Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

I apologize for the long break, followed by an even longer post about books. My mind was on vacation but now we're back

You will recall the Mennonites on a Plane incident from the start of our trip. The Mennonites did not leave us in San Francisco, they followed us down the coast. I saw them in Monterey and spotted them at various places we stopped throughout Big Sur. What would a peaceful religious sect want from us? And why would a group that never shaves worship a specific brand of shaving products?

I never found an answer to those questions, but I think a clue may be in this story. If the Amish are moving west to Colorado, why wouldn't the more progressive Mennonites move all the way to the coast? They are probably buying up beachfront property and opening family-style seafood restaurants with big bowls of all-you-can-eat, German-style clam chowder.

In Santa Barbara I did get to sit with my feet in the sand and eat fish tacos: a life-long dream realized. We also visited the winery where our niece works to supplement her income while she completes her PhD in psychology. She quite knowledgeable about and quite fond of wine, a relationship of which her mother and I both approve. She told us "I almost never drink hard liquor anymore, except I have a bottle of vodka in the freezer, but only because I got it from a woman whose cat died." That is an excellent opening line to some kind of novel, which should perhaps be written while drinking copious amounts of wine.

Another highlight of our journey down highway 1 in CA was the nude beach. Here we see a couple blatantly engaging in PDA in the nude, not caring who sees them.

Airplane

We were sitting in the gate area, waiting for our flight when the 4 TSA agents came up. They were clearly there on business – it wasn’t quite as dramatic as, say, “The Wire” when the cops come into the courtyard at the low-rise apartments and everyone yells “five-oh” and scatters – but these four officers came in and “took positions”, definitely there on business.

One stood with his back to the wall by the door to the jetway, one moved somewhere behind me, one gave the lowdown to the gate agent and the fourth questioned “The Witness”.

The Witness was a woman about my age, seated opposite me. She spoke to the agent as they both looked at someone somewhere behind me. I heard her say “…about ten minutes ago…” She had observed some suspicious activity and as the incessant indoctrination announcements instructed, she had alerted someone. I appreciated that she had done so, but now I had to figure out who the terrorist(s) was (were).

I turned around and immediately saw two bearded men traveling with modestly-dressed women, all wearing head coverings of a different culture. They were Mennonites.

I wondered what suspicious acts they had been engaged in that had alerted The Witness. Perhaps they had been sharing fried chicken and homemade pies “family style”. Maybe she had seen weapons of mass consumption. I’m not trying to stereotype people here; it’s just that I have come in contact with the Mennonites and Amish people only at bed and breakfasts and restaurants in Ohio and in Pennsylvania. There are always large quantities of food concealed in kitchens or even openly displayed in their gathering places.

As the situation developed, it was obvious that the TSA agent trying to be inconspicuous by the jetway door was going to pull the terrorists aside and water board them … or at least wand them and look through their carry-ons. But the Mennonites boarded and front of me and went through unmolested. I had apparently made an assumption based only on the fact that they looked different from me and I was embarrassed. The worst thing was that I wouldn’t get to see the real terrorists pulled aside and tortured.

As people boarded after me I worried whether the terrorists had been arrested or any of them had slipped through. During the flight I thought I had figured it out. There was a young couple who had smuggled aboard a baby designed to render us helpless. The baby screamed through most of the 5-hour flight, especially loudly during the heavy turbulence, when we just wanted silence so we could weep and pray to our God in peace. Halfway through the flight everyone in coach (first class had been provided noise eliminating headphones) went to the couple and promised to renounce our evil Western lifestyles, but it did no good. Turns out it was just a crying baby.

The actual terrorists turned out to be a trio of women dressed as flight attendants. Prior to the flight they had somehow secreted tremendously heavy metal carts aboard the aircraft. The wheeled carts were just slightly wider than the aisle between the seat row. One hour into the flight, the women grabbed the carts and ran them pell-mell up the aisle, smashing armrests, shattering elbows and ripping legs off at the knees. They tried to cover their mission by tossing snacks and beverages at the passengers, but these just became part of the scene of carnage, mixing with the blood and severed appendages. The screaming of the multitude momentarily drowned out the baby.

Shortly thereafter, the women came by with hot towels to staunch our wounds and comfort us. It never did become clear what their mission was.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing airplane glue

Ladies and gentlemen, we have experienced a bit of a problem, which has caused our rapid descent from 13,000 feet to 7,500 feet. We haven’t flown at this low an altitude since Lindbergh was alive, so we hope you appreciate the historic nature of this calami - - er, plane flight.

We assure you that the flight crew is debating possible options for a workable solution to our distress and we may go lower before we regain our normal cruising speed. The pilots have positioned us over the Grand Canyon to provide the illusion of greater altitude and, in the event of a final free fall to oblivion, more time in which to proclaim, “We’re okay so far!”

Currently the Captain is arguing that we should try “jiggling the flappy things, to see if that reverses the nosedive or whatnot.” The copilot says “that’s ridiculous, we need to dump all the fuel to lighten up this puppy and make it go higher.”

While they work out the technical issues, the flight attendants will be passing down the aisles with beverages and tainted peanuts.

If you look out the window you may notice some of the first class passengers bailing out of the plane with free parachutes provided by the airline. The airline feels that it is the higher fares paid by these passengers that put this plane aloft in the first place. So, even though it was these same passengers lobbying the pilot to perform risky flying stunts that caused our current trouble, the airline does not want to lose their business.

The remaining first class passengers will be bailed out as soon as we convince them that, no, they do not deserve free drinks anymore, because they have been naughty.

Some of you in coach will soon be unceremoniously “bailed out” without parachutes, but that’s life.

You will notice that the pilot has turned on the "fasten seat belts" sign because that will give you all something to work on, occupy your minds and provide a temporary mood stimulus.

In the event of a crash, free soup will descend from overhead. You will be instructed to bend over, put your head between your legs and kiss your assets goodbye.

Now enjoy our in-flight movie, “The Grapes of Wrath.”