The Middle Seat: Volume I First Class V. Coach. I'll Take First Class Please...

By Jay Conlin

A humorous collection of blog posts from the Travel Blog, The Middle Seat by Blogger and frequent business traveler Jay Conlin. A corporate Labor Negotiator, Conlin blogs about his various business travel headaches, successes and failures capturing the "spirit" of the Weary "Road Warrior". Mixing in stories of his time at his "home office" the reader gets a glimpse of his life at home as well which includes a wife, three children and two not so obedient dogs...Chase and Murphy. Volume I captures the first six months of The Middle Seat. The blog, which began in 2011, continues today and is carried by The Reading Eagle Newspaper (Digital Edition) in Reading, Pennsylvania.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Conlin
• Release date: Jan 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310165511

Book preview

The Middle Seat - Volume I

First Class V. Coach. I'll Take First Class Please...

Published by Jay Conlin at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Jay Conlin

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter 1 - Welcome To the Middle Seat

I travel for a living. Actually I negotiate labor agreements for a living and since my territory is the entire United States, I travel...a lot. The work does not come to me so I go to the work. Now I know other people travel more than I do but given that I am On the road at least 40 weeks a year, I felt that qualified as enough travel time to tell people. When you travel that much...things happen. For instance, three years ago I flew to Florida in mid-December (with my wife) simply so I could achieve the highest status on my preferred airline. It was a brilliant plan and I did achieve my status...our flights home were also canceled which meant we drove home to Pennsylvania (I needed to be back for work). Oh yes, and I got the stomach flu somewhere around Rocky Mount, North Carolina. It wasn't pretty. My wife drove by the way...

These are the types of stories I have been sharing on my Blog called...you guessed it...The Middle Seat since 2011 and now I have decided to put them in e-book form. This is Volume I: I hope you enjoy

Chapter 2 - Departure Day

Monday:

4:45 AM: The alarm on my smart phone blares the calypso music my wife calls Caribbean Dance Party. It is departure day for another business trip and like most nights before departure day, I sleep fitfully. Not wanting to oversleep I awaken roughly every hour calculating how much time I have before I must get out of bed. It is a ridiculous exercise I repeat for nearly every trip. My smart phone has never failed me even though hotel wakeup calls have. Nonetheless, I am a creature of habit. Inevitably I hit a deep level of REM sleep moments before the alarm sounds. Today is no exception and I groan as I exit the bed.

5:15 AM: After a slow start I move steadily now to meet my self imposed 5:45 AM departure deadline multi-tasking as I go. I am not a good multi-tasker. I have coffee brewing, eggs cooking (slowly) and I decide to pack the car while all this is going on. I enter the mud-room and awaken Chase and Murphy, our Golden Retriever and Chocolate Lab experiment (he is NOT a pure breed). While I am not a deep sleeper, I do sleep better knowing the dogs will at least startle any potential intruder providing me some sense of security as the protector of the house. That comfort has now been thrown out the window. Today they would be better named Coma and Tose as both are out cold. They look like teenagers being awakened for the first day of school, squinting through the bright glare and seemingly asking, "What’s your problem? They follow me out and while I load the car, they take care of their morning business", except Murph is taking longer than usual. Eventually, I discover why, I have solved the mystery of the missing Ziploc bag from the table a day earlier. The car is packed, the dogs are back in bed and the eggs are overcooked.

5:47 AM: I congratulate myself for basically hitting my deadline. The weather forecaster on Way Too Early (It is by the way) says it will be a beautiful day in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic (I live an hour from Philadelphia). Thunderstorms cropping up in Minneapolis…expect airport delays and rough weather out that way. I connect through Minneapolis…

7:14 AM: I have parked my giant SUV in the parking garage. My car hits the yellow colored no vehicles larger than 6 ft. sign with a loud screech and bang every time I enter the lot. While the car seems no worse for the wear, the sign could use a coat of paint. I continue this ritual as I have yet to get stuck in an up or down ramp. I head to the self serve kiosk to print my boarding pass. I checked in yesterday but with a new company issued laptop, I am unable to print on my printer at home. This technological speed bump is easily fixed by most people except me. I have neither the patience nor the ability to remedy this situation without using a debit card…so I complain and work around it as much as possible. While checking in I failed to notice my seat assignment so I am thrilled to discover that I am in First Class to Minneapolis. I am on a waiting list to San Francisco, my first destination this week. For the first leg at least, my Florida trip in December has paid off.

7:52 AM: Philadelphia to Minneapolis. I have boarded the plane, A Boeing 757. Unlike most aircraft, on these you board at a secondary door behind first class and go left instead of right. While I am thrilled to be among the elite this morning, the boarding procedure eliminates my primary way to pass the boarding time. That is, to see what passengers look like famous people. Given the circumstances, I am happy to skip the game.

11:44 AM (CDT): Minneapolis to San Francisco. COACH!!! I AM IN COACH!!!? I obviously spoke too soon and now I question why I would take a weekend out of my life last December to become Super-Duper Elite only to be assigned seat 20B on a flight over three hours. The B must stand for Basically no leg room or perhaps Be miserable for the next three plus hours. Either way, there isn’t and I am.

1:55 PM (PDT): We land in San Francisco and while it was not an enjoyable experience my emotions are tempered as a medical emergency occurred on board that required paramedics to greet our flight and remove a passenger. No word on her condition but she walked off under her own power…barely. My smart phone prompts me to switch to west coast time but I reject it as too much technology. Getting out of my seat I bang my head on the overhead bin. A number of people gasp and many ask if I am okay. I do my best that didn’t hurt impression and pack up. No medical emergency just humiliation as I appear to be some rookie flyer…the label further enhanced by my seat assignment of 20B.

3:07 PM (PDT): I have retrieved my rental car and arrive at my meeting destination. Late. The drive over was temporarily improved by the fact that my rental car had satellite radio. Unfortunately no one had activated it and while the preview channel tries to be enticing. It isn’t. After a two hour meeting takes three, I depart for a dinner meeting and then head off to my hotel. Lights out at 10:00 PM left coast time and my nearly twenty-one hour day is complete.

Tuesday:

1:45 AM (PDT): The Caribbean Dance Party starts all over…my smart phone thinks its 4:45 AM…too much technology and my day begins way too early…

Chapter 3 - An Extended Home Stand

I spent just over one hundred twenty nights last year in hotels. Some of the hotels are places I have been to many times. The front desk staff is alerted to this fact in their computers and they do their best to