04.16.13 – 7:45PM Eastern – Tuesday – Over Atlantic

The pigeon pigeon (yes, I know I typed it twice) above was walking around under the benches at Gate C72, Newark Liberty Airport. Wildlife, man. Nature is nothing if not persistent.

Airline food smells like chemicals and I consider refusing it a grand act of defiance. The staff always look at you so surprised. “Really? Nothing?” Even the salad is made of pink slime, I’m sure of it. Like the scientists usually in charge of seeing what we can learn by spraying flame retardant chemicals in rabbit eyes suddenly stumbled on the formula for potatoes au gratin. No. Nothing. Thanks.

We’ve been in the air for a little more than an hour. Our cruising altitude is 35,007 feet and we have a little more than 3,000 miles to go before we reach Schiphol. If we were on the ground, we’d be doing 577 miles per hour. I can see it’s gotten dark through the peephole on the cabin door, but last I looked out the window next to me, the engine and the wing were still there. It’s important to know these things.

They have on-demand movies now. They sell drinks now – credit or debit cards only; before we took off, the flight attendant referred to it as a “cash-free plane,” and I immediately wanted to make a Leno joke about the cost of airfare, but I don’t think the four-year-old in the seat next to me would’ve gotten it, and I hate making toddlers feel like they should laugh just to be polite – and duty free catalogs are around here somewhere. The marketing is astounding. The budgets. If they actually gave a fuck and invested, those rabbit-blasting scientists surely could’ve come up with a better, less flying-death-trap-y mode of transportation by now. Hoversomethingorother. Teleportando. Anything but Economy Class on United.

I have headphones on, because Mama Koczan didn’t raise no fool. First was Olde Growth in the airport, then Anciients, now Colour Haze. A double-album is all the better for long-distance travel, and I expect I’ll revisit She Said several times before this trip is over.

Unless of course we plummet into the ocean at a thousand miles an hour, in which case I won’t have the opportunity.

Kersploosh!

I suppose that’s what you’re really paying for: the distraction. The in-flight entertainment, the on-demand movies, the toxic food, the beverage carts – it’s like they’ve all been focus tested to draw your mind away from the fact that with each minor tumble could come immediate, irrevocable, explosive death in the sky, from which you will then drop out, to die a fearful death alone as you lose a one-sided fight to gravity, never to be found again among the expanse of flaming, floatable debris.

If it happens and I go, I want to be eaten by an octopus. It seems only fair.

My wife asked me today if I was excited for the trip. She wasn’t the only one. I guess it wasn’t showing, the thrill of it all. That starts after this.

It’s -74 degrees outside. I can see it on the monitor. Fasten seatbelt light on. Shake shake.

Tags: Eindhoven, Euroventure 2013, The Netherlands

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 17th, 2013 at 3:55 am and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.