Giant Dwarf vs. Virgin America

Last month, I woke up at 3:45 in the morning to go on vacation. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but “3:45 am” and “vacation” is a complete oxymoron to me. But that is how my vacation began, after about 2 hours of sleep following several hours of frantic packing for weather I can’t even begin to understand.

Yes, I was going to Orlando, Florida at the invitation of my uncle and aunt. UD owns a couple of timeshares in Orlando (he is a total Disneyphile) and invited my brothers and I and our significant others to hang out in the land of Walt, Mickey and a few thousand British people who for the life of me I can’t understand why they want to vacation in Florida.

But we’re not in Florida yet….we’re still in Los Angeles. In the middle of the night. Where it’s still kind of cold. And creepy. My landlord is a complete asshole and has not given me a parking space in the eight years I have lived in this building (and been a model tenant, I might add), so I have to park my car at my cousin’s house a few miles away from me when I go on vacation. Her neighborhood has no parking restrictions. So I gather up my luggage, load my car and drive to her house. Then, because it is completely unfair to ask a friend for a ride to the airport at 5:30 in the morning, I wait.

I wait for the shuttle to take me to the airport. While I wait, I eat a single granola bar that was probably worth about 90 calories. I burned that loading my suitcase in the car and then having anxiety about the shuttle not being able to find me in my cousin’s completely non-gridded neighborhood.

The airport at six in the morning was busier than I expected, but because it was mostly business travelers, I got through security pretty quick and then had WAY TOO MUCH TIME on my hands before my plane arrived. Interesting, though…..no restaurants were open and, frankly, since I don’t usually wake up until after my plane was scheduled to take off, I wasn’t really hungry.

So I sat with my People Magazine and texted my friend in Boston as the families with screaming children filed into the gate. This was when it dawned on me: I’m going to Disneyworld. Holy crap, my flight and the next five days of my life will be filled with caterwauling, shrieking children....and that’s in addition to my brothers and the Spazz!

(For those of you who have read my previous post about my difficulty traveling with others, you’ll be pleased to know that the Spazz, the Golden Child and the Thinker all came in a few days after I did. I got to travel alone. And, as you’ll soon find out, it was not all rainbows and unicorns.)

Cut to a perfectly situated aisle seat on Virgin America Airlines. I can order things to eat on the screen in front of me! I can pick my music, watch television, and even annoy a perfect stranger 10 rows in front of me if I so choose (I’m sure you know that I didn’t…..if I don’t want to talk to my seatmate in person, I certainly don’t want to text him or her through a seatback for 5 hours), all while techno music plays in the background.

Since it was breakfast time, I figured I’d order their special oatmeal and an orange juice, which is a perfectly reasonable breakfast. Eventually, the food came around and I was quite pleased with the oatmeal flavored with cinnamon and dried blueberries. The flight attendants got a bit mixed up and gave me two orange juices, which I didn’t want, but drank anyway so I could clear my tray (since it takes forever for them to bring the trash bags).

I fell asleep, which I needed, since I really did only get two hours of sleep the night before. I’m not sure how long I slept, but I woke up and felt like it was 150 degrees on that plane. I am never hot on a plane. I will travel to Phoenix in the middle of summer with a sweatshirt and blanket because of how cold it is on a plane. So I knew something was terribly wrong.

I figured the air conditioning was on the fritz.

I was wrong.

Soon, I started feeling like my stomach was rejecting something, and it felt like whatever that was, it wanted to go south, so I hightailed it to the bathroom (NOW you see why I need an aisle seat?). I made it just in time for the southern expulsion, but fully did not expect the northern spew. And this is where it gets graphic.

Because the northern exit process was unexpected, I didn’t have time to think about the safest route, so I aimed for the toilet. Bear in mind, I was already sitting on it. And I’m sure you recall that I AM IN AN AIRPLANE BATHROOM. So basically, I barfed on myself. In an airplane bathroom. On my shirt, on my pants, on my underwear, and in my hair. I was covered in upchuck.

I spent so much time in that bathroom they should have just assigned it to me as a seat. After the evil, poisonous Virgin America flight food made it out of my body in every direction it could possibly go, I then had to begin the process of cleaning up. If it’s hard to poo and vomit in a tiny bathroom, it’s near impossible to clean it up.

I stank.

I approached a flight attendant and told him an abbreviated version of my ordeal. I had two objectives in mind: (1) My duty to warn other passengers of the potentially life-threatening food on the flight and (2) my duty to find another seat in an unfilled row so as not to disturb my fellow passengers.

The flight attendant denied that the food was rotten in any way, but he at least sat me closer to the front in a row with one other passenger. Unfortunately, he didn’t tell her why and she was sitting in the middle. I didn’t realize that at first, so I didn’t say anything and then, when I figured that out, I just felt it was too late to say anything at all. This poor woman spent the rest of the flight not surrounded by squealing children but sitting next to the creature from the Bog of Eternal Stench.

The upside? They let me use the First Class bathroom after that.