Airplanes Are Cool, Airports Suck

Planes take you wonderful places. They connect people. A window seat with clear weather is akin to being granted god-like vision. You get on in one place, and find yourself at the other end needing a down jacket, or shorts. You can get a ginger ale and a smile and some eye contact, if you care to stay awake. I can go to Portland, buy a pub table (still boxed), and take it home to Juneau as checked baggage. Or frozen naan. Planes are safe, they keep us off the roads. There hasn't yet been any air-rage, and planes never get close enough that the pilots feel the need to flip each other off. A friendly professional controller assumes the role of mediator and facilitator, keeping everyone out there honest. They are clean, and the air onboard has improved orders of magnitude since the ban on smoking. You can meet all manner of interesting folks, and they are almost always cool in their individual way. After all, people who travel by air to cool places are pretty much cool by definition.

Airports, on the other hand, are like vampires. They suck life out of you. There's nowhere comfy to nap, restrooms are hit-and-miss at best, and beyond sepsis at thier third-world worst. Food is way over-priced, almost as much as buying anything at a marine store labeled "Coast Guard Approved." Come on, $8 for a flipping Whopper VALUE Meal? Here, let me cut off my ear for you... oh wait, you won't let me have my knife!!! Layovers are noisy. They design the chairs as non-ergonomically as possible so as to encourage you to walk around and buy things. Try to find a free wifi connection, there's an optimistic thought. Thank God for Starbucks. And what's with AT&T... do folks really buy 24-hours of internet for $9 when all they really want is to check e-mail for 2 minutes? I hope AT&T dies a horrible non-profitable death.

A window seat at an airport almost invariable ends up a greasy brown smog-set over a featureless tarmac and dead-grass horizon. The planes are alright to look at, though... some of the art painted on them. Salmon, Confetti, killer whales, rainbows... oranges, reds and yellows all airbrushed together in a tribute to modern surrealism. Airports are often huge, open, inspiring spaces, but fill that space with grumpy and tired people looking for cheap eats and a place to check e-mail cause they can't sit anywhere, and well, it just takes away all the architecturally-inspired spirit. No one has fun in an airport.

Well, I gotta go. It's a quarter-mile walk with all my crap to the gate, and on the way I need to decide who is going to get the better part of the $20 I just got out of the ATM for my dinner...

KML