NEWLOVE

I normally depart on flights that are scheduled at some un-Godly hour in the morning. Having to leave my house for the airport at 5am in the morning usually causes me to pull an all-nighter in order to finish packing, send off last minute emails and pay those bills I’ve been putting off. Sometimes, even, I’ll be at the laundromat in that witching hour when crackheads and homeless people wander in and out to make my life just that more exciting. “Will I die tonight or just get mugged and severely maimed?”
My non-stop flight from LAX to SYD was not departing until 10:39pm so I had all day to pack. I even had time to go to physical therapy, the bank, shopping, and brunch with friends. This is definitely a much better traveling schedule.
Normally when Brad drives me to the airport, he is in a sweaty, breathless panic since we always leave about a half an hour (minimum) after when I say I want to leave. (The trick is telling myself, and him, that we are leaving a half an hour before the last possible comfortable time to leave. Since I don’t tend to “get ready” to leave until that magic time I say I’m walking out the door, you can pretty much set your watch to about a half hour later.)
Today, I wanted to leave the house at 7:30pm for my flight. At 7:25 I was ready and Brad almost had a stroke. He’s so used to the “7:30 means 8pm” routine that he was watching the World Series with reckless abandon. Brad can’t just pick up his keys and walk out the door. He first has to contemplate his process and all the bigger questions of life like “Why are we here?” and the like. Then he has to think out loud and walk through the schedule of events… “I’m driving you to the airport. Traffic shouldn’t be too bad. Should we take the 101 to the 110? Probably. Or maybe surface streets? What do you think? What do you reckon is the fastest route from LAX to Venice – 5^th and Rose? How long do you think it’ll take to get there? I’ve got to call Flemming and tell him when I’ll be there. Baby, my car’s parked up on Franklin. It should take about 5 to 10 minutes to get up there and back.” And so forth.
I decided to take a shower and give Brad another 20 minutes to think out loud and 10 minutes to go get his car. It worked out perfectly and we arrived at LAX at 8:45pm. United Airlines flight 839 was due to board at 9:45pm. Perfect.
At 9:45 they announced that the aircraft was delayed from Chicago and we would not start boarding until about 30 minutes after the originally scheduled boarding time.
SEE?!?! I’m not the only “fake them out with the 30 minutes earlier than the actual time” schemer. I’m glad to see the world is catching on to my much superior ways!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 27th, 2007 at 8:04 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.