Unruly Passengers

Unruly Passengers per week per 10,000 flights since January 2021

Seems like unruly passengers make the news on a regular basis, like several times a year. This happens when someone gets drunk or mad and starts throwing punches and gets tackled by the air crew or other passengers. They eventually get hauled off of the airplane by the police and taken to the pokey.

This chart shows it is not a rare event but a somewhat common occurrences, well it is if you can call one percent of all commercial flights common.

However, look at the chart. The number of incidents is very high at the beginning of 2021 and has been tapering off ever since. But notice the very low number at the extreme left of the of the chart. That is not an artifact but is in fact representative of the preceding 25 years.

Investigations initiated for calendar years 1995–2022

This chart does not use the same criteria as the one at top. This one shows the total number of investigations for the year. The number of flights has varied over the years. They were reduced during the COVID lockdown and the number of investigations reflects that. However, the number was still at a fairly low level. Curious how it jumped up in January 2021. What could have happened to make it jump up like that? Well, Biden became President in that month. You don't suppose that had anything to do with it, do you? Were people losing their minds because Zuckerberg stole the election?

Via FlightAware and FOX Business

Cheeseburger

Cheeseburger

Cheeseburgers are my go to food. They are a complete balanced meal all by themselves and I like them. I could eat a cheeseburger for every meal, well, until I got sick of them, and then I wouldn't eat them anymore.

This is a well known facet of my personality, to some people anyway, which prompted daring daughter to send me this story about the joy of taking a cruise on a cruise ship.

Sioux City Adventure

Cold French fries at Wendy's Tuesday evening. Grainy frosty at Wendy's (same time and same place.) Burger was good though. I have to admit that it was late, after 10PM, and this is not the big city. This whole section of town seemed pretty dead this time of night, but there were two fast food joints (Wendy's and McDonald's) that advertised being open 24 hours. On the surface it doesn't seem to make sense that they should stay open all night long, but maybe they get a big influx of customers when the bars close at 2AM. Or maybe the two joints are in a life and death struggle to survive. If one offers something, the other feels compelled to offer something similar. This will either end with both of them retreating to some smaller number of hours that will generate enough revenue to stay in business. Or one of them will collapse and close.

Embraer E175 Regional Jet

Not hot breakfast sandwich at Omaha airport yesterday morning. We're flying on an Embraer 'regional jet'. 1500 miles and it's 'regional'. Pretty damn big region. It's small-ish. Only four seats across, but the aisle is wide enough to walk down, not like those skinny ass aisles they have on those damn 'Dreamliners'. Who gave them that name? And whose dream is it anyhoo? And how could you arrange it any better? With seven seats across and two aisles, what are you going to do? Make it six seats and one really wide aisle? Or six seats and two decent size aisles? I suppose you could do seven seats across and one decent aisle, but it would mean four seats together on one side of the aisle, which means that when the guy in the window seat has to use the john, three other people are going to have to move out of his way. The social pressure of having to make three people move so you can get out could lead to someone staying in their seat much longer than they should, which could lead to 'accidents' or possibly even long term health problems. (Look at that dude, he's so full of s*** that his eyeballs are turning brown. He musta got stuck in a window seat in one of those reconfigured Dreamliners.) The fuselage on those Dreamliners is just the wrong diameter. Or all seats need to be first class size.

The Famous Diving Elks

Good grilled tuna steak at the Diving Elk Wednesday night. I've been on a bit of a seafood kick ever since we went to Seattle. Usually I order beef, mostly because I like it but also because it's my god given right as an American to eat steak whenever I want and I intend to make full use of that right. Besides, I'm eating for all those people who can't get any beef due to politics and/or their uncooperative nature. But lately I've been ordering seafood. I cannot explain why.

