It’s An Ill Wind….

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The original title of this post was “Farting On Airplanes” because it is really about farting on airplanes, but I thought it might be better just to call it “It’s An Ill Wind”.

No, come on, now you know don’t turn your noses up, or pretend this is something that (a) you’ve never thought about, or (b) never done. Farting on airplanes is an international phenomenon that transcends all nationalities, religions, ages, creeds, classes and colors.

It is in fact the common bond of all the world’s travelers.

Whether it can ever bring us closer together, however, is another thing (Phew!)

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This is a quite embarrassing story. Not something one would normally admit to, but people write unusual things on blogs.

It concerns one of the first long haul flights that I was ever on.

Nowadays, as a seasoned flyer, I always have a good meal before the flight. I don’t suffer from air sickness of any kind and I don’t care for the stuff they call airline food. Back then, however, I was a novice and ended up on board without any breakfast other than a cup of coffee. My stomach was empty – of food anyhow.

All was well for about twenty or thirty minutes and then it started.

The obvious solution would have been to get up and go to the toilet. But easy options aren’t the way I have gone through life so far.

Also it was a big plane, a 747, and the toilets were quite a bit away from my seat. I would face a long walk down the narrow aisle.

Not that the walk itself was the problem. It was just that whoever designs airline seats has arranged things so that the nose and ears of the person sitting down is just about at the same height as the bottom of the person walking casually past.

You see the predicament?

In any case, I found myself in a window seat with two other seats to negotiate before I got to the aisle. Such was the pressure building up that I feared the exertion of hopping over the additional seats would make the whole purpose of the journey somewhat redundant.

There was nothing for it but to stay where I was, with the unfortunate choice being either bursting or releasing some of the pressure. Not unnaturally I chose to do the latter option.

As these things go it was a substantial outcome. But the drone of the plane engines (they were a lot louder in those days, I think, I hope, weren’t they?) seemed to drown out any other background noises.

I didn’t hear a thing.

I double checked by having a quick look at the person unfortunate enough to be sitting beside me, but there was no sign in the expression on his face that anything untoward had happened. Either that or he was a professional poker player with a practiced deadpan expression – or in a state of semi consciousness as a result of the concussive force emanating from the seat beside him.

My confidence grew. I thought of the famous campfire scene from Blazing Saddles and let a few more go in tribute.

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I was so happy at the relief and at the fact that all was undetected that I allowed myself a triumphant smile, and then even a laugh. The movie I was watching was a comedy so my laughter didn’t look out of place either.

It was all good.

Hang on a minute.

All was not as good as it seemed.

Cut the laughter and cue serious worried face.

I suddenly realized that all this time I had been wearing the headphones the flight attendant had given us for the movies they were showing. No wonder I had heard nothing!

Oh dear me! What had I done?

Well, I knew what I had done, of course. The big question now was, did anyone else know? Had they heard me doing it?

I looked again at the man in the seat beside me. Again no perceivable reaction on his face that indicated that anything out of the ordinary had happened, although now I was aware of them I saw that he too was wearing the headphones.   

I was relieved a bit, but still very curious. And when I get curious about something I have to try to find an answer.

So there was nothing for it but let rip again, this time with my headphones off.

And that’s what I did.

Thankfully, in the interests of the scientific experiment now under way, the quality of the offending item had not diminished in force. A guy knows about these things even without any audio feedback.

To my great relief, in every meaning of the word, I still didn’t hear a thing. The drone of the airplane engines had indeed drowned out any other sounds.

It was a magnificently liberating experience and from that day on I have never looked back, as it were.

Further experimentation revealed that the same undetectable result could be achieved even on much smaller airplanes. Commercial jets I’m talking about, of course, this is not a sport to indulge in on a single engined Cesna or something like that.

I also found out that it is possible I have been saving the airlines lucky enough to win my custom a small fortune. As you know the air in airplanes these days is all re-circulated and, as the methane content of a fart is lighter than air, the captured gas therefore contributes to keeping the airplane airborne with a consequent saving on fuel. That’s my story anyhow.

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And the good news just keeps on coming.

Independent research confirms that a person’s sense of smell is greatly suppressed in the reduced cabin air pressure, which incidentally is also why airplane food tastes so bad. 

So now if you are on an airplane and sitting beside someone who is chuckling to himself – or herself, yes ladies your secret is out – you’ll know the real reason why!

One day it might even be me!!!

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Two Post Tuesday

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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It’s not often that I post twice in one day. I did the funny post earlier but there is something else that I want to say and today is the day to say it. Strap yourselves in!

