2018: Day 72 the one with a wild day of travel to the windy city
Word count 160,730 + 2,000 or 162,730 of 1,000,000
Dear Reader,
Things were working out just fine on the way to Chicago. I got in line just in time for things to work out. The airline has these boarding groups and people were all standing around waiting. Announcements starting occurring. People knew from the first words what was was happening. Apparently, air traffic control conditions were delaying the flight. Sure the flight before had landed about 11 minutes behind schedule, but that happens from time to time. This delay was probably related to the weather in Chicago. Snow had been projected. A 90% chance of precipitation for that city. It was one of those very short leash type of delays. People had to stay right around the boarding area and just sort of watch and wait. I’m all for safety, but delay details are not very specific. If my phone alert had just said that due to snow in Chicago the flight was delayed, then I would have shrugged and moved on with the waiting game. Things in the world of airlines do not have reason codes or explanations. Time lapses and people wait. That is how it goes. It is probably not the best model for customer service. At this point, I’m not entirely sure the airline industry is worried about customer service anyway. It seems to be a logistics business at this point.
I just realized that during the course of writing in offline mode within Google Docs the spell check feature does not highlight things with angry red squiggles. That could very well speed up my writing. Even though it totally makes sense to hit spell check at the end of the document I tend to keep hitting it every few paragraphs. Sure it might be easier to just write without error, but that does not really happen. For some reason some words and letters get reverse during the course of thunderous typing. I guess this trip will test my theories on writing without spell check. I’m going to land in Chicago and pretty much have to upload this blog post. That will be an adventure. Things are usually pretty hectic that time of night at an airport terminal. Maybe this flight will have Wi-Fi. The airplane is a Boeing B757-300. It seems nice enough my seat is actually pretty comfortable. I know it sounds somewhat silly to keep writing about airplane seats, but sometimes they are fine and sometimes they are horrible. It does not really seem to have any rhyme or reason. It probably has to do with wear and tear.
Speaking of where and tear I ordered two vintage Margaritaville shirts on eBay last week. They both have the exact same tag as my favorite shirt. I’m hoping that means that my favorite shirt will soon have 2 backups. Shopping by pictures of a tag and some size information is probably not the ideal method of buying an epic button down shirt. That is what I ended up doing and it might work out in my favor. We will see how it goes. The satellite internet I’m about to buy access to is probably not all that different from what those folks sailing around the world can get. I’m pretty sure that I did not need to learn a ton of information about internet on the ocean. The odds of getting me out on a ship to sail around the world are very low. I’m not really a fan of boating or sailing or any nautical variant of those terms. That is one of those things you have probably learned about me. That does not stop me from wondering how phones and internet work at sea. Maybe it something that just strikes my interest. Obviously, it must be something that I at least enjoy learning about. Several minutes were spent looking at hardware and prices that I will never use or need.
We will see if the wireless internet on this flight works shortly. We are about to take off on a two hour journey from Denver to Chicago. That is about to happen. Well it was about to happen. We apparently just connected back to the terminal walkway. Ok now we rolled back a little bit and things appear to be going along the normal take off process. All right here we go. I’m always curious when I see people with highly cracked smartphone screens. I know that screens are really very delicate and that they break from time to time. People drop them or they just get crushed in a bag. Both time that I have destroyed a screen that phone was almost immediately sent for repair. That is not something that I tolerate very well. It looks like I was totally connected to the wrong internet… my flight statu is showing details for Washington, DC (DCA) to San Francisco, CA (SFO). That sounds like a very long flight. I wonder how many time that flight stops or if it is a nonstop. The longest flight I have ever been on was from Los Angeles, California to Tokyo, Japan. I mostly remember thinking that next time I’m booking a ticket that is not the last row in the airplane. That was the last time that I sat in the very last row of an airplane.