Stoney Creek Inn Lobby, Sioux City, Iowa

The Diving Elk has a stuffed elk head hanging on the wall. The lobby in the Stony Creek Inn is kind of like being in a Cabela's diorama. They have a moose head hanging on the wall and a full size bison standing on a platform about the same height. And don't forget the giant fake trees or the piles of logs stacked by the gas fireplace. Kind of like Disneyland, completely fake and tourist-hardened Frontier Inn.

Grandpa was in the hospital when we got there, but they discharged him and sent him back to his retirement home that afternoon. A couple of hours later they send him back to the hospital, and then a couple hours later they send him back to the retirement home. He made a total of six trips that day which seems absurd. Are these folks incompetent? Did the presence of our of town visitors disturb the equilibrium and so their judgement? Or maybe grandpa is just in that gray area where there really isn't much they can do for him.

Socks packed into model of Kinnick Stadium. Iowa Hawkeyes birthday cake.

The whole point of this trip was to celebrate grandpa's 90th birthday. He's made it farther than any of my kids other grandparents. The others have all passed away. I think there might be (might have been?) some other relatives of my wife who lived longer. I seem to remember hearing about someone turning 95. Aunt Gladys, maybe?

Sleep Inn, Eppley Field, Omaha

We drove back to Omaha last night to catch our early morning flight. We stayed at a SleepInn near Eppley field. No place to wirte home about, but our room did have a cool semi-circular extension to the shower. And breakfast starts at 4AM, though I didn't get any. Instead I got the not-hot sandwich at the airport.

We all got approved for TSA pre-check, which means we get to go in the short line, which wasn't really any shorter than the regular line being as this is Omaha and not all that busy at oh dark thirty, and then the (middle-aged? older?) lady at the head of the line bawks at the metal detector. Whether she is afraid of radiation or is one of the new model cyborgs with the metal skeletons wasn't immediately clear.

Everyone was aboard and in their seat 15 minutes ahead of take off time so we got to take off a little early. Right now it is quarter to ten West Coast time and the captain has just announced that we have started our descent into Portland.

Contrary Exit

After the trip to Seattle and the trip to San Francisco (12 hours in a car is too damn long), the drives from Omaha to Sioux City and back were pleasant little pieces of cake. I did miss one exit on the way back to Omaha, or rather I took an exit I shouldn't have. It's not my fault though. Interstate 29 bends around to the right, but if you go straight, which is where the main route should go, you end up at a stoplight somewhere, which means a couple of miles wandering through a residential neighborhood until our smart phone navigation aid gets us back to the expressway.

Passport Rules, Part 2

Geese walk along the snow covered waterfront park through heavy snowfall as the first winter storm of the season hits the area in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Dec. 8, 2016. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)

Monday morning delinquent daughter packages up her paperwork and ships it via high speed express to the passport expediting company. They are promising one day turn around time, so with one day to get there, one day to process, and one day to return, she might have her new passport by Wednesday.

Wednesday afternoon it starts snowing. In parts of the country where snow is a regular seasonal occurrence, that might not be such a big deal, but here in Portland it only snows when it will most inconvenience ME. Evening rush hour is a disaster. What would normally be a 30 minute commute turns into two hours.

Thursday schools are closed. Roads are covered with ice and snow. If you are careful, you can go places. Traffic on the roads is light because most people have enough sense to stay home.

We're expecting the new passport to arrive via FedEx, but it doesn't. Come dinner time dutiful daughter is in full panic mode. Tracking the package reveals that the delivery was aborted, no other explanation given. She finally resorts to pushing the zero button on the phone repeatedly until she gets connected to a real person, and after a few minutes of gentle persuasion they reveal that the package is at the Swan Island shipping center. It is 7:15 PM. They close at 8. Google Maps estimate travel time to be 25 minutes. (Really? With all the ice and snow?) We decide to go, maybe we'll be lucky.

Once we have gotten to well traveled places, the roads are pretty well clear of ice and snow. We see a couple of cars in the ditch, one has turned turtle. Oddly, the section of Highway 26 near the intersection of 217 has the most snow and ice. That's weird because that is usually where the traffic is heaviest.

