Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Australia Travelog #47
SYD Airport - Sun, 31 Dec 2023, 3pm

Hawk and I boarded flight UA 870 over an hour and a half ago. We haven't gone anywhere. I mean, the aircraft hasn't gone anywhere. It's an hour late for departure and still waiting.

Getting to our own seats was a fairly orderly process. We were among the first to board— even though we had an unexpectedly long walk from the Singapore Airlines flight lounge as United changed our gate at the last moment from one next to the lounge to one clear on the other side of the overpriced high-end shopping mall— I mean, airport. We settled in to our aisle-window seat pair in United's Economy Plus section and rechecked the app to see if the middle seat between us was empty, similar to our flight out to Australia a week earlier. It was still empty and there were a number of empties scattered around the aircraft, indicating a likelihood we wouldn't be crammed in with a neighbor. Hooray!

Left Your Screaming Kid at Home? Here's a Spare....

Boarding early means you get to watch everyone else board so you get a feel for who's on the flight with you. This flight is strangely full of young families with young kids. It's like everyone around us has at least one child. There's one in front of us, two in the row behind us, two across the aisle, at least one both ahead of and behind them, etc. And most these kids are fussy. Oh, joy. This is going to be a special 13-hour long flight.



Particularly special was one of the kids across from me. He's a seat-kicker. Whenever he's angry, or frustrated, or bored, or wanted attention, he'd kick his feet. And he wouldn't just kick once or twice... His feet would seem to be whirling around like a windmill, like the roadrunner in Roadrunner & Coyote.

Even worse, the kid's parents did nothing about it. One of the other parents nearby gently observed, "Wow, your son seems very anxious today...." The boy's mother responded, "Yeah, he's a kicker. It's a good thing the seat in front of him on the way out here was empty, because he kicked the crap out of it for 15 hours. All I can say is I hope there's nobody sitting there today."

All you can hope?!?! I fumed silently. Especially with the kid in an aisle seat there's pretty much a 100% chance there will be someone sitting in front. This parent is fully aware that her son's behavior will make someone absolutely miserable, and she's seemingly not prepared to do anything about it. Even as a man took the seat in front of the kid. Like, she didn't even try talking to her kid in an age-appropriate fashion (the boy's about 5 years old) about appropriate behavior in public.

Delayed as United Packs 'Em On

Boarding seemed to wind down but we kept waiting. Our scheduled departure time of 2:00pm passed.



I make fun of Southwest Airlines a lot for running behind schedule so often.... United Airlines doesn't have a great on-time record in my experience, either.

Except this delay was more than just the aircraft not being ready or there being a traffic jam in front of us to take off. United was holding our flight to put more people on it. Were they asking people on the street with fussy children if they wanted to buy last-minute tickets? People started trickling in. The pilot announced over the speakers that we were taking people from another flight.

A few other passengers and I started checking our flight apps. There aren't that many UA flights at SYD so it wasn't hard to see what other flight was in jeopardy. It was the 12:10pm SFO flight, the one we rebooked away from 2 days before starting this trip. As the hour wound on toward 3pm the earlier flight still hadn't left yet! And the fact that UA was moving people from there to here implied that it would now leave after us.

The delay has been frustrating, but at least for us it's just a minor inconvenience. All that happens is we'll get home an hour later. It's not like we have to make a connection in SFO, as many people on the flight are, and now risk missing it and having to be rebooked.

The biggest nuisance to us is that our treasured empty middle seat would likely be toast. Indeed, a woman came to sit in our row... but she had a boarding pass for my seat. "I'll fix that," a flight attendant said, as she escorted the woman away.

Op-Up for Two!

Another flight attendant returned to our row a few minutes later, paperwork in hand. "I have new seats for you," she said, addressing Hawk and me, "But they're not together. Is that okay?"

"Where are the new seats?" I asked reflexively. I didn't want to be rooked. I have, on occasion, been moved to seating that's less desirable than what I selected when I made my reservation.

"We're upgrading you," the FA announced cheerfully.

HELL to the YES!



Hawk and I totally don't mind not sitting together. I know that idea is freaky to many couples. They're like, "How could we possibly be apart for a 13 hour flight?" Whereas our attitude is, "Eh. We've been together constantly for the past 8 days. We can handle time apart." Especially when it means seats big enough to actually sleep in!

More to come....

Thanksgiving '22 Travelog #4
Woodbridge, VA - Sun, 20 Nov 2022, 10:30pm

Sometimes when I think about how old I am and how I feel, I put it in perspective by thinking how old I was when my father was this age. My dad was 35 years older than me. That's more of an age gap than many kids have with their parents. When I was 5, he was already 40. When I was 15, he was 50. One thing it meant was that my dad rarely engaged in any activities with me that had a physical dimension. Sit down in front of the TV and talk? Sure. But help me practice baseball skills when I was 9 and playing on a Little League team? It was always, "I'm too tired, ask your [younger] sister to play catch with you."

I was reminded of some of the things I missed out on when I spent the day visiting with my sister C. She and my brother in law started their family at 22. They'd both just graduated from college, and BIL was still in law school. That was a poor choice financially but a good choice in other respects. They've always had more energy to spend with their kids than my parents did.

Today BIL bounced from activity to activity with his kids. For example, two needed to lash some poles into a structure for a merit badge in Boy Scouts. BIL helped them lay out the necessary poles, found the right kind of rope, then guided them after they tied knots. My dad never would have left the easy chair in front of the football game on TV. Not that he knew how to lash anything more complicated than shoelaces anyway. BIl did other things with his kids throughout the day, including agreeing to play Trivial Pursuit with one at 9pm. 9pm? My dad would've been asleep in his recliner chair (with the TV still on) by then.

Last Monday, November 29, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley opened fire with a handgun in his high school in Oxford, Michigan. He killed 4 students and injured 6 other students and 1 teacher. The gun had been purchased just days before as an early Christmas gift to him. While school shootings, and shootings by minors, are sadly not uncommon in the US, one thing is different about this case. In addition to charging the teen with multiple counts of homicide and attempted homicide, the Oakland County (MI) district attorney has charged the parents, too. They face multiple counts of involuntary manslaughter. Example news coverage: "Key moments surrounding Michigan high school shooting", Associated Press, 4 Dec 2021.

Prosecutors have yet to present their case for charging the parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley. Based on facts that are known now it seems to relate to a) their purchase of the gun as a gift for him, b) possession of a firearm by an underage person is illegal in most circumstances in Michigan, and c) their disregard for signs that Ethan was contemplating a violent attack. Especially as regards (c), Ethan was reported at school by a teacher who saw him using a school computer to read about guns and ammunition. After a required parental notification his mother texted him, "Lol. I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught."

Later another teacher spotted Ethan with a drawing so disturbing she took a picture with her cellphone and reported it to school leadership. According to reports:

It includes a drawing of a handgun and the words: “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.” Also depicted is a bullet with the words “blood everywhere” above a person who appears to have been shot twice and is bleeding. A laughing emoji is drawn below the figure. The note also says “my life is useless” and “the world is dead.”

School administrators summoned the parents to school to discuss the material, but the parents denied there was anything wrong with it. They refused to take their son out of school for the day. And they chose not to disclose that he had access to a firearm.

Police conducted a manhunt for the parents after charges against them were announced. While their attorney says they were getting ready to turn themselves in, the facts suggest something different: they had withdrawn a large amount of money from ATMs, and were found hiding in an art studio having already fled the jurisdiction. Accordingly, the judge set their bail at $500,000 and they are currently in jail.