siting the way I usually do on the bus: on my tail bone, knees on the seat in front of me, then by awkwardly turning toward my chair so my butt was hanging off the seat.

Now, notice how I say ten hours, not nine, which was the original plan. Apparently the airline stuck a few extra people in at the last minute and they had to recalculate the weight or something…I don’t know, math nonsense. Whatever it was, it delayed our flight for a full hour, which by itself isn’t so bad, but I only had an hour and twenty-five minutes to catch my connecting flight to begin with. So once we landed I had a little over a half hour to catch my next plane.

I had to bus ninja it.

You all probably know I commute, I live a large part of my life on buses, and on many occasions I have had to run across campus like an idiot, huge backpack on back, laptop in one hand, lunch in the other, to catch my bus. I’m not unique, these people, who give up nearly all dignity only to increase their chances of not having to wait a half hour for the next bus, I call them bus ninjas.

So I anxiously tried to elbow my way off the plane as fast as I could, checked my next gate, was so nervous I forgot it within 30 seconds, and went to get my carry-on scanned. And of course, they took my backpack through the control, and the guy proceeded to have me take out everything. Because I obviously look like a drug and weapons dealer.

The dude was seriously cramping my bus ninja style.

I finally got through the nonsense, and ran across the airport like a maniac, getting to my gate ten minutes before the flight left, only to be informed that while I would be getting to Warsaw at the scheduled time, my suitcase would not. First thought: many swear words. Second thought: I’m so glad I packed extra underwear in my backpack.

At this point I was exhausted from flying and running and stressing. On the next flight the Polish people next to me assumed I didn't speak Polish. Good, I didn't feel like interacting with humanity at that point.

But that was a short flight, hour and a half, I landed, asked a bunch of different people what I do to get my bags besides wait at the airport for the next day, filled out some paper work, finally met my cousins who were nice enough to come get me, and drove back.

And now I am here, on my dad’s side of the family for the first time in five years, not sleeping like I should be, waiting for my bags to be delivered.

So there you go, the first and worst leg of the trip is over, hopefully the next bus rides/flights will be less stupid (look at that sophisticated university-level description right there). At least now I’m with family, so that makes it better.