It's a little nerve wracking driving at moderate freeway speeds on roads with dubious traction, but we don't have any trouble, not even going down Going Street towards Swan Island, or coming back up, even though it appears to be covered with ice. I suppose the sand trucks have been there.

Now all we have to do is get to the airport.

Part 1 here.

Driving

It's been raining a bit here. Drove to PDX (the airport) yesterday afternoon. With no traffic, round trip takes a little over an hour. Yesterday it took four. The Interstates were reduced to a walking pace.

Last week Dennis drove down to Los Angeles, about one thousand miles. Last time he went he drove his own car, a VW station wagon which gets about 21 MPG and gas cost him $500. This time he rented a Mazda 3. Gas cost in the neighborhood of $150 and the rental fee was $120 for a week. So he saved $200. Lower gas prices might have something to do with it.

Adventure, Now with Photos

Hail by the side of the road

Saturday, June 20, 2015. We have arrived in SIoux City, Iowa, after three days on the road. Yesterday afternoon we ran into a thunderstorm on highway 212 in southeastern Montana. We saw lightning bolts for about a half an hour before the rain hit, and boy did it hit hard. I've been in downpours before, but nothing this strong. At times visibility dropped to 50 yards. When my speed dropped below 35 MPH I pulled over, it seemed kind of pointless to keep driving at such a slow speed. At times the rain turned to hail. It made so much noise we were afraid windows would break and the sheet metal would be trashed. There wasn't anything we could do. There was no cover of any sort, so we pushed on when we could. Being on a motorcycle would have been brutal.

    We were hoping we could get a room in Belle Fourche, so we could wait till the storm passed, but no such luck. No hotel rooms available anywhere in the area until we found one at the Best Western in Rapid City, South Dakota, for $250, which I thought was highway robbery, but when you don't plan ahead you have to take what comes.

    Somewhere in central Montana yesterday we passed a pickup truck parked on the shoulder of the highway, engulfed in flames. He must have been carrying a flammable cargo. I can't imagine a truck by itself producing so much flames, heat and smoke.

    This morning heading east on Interstate 90 we saw four semi-trucks with their trailers lying on their sides in the median. All four had been westbound. Evidently the storm produced some high winds as well as rain and hail.  We also saw a grain silo that had been blown into the median and a bunch of highway signs that had been twisted into modern art.  News reports tell us that three tornados were sighted.

Jack Goes To Egypt

I was talking to my friend Jack at lunch today about Mubarak and Egypt, and this little bit of information fell out. Jack visited Egypt back in 1997, fourteen years ago. His visit was just about a month after some terrorists shot up a bus load of tourists and about a month before another bunch of terrorists shot some tourists at one of the ancient temples. He was with a group, and the group had a couple of private security guys with them at all times. They were dressed in plain clothes, not uniforms, and carried guns (with bullets). There were military guards with guns at most tourist locations, though it wasn't always clear whether they had any bullets. He saw one guard with what appeared to be a stainless steel AK-47, but when he got a little closer he saw that it wasn't stainless, it was a regular blued steel gun that been worn and/or polished so much that all of the bluing had been worn off.

San Francisco Pictures

There was a lot of unusual stuff in San Francisco, but I had forgotten the spare battery for my camera, so I restrained myself. Also, if I had taken pictures of everything that caught my eye I would never have put the camera down. There were a few people that I wish I had talked to and taken their picture, but that's hard to do, and it would have embarrassed my daughter. Anyway, here's some pics:

Mural on side of house in the Sunset Neighborhood
Click the link to see the rest.

Update May 2019 replaced dead Picasa album with link to Google Drive.

