Departing From Newark Airport

So despite the hassles and overall ordeal surrounding traveling, and specifically airports, my stay at Newark Liberty Airport was not all that bad. 

Luckily, I got there quite early, almost three hours before my flight was scheduled to take off. Plenty of time. So while it was annoying that my bag, once again, was pulled to the side, and then I waited for quite some time - probably around twenty minutes or so - before the guy even got to my bag, I at least did not feel the stress of the pull of time. It was annoying that he threw out my two tubes of toothpaste, both brand new and still in the box. But, you just shrug and move on with your life, don't you? What else can you do?

So I went to the gate, and then began the process of waiting. There was one moment, however, when I was tempted to do something different. An announcement came on that this flight was overbooked, and if anyone was willing to give their ticket up, they could get $1000 in cash and, on top of that, travel vouchers. A seat on a flight to LAX scheduled for 4:35 that afternoon would be guaranteed. It seemed that there was a murmur about how good of a deal this was, with some people smiling and wishing that they could do it.  

This hardly escaped me, as well. I grew nervous, thinking about whether I should do it or not. The thing of it was, I just kept imagining if that flight somehow got pushed back or delayed. After all, this was not a vacation trip, but a work-related trip. There were people whom I would have to report to upon arriving. Also, I guessed that the travel vouchers would go onto te credit card which had been used for the purchase of the original tickets, and that was the corporate card at work. So it was not guaranteed that I would even be able to use these. Then, one of the guys who had smiled and gotten up to capitalize on this deal himself ended up not doing it. It was at this point that I wondered if, perhaps, we had misheard or misunderstood, and instead of $1000 and travel vouchers, it was for $1000 in travel vouchers.

Big difference.

And so I killed off the temptation, and sat waiting for the original flight. Did a bit of reading, and then visited the facilities just before the flight, which was scheduled for 11:30, with the arrival at LAX expected at 2:30 later that afternoon. 

Ultimately, I boarded. It was a difficult flight. It sometimes felt like this was the young, screaming child section. The couple behind me had not one, but two young children, including one at least one boy. He kept kicking my seat. Somehow, this did not enhance my flight experience, although I remained patient. After all, as a parent, I knew the struggles of trying to do things like this with such a young child. Still, I occasionally turned in hopes that one of the parents might get the message and urge the boy to stop kicking, but this had mixed success, at best. Also, I had a middle seat, and the woman with the window seat immediately closed the window, depriving me of one of the real pleasures of flying. Personally, even after having taken dozens of flights in my life, I just never have tired of staring out the windows and admiring the heavenly view of the top of the clouds. Not this time, apparently. 

Nevertheless, I was excited. After all, this was only the third time that I would be traveling to California. And while this was for work more than anything else, I was scheduled to get at least one day off. Plus, it felt like there would be a good chance to see some other things worth seeing while out there. So there was an enthusiasm and sense of gratitude which helped to get me past any inconveniences or relatively minor annoyances endured during the flight. It lasted maybe about six hours, and we arrived at LAX on time.

More on the actual trip a bit later.