Right now I’m just typing away and waiting for airplane to accelerate toward take off. We are sort of rolling along the runway right now. I’m guessing that pretty quickly our accent to 30,000 feet will be starting. Those first few minutes of a flight are not really my favorite. Right now all I’m getting from the website is a message that says, “Internet service will be available for purchase once a connection is established.” Ok —- I just rebooted my Chromebook and check my Google Pixel 2 XL phone. Neither device is able to connect to the internet on this flight. That is frustrating. It will probably continue to be frustrating for the next 2 hours. I guess at some point they will bring me a snack. That will not really make up for a lack of internet connection, but a snack is a snack. Today it was a snack and a soda. Oddly enough that seemed to be ok… the internet allowed a connection. That was super exciting. The speed is highly questionable. I’ll try to run a speed test on it shortly.
I tried to take a photograph out the airplane window, but things are a little hazy. Things look ok from where I am sitting, but the photographs are darker and a little hazy. Maybe when my phone connects to the cloud the Google Photos the AI will be able to make them auto awesome. At the moment none of them are worthy of being a thumbnail for the blog post today. I tried to run a speedtest and that did not work at all. It directed me back to the airline website. That makes sense. I imagine the speed test would be very interesting. Oh —- I almost forgot to give you an update on my Amazon music service experience. I did finally notice the difference between unlimited and prime music. A bunch of albums that were saved to my phone are now blanked out. They are sort of darker than the other albums and they do not play. I guess you could say they are letting me know that they are not lost, but they are not mine to listen to at this time. Maybe half of the albums on my phone were apparently in that bucket. That is pretty much the only difference I have seen so far. It is probably not enough to make me want to subscribe again, but in full disclosure I did notice.
I really do enjoy writing on an airplane. This should have been a two hour time slot devoted to writing a short story. For some reason, I spent a good chunk of my time just looking out the window. That time right before it starts getting dark is really visually striking. I may have eaten a bag of chips and a slice of cheesecake. On the brighter side of things breakfast and lunch were both Soylent. It does appear that the 7-11 near my hotel sells Soylent. That should be an interesting shopping trip. I wonder how many people visit 7-11 wanting to get Soylent. You can order it online, but it is not sold at very many stores. You can tell that I’m pretty committed to this diet. I guess that is a good thing at this point. My journey to get back under 200 pounds is going to take a little bit of time. It could happen this summer, but that will probably involve getting into routine where I’m using my treadmill desk and walking Captain Pickles our new puppy. Peppercorn the dog gave up during our last walk. You might think that is an exaggeration, but it is not. We were walking to the park and Peppercorn looked back at me and just layed down on the path. That was last year. We waited a little bit and then walked home. It was one of those moments that I remembered the dog is well over 10 years old.
Right now the ground has disappeared under a layer of cloud cover. The sun is setting in the distance. Soon enough night will be here and this voyage through the sky will be over. Writing with some degree of rhythm seems to be escaping me at the moment. Maybe it was the cheesecake. It was tasty and all, but was it worth a few hundred words of writing productivity. At the airport tonight I may very well buy a pretzel. The only two places that tend to sell me pretzels are malls and airports. I’m sure other places people have pretzel cards a plenty. The clouds have an almost purple tint to them. We are 15 miles out from Chicago. This has been a pleasant flight. A little bit of turbulence, but nothing serious. I was hoping to produce a few more words doing the flight today. It seems like maybe my motivation wavered in the middle of the flight. A bunch of time got lost during a few moments of staring out the window. We are just above the cloud level now. Here shortly we will pass down through the clouds and begin to cruise in and land. All the people around me seem pretty happy after that round of snacks.
I’m going to need to remember to get my coat from the closet after we land. It is cold in Chicago and a top coat is probably going to be the right way to go about things. It will be windy and brisk in the morning. It looks like it is done snowing for the day. That is good news all around. I was not ready for a snow storm like what they are getting on the east coast. It has been a month of interesting snow storms and warnings on the east coast. I’m pretty much ready for summer at this point. That is pretty much how things will go up until the moment that I’m ready for winter again. That is the best part about living in Colorado. We have all the seasons in full effect. Sometimes it can feel like you get a couple seasons in one day, but that is part of what makes it interesting. I’m sure the internet is about to fail out here shortly. That happens toward the end of a flight. I think the journey to the hotel should be interesting enough. It could be one of those things that is more adventure than I planned for. That should become pretty clear here soon enough.
Dr. Nels Lindahl
Broomfield, Colorado
Written on my Storm Stryker PC and or my ASUS C101P using Google Docs