Parking in San Francisco

I don't know if parking in San Francisco is actually worse than it is in Portland, or if it just seems that way because it was unfamiliar to me. A week ago Saturday daughter and I borrowed my brother's van and headed downtown to the farmer's market at the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero, which is a street that runs along the waterfront in downtown. We got to downtown on Mission. We drive by a parking garage across the street from Bloomingdales (which backs onto the Westfield Center, where we had lunch later on). It might be a good place to park, but I want to see just how far it is to the Ferry Building, so we drive on until we get there. It's not too far (about a mile), but the Embarcadero is a parking lot and it takes forever to get turned around and head back the way we came. We spot two parking garages on the way back, but one is a city garage and is closed for renovation and the other is only open on weekdays.

There are lots of parking meters, but they only take coins to the tune of $3.50 an hour, or some sort of card that you have to get beforehand from some unknown location. We finally spot a hotel with parking. The guy quotes me $10 for the first hour, and $4 an hour after that. Fine, we've been in the car for pert near two hours and I am ready to be out. Turns out the rate was $4 for each additional HALF-hour, which made our total parking bill $30 for three and a half hours. Fortunately they take credit cards.

We went out to eat a couple of times in Central San Francisco, not downtown, but busy areas. My brother drove. Sometimes we had to drive around five or six blocks before we could find a place to park, and it was always marginal. There are never any open parking spaces on business streets. It looks like there are lots of spaces on the surrounding residential streets, but they are actually driveways, fire hydrants or loading zones. Once we found a place to park between two driveways. Dan had to adjust the car twice to avoid impinging on the driveways. We are talking inches here.

Down in the Sunset, where he lives, it's a little better, but not much. Houses are built right next to each other, like row houses, but each one is a little different. Most houses have single garages and a single driveway. Sidewalks are wide, 15 feet minimum, and go from the street to the front of the house. Some houses, maybe half, have some kind of shrubs or flowers out front, but you are just as likely to see a car parked on the sidewalk. Once again you have the appearance of lots of available parking spaces on the street, but they are actually driveways. Lots of concrete, asphalt and stucco and virtually no grass.

The North-South streets are a normal width: four lanes, two traffic lanes in the center with one parking lane along each side. The East-West streets are like expressways: six or seven lanes wide, and they go for forever. I'm pretty sure I've seen these streets in the movies. There is very little traffic because every two blocks there is a stop sign. It's very odd. On one hand it feels very cramped, on the other it seems like there is an awful lot of space. Next time there is a boom here I would expect this area to be made over.

Don't leave anything valuable, or anything that looks like it could contain something valuable, like a paper bag, in your car because that is a recipe for having someone break into your car and steal it.


View C & K's Trip To San Francisco in a larger map

I'm Back

Just got back from a week in San Francisco with my daughter visiting my brother Dan, his wife and new baby (!!!). Baby is only two months old. It's been a long time since I've been around a kid this small. It was fun. I'm so much older than her it's like she's my granddaughter.

We hiked around town, went out to eat, did a little shopping (I bought a battery for my watch). I finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma. It is an amazing book. He covers more ground in one volume than you could get out of a dozen lesser books. It will take me some time to digest it.

I wanted another book for the flight home, but I was pretty beat, so I picked up something light at the airport bookstore: Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich. Funny murder mystery. I get a kick out of it every time I open it.

Paranoia (or common sense?) kept me from putting up a note explaining my absence here. I could have put up a few post-dated posts before leaving, but that would have required planning ahead. I had access to a computer, so I could have posted while I was there, but it was nice not to be slaving away at the computer for a while.

Anyway, I was away, I had a good time, and now I'm back.

Orcas Island

East Sound, Orcas Island

My wife and I drove up to Orcas Island for a couple of days last week. We think it's only the third time we have been away from the kids since we started this family. We stayed at the Kangaroo House B & B. We had a good time doing nothing, reading mysteries, eating at restaurants, sleeping. No computer, no internet. We did go for a hike in Moran State Park. We originally planned to take a walk around the lake, but I saw this trail heading up the hill and said "let's take this one". We climbed until it started heading back down. I was already pretty tired and I didn't want to go someplace that I was going to have to climb out of to get back, so we decided to turn back. We climbed maybe 500 feet in about 45 minutes. It wore me out.