I don’t remember where I was when JKF was shot. It was a bit too far back in time for me to be worrying about such things. I do remember where I was when I saw my first movie about the assassination, though. I was in a cinema. The movie was called Executive Action and starred Burt Lancaster. Some critics panned it at the time but I thought it was very good, based on a conspiracy theme naturally enough. I actually thought it was better that Stone’s acclaimed effort, ‘JFK’, made many years later.

I also remember where I was this day eleven years ago. It was the day that the world changed for ever and I was sitting in my study at home battling with a few spreadsheets for a business plan I was putting together. The TV was on in the background and the normal programs suddenly cut to what was happening in New York.

 

World Trade Center, New York City, September 11, 2001

Of course that was the end of my spreadsheets for the day. I became totally enthralled in the news coverage which was to say the least confused. By that time the first tower was belching out a steady stream of smoke. It was clearly on fire and had been very badly damaged.

The reporters were speculating as to what may have been the cause. They talked about ‘accidents’ and eyewitness reports of a small private aircraft hitting the building. But, to anyone with any wit at all, it had to have been much more than a small airplane to do that amount of damage to a building that huge.

Then, as I continued to watch, the second plane hit the other tower. Some of the reporters still could not come to grips with what was happening. The second plane was clearly a large commercial jet and, equally clearly, it had been flown deliberately into the second tower.

This was the real deal. And all of the multi-billion dollar military/intelligence defense network had been caught with their trousers down round their collective ankles.

A massive terror attack was in progress and we were able to watch it in real time on our televisions. It was at the same time mesmerizing, engrossing and, not least, horrifying.

The horrific nature of what had happened became clearer when everyone began to realize that, not only had many innocent people probably lost their lives when the airplanes had struck the buildings, but also that there was little or no hope of saving those on the floors above where the impact had occurred. It got even worse when some of the trapped people threw themselves out of the building and could been seen falling to the ground and to certain death.

Emergency services rushed to the scene. Many acts of extreme bravery followed as police and firefighters went into the burning buildings with little or no regard for their own safety. I can’t say this for sure, but I imagine at least some of them knew there was little chance they would get back out again. But they did it anyway.

Then we heard that the Pentagon had been the target of a further attack and yet another airplane, also bound we were told for the Washington DC area, had gone down somewhere en route.

In all 2,977 people were murdered as a result of the terrorist attacks that morning.

We know who was responsible for the attacks. We know that many of their terrorist comrades, including the figurehead Bin Laden, have since been killed. And we know the terrible cost in terms of lost lives and serious injuries to the various armed forces who were sent to do that job.

September 11 is now officially ‘Patriot Day’, a day of remembrance. And we should all take at least a moment in honor of the victims.

Sadly the aftermath of these terrorist attacks eleven years ago brought only knee-jerk reactions from jerk politicians. They had the audacity to call it the Patriot Act, but it attacks the freedom of innocent law-abiding citizens just as much as it does the terrorists and criminals.

Contaminated by the hellish liberal inspired ‘guilt’ that now pervades all government decisions and means that it is no longer perceived as acceptable if we take our own side in a fight, a raft of idiotic, unnecessary and unfair legislation has, and is, being enacted.

This is being done in the name of defending the homeland, but unwilling to only target the national, ethnic or religious groups who are responsible for the vast majority of the terror, poor old law-abiding Joe Public gets targeted as well.

Everyone is now guilty until they can prove their innocence. Get on an airplane at an airport and you are treated as a potential terrorist and irradiated and probed and so forth. Open a bank account and you are treated as a potential terrorist trying to launder money – despite the fact that it was the banks themselves who were doing that job.

It’s not that any of this is a great hardship. It’s just that it is completely unnecessary and unproductive. It is the typical politician’s and bureaucrat’s way of trying to con the populace by substituting activity for real progress.

A lot of potential terrorist attacks in America and elsewhere have been thwarted during the past eleven years, but not one of them as a result of all the overt claptrap at airports and so forth.

Will it change? Will sanity and intelligence take over?

Not a chance.

Will it get worse? Will the bureaucrats’ hunger for control and interference increase?

Of course it will, regardless of whether the regime is Republicrat or Democrican.

So who really did win?

The terrorists may well have lost, but the people certainly didn’t win! 

Tarzan Takes A Vacation

“Fight Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I used to be friends with a guy from Northern Ireland. We are going back thirty years here so quite a while ago. We’ve lost touch since as you tend to do with some if not most acquaintances.

