Sky-high blogging

Hello dear reader. Just a few hours into the trip and I already have things of interest to tell you.

I didn't feel I was exceptionally late for a 12:10pm flight standing in line at check in around 9:45. Yet, when it was my turn at 10:15, the lady at the counter regretfully informed me that she cannot assign me a seat on the plane. When she saw my wide shocked eyes she elaborated that she only had "pre-reserved seats" left so I should report to the gate and wait for my name to be called. That didn't help me much. When she placed these frightening tags onto my checked luggage, I was terrified. After confirming with her three times that they would take me with them on the plane in any case I went on through passport and security checks.

At the gate I was displeased to find that there were apparently no restrooms or any food or beverages to be found on this side of the last security check. Little did I know that this wouldn't matter later. I started counting the number of screaming infants in the waiting area around me and came to a fair five - that wasn't too bad. And things were even looking up when several of them were dragged by their progenitors to another flight to Washington departing earlier.

So I started reading the articles I had printed out so I could finish writing the overdue progress notes on two patients I still had with me.

About fourty-five minutes later they started boarding and I waited patiently for them to call out my name - which indeed, they did. Now this time around I wasn't unprepared when it came to seating. I had read all about those nasty A and G window seats on Boeing 767-300s that had boxes beneath the seat in front of you limiting your leg space on seatguru.com. But the only thing worse would be a D seat - that's one of the three seats between the aisles - more specifically, the middle seat. No way to stretch out your legs to either side - and if those seats next to you would be occupied by a mom with her baby on one side and an obnoxious man on the other side like in Trillian's case I'd be in for a rough ride.

Na-ah, that wasn't going to happen to me. I found that I had been at the check in early enough. I even tried to check in online the day before - which I couldn't, due to my lack of confirmation or etix number. Expedia informed me I'd get that at check-in today. No fair. I wanted a good seat!

So when I went to the gate today after they had called out my name, the lady handed me a boarding pass out of the small pile in front of her. It read 8D. I sighed and turned to the other woman processing boarding passes counting my blessings that they actually stuck me with the loser card .. a D spot.

Then I took another look at the pass .. it was a funny color. Golden .. not blue like the others. Then it hit me .. it said "United business". They didn't. Did they? Row 8 was an awfully low number. They must have.

They bumped me into business class.

With a broad smile on my face I could hardly conceal I found that 8D was actually much more comfortable than I had imagined when I saw the ominous "D". Even while I was still coming in and looking for a place to "stow" my carry-on stuff a flight attendant carried around a tablet asking whether we wanted champagne or orange juice. Another one offered to "hang my coat" while I was still fiddling around with my stuff trying to choose whether to put it on the ample room on the floor or in the overhead bin. So much space. So hard to choose.

This was going to be awesome.

Just minutes later I was handed the in-flight menu. The .. menu. Now, smoked thyme chicken and smoked salmon with couscous salad, pine nuts with lime crème fraîche, fresh seasonal greenes with caesar dressing, pan-seared oh-so-tender South American filet mignon with smoked bacon demi-glace (mmmh), pommery mashed potatoes and an asparagus, carrot and red pepper sauté laterI am sitting/lying here in an almost horizontal position, the seat periodically pumping up a balloon in my lower back and the glass of water next to me hardly ever going low before someone refills it without even asking. One of the in-flight-entertainment channels is running on my own little screen - if I don't like it, I can just switch channels. I did pass on desert since I haven't totally forgotten my poor lower-class economy roots. Had a sandwich and toblerone later instead. Heheh.

But I did get those progress notes almost done, so I'm reasonably proud of myself.


Not sure whether they'll be able to pry me off my seat after we've landed in Chicago.


Now I'm almost hoping for that immigrations officer to deny me entry to the States - I'll just stay in my seat then.

I hope Lufthansa will be equally interested to have me as a future customer on the flight back, it'd be very frustrating to go back to coach after this.