My experiences with Air Travel

Residents of cities like KC are disadvantaged due to the lack of direct flights to most destinations. If one absolutely can't avoid connecting flights, the itinerary should be chosen such that it allows enough time at every point of connection. My thumb rule is atleast an hour for domestic flights and atleast 3 hours for international connections. All said and done folks, one can never plan enough for a trip that involves multiple flights and I'd like to share the example of my first trip to India this year that just didn't go as planned.

My friend who had volunteered to drop me at the airport showed up 30 minutes late at my house. I was so frustrated with the waiting that I just lost my cool and suddenly he knew he wasn't dealing with the friend that he knew all these years. Anyways, we reached the airport 2 hours before departure and after checking in and security check, I started my long wait at the gate. Ten minutes before scheduled departure, I started wondering why they hadn't started boarding yet. So I walked upto the gate where I could see the display and sure enough, with no announcement whatsoever, the flight was now delayed by 30minutes. Twenty minutes later, they delayed it by another hour and so on until finally, when we departed we were delayed by 2.5 hours. I thought I could still make my connection because this would leave me with an hour at Chicago. But the airline had different plans, they made us wait at the tarmac for an hour supposedly because some radar equipment at Chicago was malfunctioning and they expected every flight out of Chicago to be equally delayed. So we ended up reaching Chicago 3.5 hours late, but wait we had to wait another 30mins to find an empty gate that the flight could park at. When the flight was finally parked, the gate wouldn' move down to attach to the flight's door. After 40 minutes of trying to fix it, the pilot got the bright idea that he could taxi to another gate to get the passengers deplaned. So he asked all passengers to get seated with seat-belts on and just as we were ready, the gate was attached to the door and yipee we were out.

So I ran to the flight status display and sure enough my connecting flight to Brussels had departed on time. I then used a courtesy phone and called the airline to re-schedule/re-route me to my final destination, Chennai because I was well aware that there were atleast 3 other options available. The first agent that I spoke to was being difficult and gave me only a couple of options 1) To fly the next day on the same flight which meant that I had to spend the day in Chicago 2) To take a flight to London and then to Mumbai and from there to Chennai which would have got me in there 18hours beyond my scheduled arrival. I absolutely lost it at this point and if she had been anywhere infront of me, I might have reached to pull out her jugular. She hung up on me!! and that was probably the best thing that happened to me on that day. The next agent I spoke to was sweet and re-routed me Chicago to London(American) and London to Chennai via British Airways.

Ofcourse, American Airlines lived up to its standards and the next flight started 2 hours late. When they started distributing the meals, I asked for vegetarian and the attendant gave me an arrogant reply:"Sir, you ought to have requested special meals in advance." I replied that I had confirmed my vegetarian meals thrice but was unable to catch the flight that had special meals for me because American Airlines messed up. The flight landed 2 hrs late in London and the one hour for connection was just enough given that Heathrow is not a small airport by any standards and I had to take a long bus ride to get to my other flight. My journey from thereon was uneventful and I reached home only 4 hours beyond my scheduled arrival. It could have been worse.

The Mowdown

On deciding to mow my lawn all by myself, little did I know what I was getting into. Buying and hauling a mower when you own a Pick-up truck maybe a cakewalk but fitting one in a Corolla can be quite a challenge. After dialing the 100pound motor through all possible angles, I was able to finally zero in one one that would take it through entirely. Alas, the mower was firmly in my car's backseat....and with a relatively short ride, I reached home fine.

The doors in the sedans don't open 90degrees, they're probably made to ensure that things can't be taken out easily from the car. After yanking and twisting and pushing and rolling, I decided that I needed help to get it out from the car. So I called my friend with the idea that while he tries twisting it from inside, I'll pull it out once we adjust the twist to the exact angle. However, my trusted(but impatient) friend ended up on the wrong side and literally yanked it out in no time thus landing the mower with a thud on the floor and in the process, delivering scratches to my car. Avoiding this was exactly why I called for assistance in the first place!! Well, atleast the mower was out and I wasn't feeling half as bad for the scratches as my highly apologetic friend was. Besides, my car was no new shining Corvette to get worked up about the scratches.