This story is about his Dad.

As you may or may not know the weather in Ireland is awful. Cold, wet, windy, rains every day with a ‘y’ in it, or so the locals say. One traveler from Africa once remarked that it was like living under an elephant!

The result has been a continual decline in vacation resorts, towns and villages there. People still come for the golf, there is renewed interest in that with the recent success of Rory McIlroy and Darren Clark. But on the whole the locals prefer to get away for one or two weeks to a location with at least the chance of a bit of heat and sunshine.

But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the period in which this story is set, foreign travel was a fairly new phenomenon for most ordinary people.

But my friend’s father and mother thought it would be a nice and different break for them and they booked two weeks in the south of Spain.

They arrived without incident, booked in to their hotel and that first night just had a meal in the hotel restaurant and went to bed. Traveling is always tiring.

The next day they partook of the buffet breakfast that most of the touristy hotels in Spain provide and after that went back to their room, got their towels and creams and so forth, and headed for the beach, which was only about 100 yards or so from the hotel.

My friend’s mother lay down on a towel to take some rays, as they say, and his father who wasn’t really the type of guy who liked to lay about all day, got a beach chair from which he had a better vantage point to survey the beach and sea activities.

We’ll never know whether it was the heat, or just the sight of bare heaving glistening continental bosoms, (they are not a bit bashful in some parts of Europe), but after about half an hour on the beach it all became too much for my friend’s Dad. All of sudden, without any warning whatsoever, he jumped out of his beach chair, started to yell like Tarzan, beating his chest at the same time, and ran towards the Mediterranean Sea.

There was a slight slope in the beach and by the time he had reached the water he had built up a considerable head of steam. His momentum took him quite a bit into the water, not quite waist deep but getting there.

Now, I should say that the Med is no Pacific Ocean, but there are nevertheless waves and as everyone knows the seventh is usually bigger than those preceding it.

And just when my friend’s father reached about as deep as he could on his feet he decided to dive through the next wave, which was a relatively big one. According to his wife, who was looking as this spectacle with more than a little bemusement, he was still doing his version of a Tarzan yell and beating his chest. And so into the sea he dived still yelling and open mouthed.

I forgot to tell you he wore dentures, which is rather crucial to the rest of the story.

Yes, when the wave passed and he resurfaced not a tooth of any kind had he in his mouth.

Of course he frantically searched for both sets of gnashers.

I love watching when people who don’t know how to dive underwater try it. Their ass goes way up in the air, their head maybe six inches or a foot under, and then after maybe two or three seconds they re-emerge gasping and spluttering as if they’ve just been down to the bottom of sea. I imagine that’s what he did.

But you know what the sea is like. Both sets of false teeth were long gone, never to be found again.

I have heard tell of people packing extra underwear, or shoes (hey ladies), or even glasses as emergency back-ups. But I have never heard of anyone packing an extra set of teeth.

My friend’s father wasn’t to be the first one to do it and so he had to spend the next twelve and a half days of his vacation completely toothless, only able to eat soft mushy stuff and soup, but having to avoid the juicy steaks completely.

And he looked like a prat, maybe not quite as bad as the photo below but you get the idea.

toothless

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Be Very Careful How You Grab A Granny

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I think the moral of this blog post is, if you have to grab a granny at all then be very careful how you do it; and if you do do it hang on as tightly as you can no matter how much she struggles.

It rather strange advice I know, but there is a reason for giving it.

First of all, here’s granny Lucerne.

skydive01

As you can see she is in good spirits. I don’t know whether she had a bucket list, but one of the things that this 80 year old granny wanted to do and had been planning for a decade was to skydive.

As for myself, it has never been an ambition of mine to jump out of an airplane that wasn’t in trouble. Although I would much rather that they would stick a parachute under my seat on an airplane instead of a bit of glorified polystyrene, I mean on a flight from L.A. to New York for example how much ocean is there to be worried about?

But back to 80 year old granny Lucerne. For a while everything went well. She was very happy and excited by the prospect of her first skydive parachute jump.

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The trouble started when she got to the door of the small plane and peered outside at planet earth below.

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As her skydiving buddy, to whom she was attached, also tried to push through the open door ready for the jump, granny’s reluctance turned to panic.

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She was heard shouting “No”, but by that time it was too late, the whole process had gained its own momentum.

skydive05

And out they tumbled.

skydive06

And tumbled, and tumbled, plummeting earthwards at an accelerating rate

skydive07

By now granny must have been in a blind panic because instead of relaxing and going with her skydiving buddy, she flailed about and started to slip out of the harness that was holding them together. Remember just the buddy had the chute.

