One of the things I've found difficult during this trip is typing on planes. It's not the plane itself that makes it difficult. Turbulence may convert words into new ones, the person in front of me may recline too quickly and put a crack in my laptop's case, but those are minor inconveniences. The bigger issue is the person next to me.
It's not a question of whether I'm going to write about them. The sane ones don't usually produce good writing material, and the crazies don't seem to care what's going on with the computer anyway. It's just the feeling that someone is looking over my words as I type them out, then revise them, and then revise them again. It doesn't matter that it'll end up being read en masse later; it's the immediacy of readership that unnerves me, making me contort myself around the screen to shield it from prying eyes.
Maybe it's just that I've taken the liberty of peering into others' notetaking so much over the past four weeks. Sitting in an aisle seat affords me that luxury, and it's an interesting glimpse into others' lives. The lady one row up and across the aisle from me has been shuffling some large cards, mouthing the words to herself. In bold 24-point text, it's not hard to make out what she's reading.
"Let me take a moment to toast, I mean ROAST, Jim, our head of corporate sales." I wonder if the capitalization of roast is meant to be shouted, or if it's just to remind her of why we're all really here. As she goes on, there are a number of other prompts. "Funny you should say that, Mike. (LAUGH AT JIM)" Were I giving Jim's ROAST, I'd probably end up reading the entire thing out loud, spoiling the planned spontaneity of the event. Watching the lady rehearse a subdued chuckle at an imaginary audience, I wondered how it would turn out for her.
Compared to some of my recent flights, most of the people around me right now seem relatively normal. JetBlue can be a tricky airline for speaking to fellow passengers because of the television found in every seatback. Even the most technologically backward-seeming person will have a set of headphones with them, and before I can turn to ask where they're from or whether they lament the loss of kosher meal options in modern air travel, they'll be plugged in, watching reruns of football or a trashy talk show.
I've resorted to piecing together identities from what I can see. Next to me at the moment is a quiet older couple. Whereas couples usually travel with the women in the middle seat, these two have switched roles. In his sleep, the man keeps slumping closer and closer to me, until his coarse beard brushes against my shoulder. Then he'll jerk up a bit, settle back, and we'll start the cycle once more.
The middle-aged gentleman across the aisle also has drifted off to sleep, although he started the flight in a much more agitated state. While the last few passengers were looking in the overhead bins for space, I had taken out the phone Wired.com loaned me to make one last Twitter update. As I did, I heard him make a sort of sputtering yelp, the kind of sound you make when you knock over a cup of coffee on your desk. I looked up to find him glaring at me angrily. He struggled for a moment, and then pointed a finger. "You," he spat. "The phone. Off. Now."
I've seen plenty of strange things, but his anger caught me off guard. Who was this man, and what about the phone irritated him so profoundly? People were still wandering the aisles and a flight attendant chatted with a pilot through the open cockpit door. I replied that I would do so once finished with what I was doing.
"No!" he demanded, his voice raising. His wife, sitting next to him, rolled her eyes without turning her attention from her magazine. "It must be off! Must! It is the law!" He punctuated the last word by driving down his fist, paused for a moment, then added, "Unless you are an air marshal."
I'm typically a polite guy, but I had to laugh at the strange remark. "So, you know about aviation law, then?" I asked. I wasn't trying to goad him on, but the door was open and I wanted to see what was on the other side.
His eyes still smoldering, he turned to the screen in front of him, folding his arms across his chest. "I am one," he sputtered.
One didn't need to spend long regarding his brown loafers or the coffee stain on his shirt to realize that the claim was absurd. It would've been more believable had he claimed to be the Queen of England. His wife, magazine now closed, leaned forward just enough to meet eyes and gave me a look that said At least you're not married to him.
At around four weeks into the trip, I'm headed down the home stretch. Confirming what both common sense and a flight surgeon told me at the outset, flying for a month straight is not the healthiest pursuit. Among other things, the dryness of recycled air has been taxing, chapping my lips and cracking the skin on my knuckles.
To combat dehydration, I've taken to drinking water much more regularly than I would on terra firma. The natural outcome, of course, is that I've needed to take more frequent trips to the restroom. It's one of the reasons I'll pick aisle seats during flights.
It was on my most recent trip to the back, the sixth on this flight alone, when I noticed the eyes of several surrounding passengers on me. What's with this guy? How many times does one really need to pee?
Their expression, curiosity mixed with the restlessness from hours sitting in a long metal tube, was immediately familiar. It's the same one I've worn through the last 60-odd flights. As I walked past, hands on the overhead bins for balance, I realized that I had joined the club of eccentric travelers who find their way into stories among families and friends upon arriving. The half-deaf grandmother who shouted a conversation with her daughter for the whole cabin to hear. The man who clipped his toenails in-flight, sending stray pieces shooting onto his seatmates.
And now me, the guy who obsessively rubs lotion on his knuckles, stopping only to head back to the bathroom for a seventh time.
Photo: Brendan Ross / Wired.com
Brendan Ross is spending a month flying JetBlue and living in airports. Follow Terminal Man’s travels on Twitter @Flyered and check out his itinerary on Google Maps. An RSS feed of his posts is available here. You can also track his flights on Tuesday to Oakland, Long Beach and Sacramento, and those on Wednesday to Long Beach and San Francisco through FlightAware. And check out his previous posts here.