Update September 2022 replace defunct Picasa album with photo and link.

Standing Room Only

The girls flew back from Europe on a big Airbus jetliner that had the restrooms on a lower floor. You took stairs to get to it. Once you got downstairs there was a small room, perhaps 5 feet by 10 feet with doors on all sides that led to the restrooms. There were a number of people standing in this anteroom. Supposedly some of them spent the whole flight standing there.

This is great thing. I think one of the things I dislike about flying is having to stay in your seat for hours on end. Being able to stand up for a while without being in someone's way would be a good thing.

TSA - Transportation Security Administration

All in all my time with the airlines was not too bad. There were a couple of incidents that might be worth relating. The first was when we were trying to take off from Minneapolis-St. Paul on our way to Columbus. There was a lady sitting in the row behind me who had a small dog in some kind of bag. The flight attendant spent 15 minutes trying to ascertain whether it was okay for her to have the dog with her or not. We are sitting on the runway, all buttoned up, we have taxied away from the terminal and now we are sitting on the tarmac while this flight attendant goes through these shenanigans.

I am thinking there is something wrong with this picture, but I can't quite figure it out. TSA evidently let her dog through security, and I can see that, it's not like he is going to explode, at least not with deadly force. I suppose if it was a trained killer (!?) it could be used like a knife (take this plane to Miami or Fifi will bite your nose off!). And the woman sounded like the grandmotherly type, but the ones who look the least suspicious are the ones you have to watch.

Anyway, it all boiled down to whether the lady had a receipt showing she had paid the $100 to allow her to take the dog on the plane. She's digging around looking for this magically slip of paper and I'm thinking this is nuts. The plane probably burned $100 worth of fuel just sitting on the ramp waiting for this to be resolved. Me thinks the flight attendant had too much coffee.

On another note, I saw this sign on a door in a terminal somewhere:

I don't quite know what to make of this. Somehow I don't think it's a good idea, but hey, the TSA knows what is best for us, right?

They confiscated my pocket knife in Columbus. It was old, and raggedy, but still useful, and it was mine. I could have gone back and mailed it (for $12) or checked it as luggage (!?). Could I check a knife all by itself? And if I could, would I have had to pay the $15 fee for a checked bag? I knew I had a new one sitting at home, so I let them keep it.

I put it in my suit case for the flight to Ohio, but coming back I forgot about it until it was too late. I wonder what they do with all the stuff they confiscate? I left a set of keys at security once when I was seeing my kids off. When I came back through a few minutes later, the guard opened up a drawer with a zillion keys in it. So I imagine they confiscate a lot of stuff.

Then there was the loud flight attendant. She is giving us the standard safety spiel at the beginning of the flight and she is REALLY loud. I have to plug my ears with my fingers until she is done. I see her walking down the aisle later on, handing out peanuts or some such, and the nitwit is wearing bright yellow, foam earplugs! Some people.

Update June 2016 replaced missing picture.

Portland Industrial Clinic

Took darling daughter downtown to get her immunizations in preparation for her trip to Africa next fall. The place we went to is an old clinic right on the border between an industrial area and trendy 23rd.

Inside there is a waiting room with 12 people and room for ten. She was there for an hour and a half. I ducked out to find a better parking place, and when I came back I found out that we didn't have any way to pay for the shots, so ducked back out to find an ATM.

Trendy 23rd is one block away, and within a couple of blocks I find a Starbucks. The barista there kindly gives me precise directions to the US Bank, three blocks farther on. There are lots of shops all up and down 23rd, but I picked Starbucks thinking I would have better odds there of finding someone who knows the neighborhood, and I was right, or lucky. So often when I stop and ask for directions and I get someone who barely knows where they are, much less where anything else is. On the way to the bank I notice these two gas meters behind the glass in a flower shop. Never seen gas meters inside before.

