Leaving on a Jet Plane

Previously: Seahorses

And then began the long flight home.

As I was drafting this post, I considered writing another long diatribe about the airplane business and the state of flying these days. But I decided it would be redundant, since my description of the flight to Hawaii covered most of what I wanted to say.

We were packed in overbooked flight, and once again, got very little sleep — Ray less so than I, since he was feeling sick the entire flight back. We had a layover in Phoenix, where there were so many people waiting for their overbooked flights that we had to sit on the floor.

A group of college girls were seated on the floor next to us, talking to some classmates of theirs who had been on our plane. They had gone to Vegas for Spring Break and now were having a hard time getting home because of overbooked flights. They had been stuck in Phoenix for a day and a half and had even been sent onto a plane going back to Vegas. I breathed a sigh of relief that we weren’t in their shoes, and I started wondering about the fact that we turned down the airline’s offer to give us free tickets to give up our seats on the plane.

They announced on the P.A. system that they were looking for passengers to give up their tickets back to Philadelphia in exchange for a free roundtrip domestic ticket (within the contiguous states, of course). Well, we’d already given up our free Hawaiian tickets…why take a domestic ticket?

Sigh. We got on the plane and returned to Philadelphia as scheduled, just in time for me to go to my Philadelphia Singers rehearsal.

And thus endeth my tale of Hawaiian adventures. For now.