Airplanes

I was just thinking today how much I like...and dislike...British Airways. They have a nicely-designed, helpful website, they're relatively easy to work with, they provide good inflight meals. (Yes, I really like airplane food!) But they didn't design their seats for short people, and they didn't design enough bathrooms for a couple hundred passengers on a 10-hour flight. If you have a window seat, you're probably only going to get up a minimum of times. Which means you inevitably wait till you really need to use the bathroom. And half the time you have to stand 10 minutes in line, even if looks like it should be quick because there's only 1-2 people ahead of you. What to do? At least waiting around is a good time to grab a snack from the kitchen!

My tips for flying (hopefully i'll follow all of them next time):

• Have your water bottle in easy reach, NOT stowed in the luggage rack where it really does you no good
  
• Bring something you can comfortably scrunch against the window to sleep on, should you be so fortunate as to have a window seat (There's nowhere to put your head in an aisle seat. But thankfully I've never been in a middle seat, as that must be worse!)
  
• And don't wait too long to get up if you do happen to be inconviently trapped in one of those window seats. Don't wait until the people next to you are sound asleep!

Travelling by yourself isn't too bad, but it just gets really long and tiring. I never realized before how much we need interaction with people we know! Even a slight aquaintance would be nice, although you can meet people on the plane, provided you're not too busy trying to sleep...or pretend to sleep. This last time on the flight to Entebbe I met a couple young guys visiting family after years in the US. One of them let me borrow a CD of Lugandan songs (so I would be more cultured) and once we arrived was going to loan me 1000 shillings so I could call Craig. Maybe even a little too nice to me, but I think it was just out of the goodness of their hearts...

And maybe someday I'm actually going to travel with someone from Billings. ;)