Upon agreeing to their $3 charge, the ATM coughs up the requisite $200. $125 for Yellow Fever, $75 for Typhoid. Turns out the Typhoid immunization is not a shot, but four (count 'em, 4!) pills that need to be refrigerated. They give us an ice pack to keep them cold on the way home. A few minutes before we are finally able to leave the clinic a man pokes his head in the door sees all of us waiting in this tiny room, says "God Damn" and "Jesus", and leaves. I have to laugh, it's what exactly what I thought when I first came in the door.

Diagonally across the street from the clinic is this building,

which turns out to be Laika, the home of the movie Coraline.

Update January 2017 replaced missing pictures.

Forty Years

I got a note this week from a woman I went to high school with back in Ohio 40 years ago. It seems that she and her buddies are cooking up a reunion. When I left Utica, I thought I would never go back. I really did not like high school. But now, after hearing some of the names of people I went to school with I am thinking I might go. I mean it's been 40 years. Some of the anger and resentment should have worn off by now. Some of the people I remember clearly, for one reason of another. Some of them I didn't remember until I heard the name, and some of them, well, the name sounds awfully familiar but I don't really remember the person.

I imagine Granville High will be holding a reunion as well. I knew a bunch of people from Granville as well. It was closer to my house than Utica was. If the dates are anywhere close I might be able to go to both.

Getting there will be a bit of problem. It's 2500 miles by car, which would amount to 5 days of driving and $200+ for gas, times two. Or for a similar sum of money and a day of misery, I could fly. I just hate flying, but I don't think I really want to drive all that way. Arrrg.

Greetings From Tokyo

My brother went to Tokyo and all I got was this lousy email:

10:30 PM here. Got here about a day ago. Took train and subway into town and got checked into hotel without any major problems. Initial impressions: agent-type people quite polite and helpful. Country seems to have a lot of bureaucracy. Quite a bit of overstaffing in public works-type jobs -- maintenance, cleaners, landscapers, maybe to keep people employed? Much less efficient than, say, Hong Kong, in my opinion. Not nearly as cosmopolitan as I imagined -- foreigners seem to be viewed with real curiosity. And where the heck is all the trash and grafitti, and why aren't all the public facilities vandalized, and how can they just leave things lying around like this without them getting ripped off or destroyed?

Okay, he did send another one:

Quality of life, fulfillment, happiness are relative. Some people can't live without a big lawn, which would be difficult to find here. I have seen some fringe elements -- street people, homeless people, but even these seem disciplined and polite. Hope to do more research. Intensive and extensive socialization from the cradle seems to be the rule here, I imagine that's what maintains the orderly society.

Lots of partying into the wee hours. No boom boxes, however.

Preikestolen, Norway

Stolen from Marty North & Greenfield Park. Funny, I don't remember going to Norway. I swear the guy in the blue jacket sitting on the edge looks like me.

Amtrak

First Tamara puts up a post about Amtrak, and then Dustbury puts up one of his own, and since trains are near and dear to my heart, I better put one up too. Looks like the government is going to shell out about as much as Amtrak gets from ticket sales to keep it going another year, $1.5 billion each for a total of $3 billion.

My kids use it to get back and forth to school. More often than not the the Portland to Eugene run is supplanted by a bus, but a bus much superior to those run by Greyhound. For short runs like this (one or two hundred miles) the train is an acceptable means of travel. Much longer than that and the price of tickets and the time required begin to make travel by air, miserable as it is, attractive.

Cigarettes & Liquor

Twister Liquor Store, Pampatar, Venezuela

At lunch today my friend Marc tells us about liquor pricing in Venezuela. He goes in a liquor store and as you might expect they have three sizes of liquor bottles: small, medium and large. Also, as you might expect, the small bottle is the cheapest, the large bottle is the most expensive and the medium size bottle falls somewhere in between. However, when he (or more likely his wife) checks the price per milliliter he is surprised to find that the small bottle is still the cheapest.

