Day 9

Sunday, October 3, 2004

Please try to imagine what we are saying.

7:30 am

Dazed and barely able to focus, we check out of the Candlewood Suite hotel. We think this whole concept of having a room with a microwave, fridge, and stove is pretty keen. Especially at breakfast--Robert likes his Shredded Wheat and Laura likes her second cup of coffee, so it saves us tons of time (and saves us FROM tons of Velveeta) by eating in the room.

The VCR and CD clock radio are also nice bonuses.

9:37 am

Because we purchased our tickets at the same time, using the same credit card, United Airlines has naturally assumed that we are complete strangers and seated us at opposite ends of the plane. Flying is already miserable enough without having to sit next to some clod you don't know (better the clod you know, than the one you don't).

Robert whines about how he wants to sit next to his lovely wife (and if you've ever heard Robert whine, you know the obsessive-compulsive way he goes about it). The United Airlines guy decides to put us together in exit row seats(!).

And these exit row seats have an insane amount of legroom. You practically have to walk to where your underseat luggage is stored. This makes life much more tolerable (especially since we'll be on this plane for eight hours).

11:55 am

For reasons known only to United Airlines, the shortest way to Seattle involves stopping in Washington, DC for an hour or so.

Also, "because we'll be changing crews," we have to get off the plane and then get back on, even though we're in the same seats. (Apparently, they believe that if we stayed on the plane, we'd break something or maybe steal an engine.)

When we get back on the plane, we discover that the person in the seat in front of Robert has broken his seat. In a pretty major way--it lays all the way flat, down into Robert's lap.

For a moment, we're afraid that they'll move us out of our Golden Seats, but then Robert remembers that we're in an exit row...

"Sure be a shame if a whole bunch of people died in this exit row, because that seat blocked the way out! I'm ready to do MY part to get MY butt off the airplane, but, golly, that'd be a real shame if the media found out that the seat was broken before takeoff and United didn't fix it and there was a whole bunch of charred bodies of women and children all piled up by this here broken seat."

The stewardess wisely decides to call maintenance, who springs into action!

After about ten minutes, they send a guy up with a roll of duct tape. He duct tapes the seat into the upright position. Frankly, we're not sure that if the plane crashes and catches fire that duct tape will hold the seat in place, but we don't really want to change to a different plane, so we hold our tongues.

2:14 pm (PST)

Laura has overheard the stewardesses talking in the back about how the plane has extra fuel in case we need to divert to a different airport because of St. Helens.

Volcanoes and rain! That's all we have here in Washington State, except when we have giant killer earthquakes!

3:27 pm

We're in the car on the way home with the same KGB driver we had on the way out. They say that travel changes you; well, it's changed us, because after being in Boston for a week, surrounded by big, beefy guys, our driver looks normal.

Well, that's it for this trip. We've been to the cradle of Liberty (one of them, anyway), the home of the brave scientist, and the land of the lobster.

We don't know when the next trip log will be, because right now, we're too busy kissing the carpet and hugging the cat, and freaking out at how huge a stack of mail we've got after just nine days (catalogs & Christmas = yow!).

Hope you enjoyed it, and remember: Never abandon the duck!

Robert & Laura
Cheap Geek Tour Part Deux est fini