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The next few shots show just how far out the harness her struggling had caused her to slip. By the way, the hand in the bottom left of the photo belongs to the photographer who had realized what was happening and guided himself over to them to try to help.

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Another photo also showing just how far out of the harness granny had managed to wriggle.

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Eventually her skydiving buddy gets the chute opened. (He has got a complete right leg in case you’re wondering, it’s just the angle of the photo!)

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And with granny held in what had to be a vice like grip they both made it to the ground, a little worse for wear but thankfully, alive.

skydive12

And here’s the video.

Enjoy!

Lost In Transit

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 

 

I wrote a little while ago about Tommy who got lost in the fog in a field beside his own house, and about Thomas Nutall the worst explorer in the world. Well, sense of direction, or the lack thereof, has come up many times in my journeys.

I used to travel on business with a guy called “Bill”. Bill was a nice man, old-school, good manners, fairly prim and proper I suppose you would say. He was in his seventies when I got to know him and worked along with him.

He should have been retired from business but he had a wife who sounded a lot better from a considerable distance and luckily she was not unhappy about getting rid of him for a while – as often as possible as it turns out!

Anyway, domestic bliss aside, Bill made frequent plane trips which obviously meant using airports.

Getting him on to a plane usually wasn’t so bad, although if he stopped to buy something or talk to somebody and you walked on without him, he would always be the last man on to the plane.

But the real fun was when Bill got off the plane. Even on short trips, where the gin and tonics hadn’t been flowing in his direction.

Actually, I’ll come back to that in a moment – I’d forgotten about this until I started to write this blog post.

Bill even got lost once inside the airplane itself. I mean actually inside the airplane! Can you believe it?

He had got up, I presume to go to the bathroom – no, hang on, I absolutely refuse to call what they have on airplanes a “bathroom”; for a start there’s no “bath”, and for another thing there’s no “room” either; it’s a “toilet”, and a small one at that, okay! And for another thing why are they always so small, whether you are on a huge 747 Jumbo jet (I haven’t yet been on one of those Airbus monsters) or a piddly small 737, the toilets are still the same size. All for the sake of being able to offer a couple of extra seats to keep more passengers total discomfort. End rant. Sorry about that, back to today’s blog.

As I was saying, he had got up, I presume to go to the bathroom. There had been a queue at the toilet closest to where Bill was sitting, so he wandered to another one on the far side, and at the back, of the plane (it was 747, small toilets but a big plane!)

But when he opened the door and walked out he didn’t know where he was! I mean, he knew where he was, he knew he was on a plane, but he didn’t know where his seat was and he couldn’t remember the number. And his routine was to put boarding passes, tickets and other paperwork neatly away in his carry on bag before take-off, so he had nothing to refer to.

He had a walk round first class and was gently ushered out of it by a polite, but firm, flight attendant, before he managed to make his way up the stairs. He inspected business class but saw nothing familiar. Then he spent the next twenty minutes walking up and down the wrong aisle looking for his seat in coach.

I watched what was going on. But I didn’t help him out. And I kept my head down so that he wouldn’t see me. We were sitting together and I didn’t want to give him a clue as to where to look. It was too funny and I was enjoying it, much better that whatever film they were showing at the time. And I knew there was a limit to where he could go.

After a good half hour he showed up.

“You were away for a while,” I said when he got back.

“I didn’t feel too well,” he told me. “And I went to ask one of the flight attendants for some water and an aspirin.”

“Oh?” I answered. “I though maybe you’d got lost or something.”

“No, no, nothing like that.”

I just left it, he’d already given me enough entertainment. He went to sleep and that was it until we landed.

 

Which is actually what I started to say in the first place. Bill was just a normal bloke when the airplane doors opened and everyone started to funnel out into the terminal. It was when he got out into the open that the fun started.

For some strange reason Bill invariably took off like a bullet. And always in the completely wrong direction. If he was going for a connecting flight he headed for baggage claim and the exit. If he was at his journey’s end he headed for connecting flights. And all at top speed.

The first few times I tried to run after him, but it was hard work, he had a remarkable turn of speed for an older man. After that I just let him run wherever he thought he was going. Once he even walked from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 at Heathrow airport, and back again, and that is quite a distance despite what the airport brochures tell you. It was perhaps fortunate that he didn’t get on the underground train and end up in the middle of London somewhere.