Ok.All set and ready to mow was what I thought and with the minimal assembly that it required, the mower was up and ready. It did need gasoline and oil though. Pouring the engine oil was easy and I had picked up gasoline in a nice plastic 2.5 gallon can that they sell with a spout. Now, I did not know that it had a spout though...so I opened the cap and started pouring gas into the mower...guess what I was pouring more outside the mower than into the mower's tank. I knew there had to be a better way to do this. So I called another one of my trusted buddies, who asked me to reverse the direction of the long tube attached to plastic gas can and screw it tight with the lid...boy a flexible spout that I could bend right into the mower's tank...Sweet...that's how you do it!!

Armed with the mower, I pushed down my driveway and after priming it and pulling on the blade handles, I turned the ignition. Kehnkehan..Kehnkehan..not lyrics of some Hindi song...that was the sound that the mower made, more like someone clearing his throat at high decibel level. After several tries, I started wondering if these electric start mowers are any good at all. That's when I realized, anytime you buy electronic goods with batteries, you have to charge them and charge them for a long-time. If I had to mow on the same day, it had to be the recoil starter...except I could not find the coil that I needed to pull. So I went back to the mower's auxiliary parts, found the recoil starter and used the manual to fix it to the mower.

Once again, armed with the mower, I pushed down my driveway and after pulling on the blade handle, I started it with one mighty pull and almost tore my biceps in the process..but the mower started. It was a self-propelled mower, so I thought that if I gave it the initial momentum, it would start moving by itself. So I got the mower on my yard and boy it was cutting fine...success at last. The mower was cutting fine but I didn't see why it was called "self-propelled"...the only propelling was being done by me which on a hot summer day can be really tiring.

Another problem was that my yard had not been mowed for the last 2 weeks over which we had had 6 thunderstorm warnings, heavy rains on 5 days and flash flood watches for the county on atleast 5 days. As a result, the grass was atleast 7 inches tall and was moist which for someone experienced with mowing chore meant emptying the bag very often. However, I was so happy about chopping down grass from the yard that I failed to realize that the bunches of grass being spewed out from the sides were because the bag intended for the grass was full and had to be emptied. I did however empty it once before I was able to get most of my front yard. The damage had been done, there was dead grass all over my front yard, there was lots of dead grass on my driveway and literally every part of my body was oozing with sweat. My front yard never seemed so big...well I still had to get the sides.

The side of my house slopes down between a tree and my neighbor's fence. So the mower has a natural tendency to slope towards the fence and get stuck in it. The recovery involved a pullback up the slope and a change in its direction until it sloped downwards and got stuck in the fence again. Amidst all this, I felt very fortunate with whatever little mowing was being done. I had still not understood what self-propelled meant. Anyways, I was completely exhausted and after filling a couple of the Home-Depot yard waste bags with grass(there was more dead grass on my yard), I called it a day (a really long-day at that).

It's amazing how new ideas come to life on a different day, or at a different place. The day after my first tryst (or ordeal) with mowing, I decided to get my backyard. This time however, I wanted to make the 'self' in the self-propelled mower work. After exploring the mower, I saw one handle right by the blade handle and pushed it..the mower moved forward. It was so convenient that I was kicking myself for not trying it out the day before. It was so much easier and I also had my battery charged. The ignition start worked fine and was so much more convenient than having to pull the recoil starter with which you risk the muscles in your back and arms. I still had not realized that I had to empty the bag often and thought that the mower was a piece of junk for directing all the grass outside instead of getting it into the bag. There was a lot of dead grass in my backyard too.

The problem with dead grass is that it forms a layer blocking sunlight and water to all the grass beneath it thus making parts of the yard barren. This makes your yard look really bad. After my first mowing attempt, I have been mowing on a weekly basis and emptying the bag very often. However, I did have to spend a considerable amount of time this weekend pouring top soil and seeds into the barren areas and I hope my yard starts looking as good as it was before I started mowing!!!