Now this is completely backwards to what we have come to expect in the US. The bigger bottle is supposed to be the "economy" size. By putting liquor in a larger bottle, the producer saves on packaging, and this cost savings is supposedly passed on to the consumer. There was even a bit of a scandal a few years ago when it was discovered that this was not necessarily the case. That is why you seen the price per ounce displayed with prices in grocery stores.

Marc asks the clerk about this, and given the language barrier and all it takes some doing, but eventually he finds out that she is aware of this discrepancy. Their logic down there is slightly different than here. Poor people can only afford to buy the small bottles, so they sell them as cheap as possible. People who have enough money ("rich people") to buy the larger bottles do not mind paying a little extra in order to get one big bottle instead of a bunch of small bottles. So they are paying for the convenience of having the big bottle. Weird.

And cigarettes? In Venezuela there is no such thing as a "carton of cigarettes" or even a pack. Cigarettes are sold individually. I have seen this in some convenience stores here a few years ago. Haven't seen it recently, but I haven't been in one either.

Update November 2016 repaired broken html

Air Travel Notes

Miscellaneous observations from our recent flight to Iowa. More evidence that air travel is the very peak of technology and the very pit of civilization.

Portland

I have an aluminum watch, aluminum case and bracelet. Used to be I could wear it through a metal detector and it would not set it off. This time it did. Of course it could have been in combination with my belt buckle that triggered the alarm, but taking the watch off is easier. Belt buckle alone did not set off the alarm.

Annoying unattended luggage announcements. We are in the secure section of the airport. All the bags were supposed to have been checked. Why are we being subjected to these stupid announcements over the PA (Public Address) system?

At the gate there is black woman with two crying children. The crying sounds like they are acting, not hurt, or scared. Perhaps each one was trying to cry louder than the other. The mother did not look too happy. I offered her a smile, which she returned. I've been there. Father shows up and she tells them they've been fighting.

Flight attendant giving the "buckle your seat belt" instructions had a very thick accent and/or a speech impediment. It's bad enough we have to listen to these stupid safety instructions every time we get on a plane. Now they are making them incomprehensible as well.

Flight was not full. Out of 21 seats I could see from where I was sitting (3 and a half rows), 8 were empty.

Pilot told us flight would be 2:33. It took 3 hours.


Minneapolis - St. Paul (MSP)

Clear and cold at MSP. Land and sit on runway, they've changed our gate. We get to the gate and it takes a long time before people start getting off. I don't know what the hold up was. For some reason having to wait after we have landed is the most annoying. We have over an hour here before the hopper (twin engine turbo prop) takes us to Fort Dodge (Iowa). This is good as the boarding gate for the hopper is a long way off, relatively speaking.

T3 Mobile Defender from Lamperd Less Lethal

As we are walking through the terminal we see a police tricycle. Looks kind of like a Segway, but it's a trike. It appears to be driven standing up.

There is an automated train that takes us part of the way, and after we get off the train there are a series of moving sidewalks. The train worked very well. Much better than the one I rode in Dallas maybe ten years ago.

On the way we went by the world's largest parking garage. Well, it looked that way to me. Ten stories and a half a mile long, maybe?

The Humphrey Terminal SRF Consulting

We finally get to Gate A-9. There are maybe a dozen seats there and most of them are filled. Well, now we know where it is, so we go look for something to eat. There is a small food court three slidewalks back. There are three or four food vendors and some tables. Most of the tables are full, but I managed to secure a double with four chairs. There are crumbs on the table from the previous visitor. I look around for cleaners or cleaning supplies, but find nothing, not even napkins. True, I did not look very far. But I did find some napkins in my pocket and used them to sweep the debris off the table and into my hand, which I dutifully carry over to the trash can. Three people get sandwiches from Quiznos. Anne shares her sandwich with me. Kathryn has some left over, buy it is less than half and I have already had enough. I don't like to eat too much when I am flying, it gives me grief.