By the way, when an airport brochure says “close” reckon on at least half a mile or more, and if have lots of luggage that’s a long way.

Remarkably though, he always turned up – eventually. He never said what had happened or where he had been. And I never asked, so I don’t know.

I’m certain that made two of us!

 

 

Have you had similar experiences? Send them along. Let the world know what is happening before it is too late.

The Worst Airport Greeting In The World

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 

This is a sort of follow on from yesterday’s blog about Mr Nicholas Scotti, the worst tourist in the world.

Today’s is about Mrs Josephine Williams and her family, who in 1975 went to meet a long-lost brother at Heathrow Airport (London).

Eventually the traveller wandered into the airport lounge, greatly relaxed by the in-flight drinking facilities, and was immediately smothered with the kisses of Mrs Williams and her sisters.

“Gee, this is great,” he kept saying, all the while cuddling Mrs Williams in a manner which she later described as “not like a brother.”

His enthusiasm for British hospitality was modified, however, when Mr Williams shook his hand firmly and ushered him to a parked car.

They first suspected that something might be amiss when their long-lost relative tried to jump out of the car while travelling at speed up the motorway.

When told that he was being taken to a family reunion in Coventry, he replied, “Take my money. Here’s my wallet. Take it and let me go.”

Slumped miserably in the front seat, he added, “This is the first time I have been to England and I am being kidnapped.”

“I thought from the beginning he wasn’t my brother,” Mrs Williams said later, “but my sisters wouldn’t listen. They said I was only twelve when he left for America and wouldn’t remember.”

They had taken home a complete stranger!  I don’t know if they ever met up with their brother or not.

 

The Worst Tourist In The World

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 

I don’t know whether any of you have heard of Mr Nicholas Scotti? I hadn’t until I read about him on the internet. But his story is one that fits well into the ‘stupidity’ category that is one of the underlying themes of this blog.

Mr Scotti holds the title of being ‘The Worst Tourist In The World’, or certainly one of the least successful ones.

Nicholas Scotti is of Italian descent and is from San Francisco, USA. In 1977 he decided he would like to visit his relatives in his native Italy.

An inexperienced traveller, Mr Scotti booked his vacation trip using a travel agent and on the appointed day made his way to the airport for the flight. Getting on a plane was a relatively easy and quick process back in 1977 (oh, those were the days!!), and Mr Scotti made it on to the plane without incident. He settled down for the long flight.

En route the plane made a one-hour fuel stop at Kennedy Airport and the passengers disembarked.

But Nicholas Scotti didn’t know about the re-fuelling stop. He thought that he had arrived in Rome, Italy. He duly left the airport and spent two days in New York believing he was in Rome.

When his nephews were not there to meet him, Mr Scotti just assumed they had been delayed in the heavy Rome traffic they had mentioned often in their letters.

While tracking down their address, the great traveler could not help noticing that modernization and new construction had brushed aside most, if not all, of the ancient city’s famous landmarks, but that didn’t deter him.

He also noticed that many people spoke English with a distinct American accent. However, he just assumed that Americans got everywhere. Furthermore, he assumed it was for their benefit that so many of the street signs were written in English.

Mr Scotti spoke very little English himself and next asked a policeman (in Italian) the way to the bus depot. As chance would have it, the policeman came from Naples and replied fluently in Italian, which only helped to reinforce his belief that he was in Rome, not New York.

After twelve hours travelling round on a bus, the driver got fed up with him and handed him over to a second policeman. This one was not Italian and a brief argument ensued during which Mr Scotti expressed amazement at the Rome police force employing someone who did not speak their own language.

Scotti’s brilliance is seen in the fact that even when told he was in New York, he refused to believe it. The man was a veritable genius!

To get Mr Scotti on a plane back to San Francisco, he was raced to the airport in a police car with sirens screaming. Even then he remained unconvinced. “See,” he said to his interpreter, “I know I’m in Italy. That’s how they drive.”

 

 

TSA Vid

Hi,

Back to flying and airports again today.

Another good video (courtesy of AirportsMadeSimple.com).

Hope you enjoy.

 

Sometimes The Idiot’s In The Front Seat

Here’s another short video.

I don’t want to make this blog all about fights and airports, although you’d be amazed how many strange things happen on those journeys. And I also don’t want to put anyone off flying. I do it all the time and it is a very safe mode of transport, despite the hassles at the airports these days.

Sometimes, however, the idiot is in the front seat of the plane. Oh dear!