Atlanta Day 0 - Planning and the Flight from Hell

This trip entailed of a lot of planning.  I used a white board to plan every day of the trip as well as note cards for each day of the trip.  The board shows Oslo, but Oslo was scrapped in exchange for Copenhagen. 

Every train trip had to be reserved, flights booked, as well as one bus ride.  Hotels of course and all Escape Rooms.  Plus concerts, comedy shows, and entry to a museum.  I also got an multiple venue tourist pass for London.  I had a blast organizing this.

Though I had paid extra for the "comfort plus" section, my carry-on was deemed too large (European planes have smaller overhead bins) and it had to be checked when we boarded.  The comfort plus seats were somewhat more spacious but still too tight for my fat ass.  The seats we had were not at the window and aisle which I KNOW I had booked, but in the middle of 4 seats.  I think that the plane type had changed from the time I had booked it in July to when we flew in November.

You know how you always hear about the crying screaming baby on flights?  Well, we had one in our row on the window and then there was another in the pens behind us.  Our seats were facing a wall (again, not my choice) which meant that we had lots of leg room but then 2 things happened.  Without a seat in front of us, the tray tables were built into the armrests of the seats.  Because of my big gut, it was impossible to put the tray down flat.  Rose kept telling me to move my ass back, but it wasn’t my ass that was too big.  The airline attendant suggested to move back a row to 2 empty seats.  Now I could put the tray table down, but just half.  Oh, and to add insult to injury, I had to ask for a seat belt extender – well, I really DIDN’T have to, but I felt like I was being squished like a freeze pop.  The second thing that happened was that Rose’s chargers didn’t work but she could have plugged under my legs into mine so that wasn’t a real reason to move.

The row we moved to was ok but then the two folks to the right of us apparently met up from years back for the first time and chatted and chatted forever.  I asked them once to be quieter and then more rudely after another 15 minutes asked them to stop talking and they did (phew – I was afraid I’d be kicked off the plane in the middle of the Atlantic).

My next problem was that my Lupron shot (for my prostate cancer surgery) had finally kicked in and though I luckily just wore shorts and a t-shirt, I sweated my ass off.  Sleep in these rather tight seats was impossible.  Rose couldn’t sleep either, so in 3 hours from now we felt we would be like zombies when we arrived.  Technically though, it will just be 4 AM.

Only good news is that the flight, scheduled for 8 and a half hours, was only going to take 7 and a half.  We’ve had turbulence, so perhaps we’re taking the “jet” stream.  That’s what I would ride were I a pilot!