There is a young couple there with small children. The wife is speaking harshly to the kids. The father is wearing a ball cap with BERETTA written across the front. I'm surprised they let him through security.

Burger King does not have milkshakes here. Bummer.

On the whole trip there were only three annoying cell phone talkers, and they quickly shut up. No, I didn't growl, or even glare at them. MSP has a "cell phone area", for people to talk loudly on their cellphones, I imagine. Good idea, if it works.

I'm looking for a restroom but all I see are "Companion Care" rooms. I open the door on one, but I decide against it for some reason. But now my hand is sticky. When I finally find a restroom I go to wash my hand and it is cover with black stuff. I have to wash my hands twice to get it all off. I got this from just touching the door handle on the "Companion Care" room.

The paper towel dispenser was missing it's knob. It was one of those with the lever you pull down to unspool a short length of paper. On the end of the lever there is supposed to be a plastic knob which is easy to grip. This one was missing, leaving me with having to push on the narrow edge of the sheet metal lever. Grrr!

The attendant at Gate A-9 has a big black mole on her face. I wonder why people put up with these things. Maybe the cure is worse than the disease. I suppose they are used to it. Maybe it doesn't bother other people as much as it bothers me. I wonder if it would bother me if I knew her.

They have an abbreviated Jet-Way that leads to the door. The last time I was here we had to walk out across the tarmac to the plane. The hood at the end of the Jetway does not completely seal against the fuselage. It leaves a gap a foot or two tall. Along the side of the Jetway there is container with shelves to store your "checked" baggage. While we are standing in line to board the plane the door to the container slams shut with a big bang. The "container" is an elevator that takes the baggage down to the ground and the baggage handlers.


Hopper (short range turboprop aircraft)

The plane is a Saab-34. The doorway into the airplane is not very tall and Anne bumps her head. Loading seems to go very slowly, especially since there are only a dozen or so passengers. There are two seats on the right hand side of the aisle and one on the left.

The engine nacelles seem enormous considering the relatively small size of the props. The props have four blades and look to be about 12 feet in diameter. The inner half of the leading edge of the props appears to have some kind of rubber coating, anti-icing system, I assume. The nacelle looks to be about five feet tall, 12 to 15 feet long, and two or three feet wide. The air intake under the prop looks to be about 6 inches by 12. The exhaust looks to be about 12 inches in diameter. The nacelle also holds the main landing gear.

When the engines start up I can see where the blades are spinning. The outer tips are marked by yellow. The spinning circle shifts up and down by fractions of an inch. Once we are at cruising altitude I can no longer see the outer parts of the blades. I can still see a smear where the inner parts of the blades are.

I watch six airliners land while the hopper is taxiing prior to takeoff. The come in one after another, alternating on parallel runways. We have to cross one of these runways and we do so at a good clip.

On the way to Fort Dodge (Iowa) I see numerous power generation windmills. I couldn't count them all. 50? 100?

Iowa is flat. The whole Midwest is flat. Flat as a pancake clear to the horizon. As seen from an airplane anyway. From a bicycle it's a different story.

Saw what looked like some kind of ice fishing camp on a frozen lake. Tried to get a better look and the whole place erupted in a cloud of smoke, or snow. Look again and all the "smoke" is gone. Shift my head and it's back. Oh, it's craze or scratches on my window. There isn't any smoke. It really fooled me for a second. Amazing.


Fort Dodge

Driving through Fort Dodge on a four lane concrete road and in half a mile I only see maybe ten cars.


On our way out of Fort Dodge, I see a couple of railroad gondolas equipped with big yellow snow plow blades. Makes for a quick way to get a snow plow. Just hook up an engine behind the gondola and push.

Just down the road we drive on a bridge over a good size river. There are automobile tracks going up and down the ice.

Update December 2016 replaced missing pictures. Minneapolis parking picture is not the original.