Damn you Elon! You’re such an asshat, but you (or at least your people) create neat stuff. Our plane has Starlink. Damnnnnn…
High speed Internet before we even pushed back from the gate. And it seems to be free on Air France, or at least it is in Business. We’re going to France, and I’m really excited about Starlink. The three or four of you reading this only have to endure a few blog posts. Jeri has to live with it all the damn time. Speaking of which, she’s in the pod behind me and we were texting back and forth to get her Bluetooth earbuds connected to the plane’s entertainment system. And I’ve been listening to my Spotify playlist while emailing. Yeah…Starlink.
So I last left you while we were luxuriating in the lounge, what, HOURS ago. We continued our eating (or at least I did) in a weak effort to offset the cost of our tickets. And for ultimate luxury, we both grabbed showers. About an hour before departure, we wandered down to our gate, and they just started boarding Business. Just about walked on board.
Nice plane, a newer 777-300. The Business cabin has 1X2X1 seating, and Jeri and I are on the right side, me in front of Jeri. The pods/cabins/whatevers have doors. Weird, but cute. I guess that provides a false sense of privacy when going fully flat with the seat. The ledge to our side has a built in wireless charger, so that’s where I plop my phone and can keep it running indefinitely. OK, here’s a bitch…This plane doesn’t have the individual air nozzles so I can shower myself in a curtain of air. I love me some nozzles. Bastards!
Ooooh! The Santa Ana winds required us to do an eastbound departure. In all of my flights in and out of LAX, I’ve never experienced an eastbound one. I guess that’s one more thing off my bucket list that I didn’t know was on it.
Meal service was OK, but in the First World Problems department our preorder meal of beef didn’t go through and they were out. We, practicing for our arrival I France, were of course outraged, and settled for the chicken. Yeah, we’re still eating and it’s still about food.
The service on Air France is a little…different. We noticed it on our trip last year. It’s not overtly friendly like an American, “How ya doing, honey??!” It a bit cooler, but very efficient and professional. It’s easy to misread as indifferent, but it’s not. We are being well taken care of. They just don’t grin like idiots at you.
We normally travel light, carryon only. For this reason I’ve never been able to bring along my over the ear Bose headphones I use at the gym. They have fantastic noise cancellation, but I usually use some less effective earbuds because they’re transportable. Not this time! My beast headphones are working quite well to kill the annoying baby a few rows away. Well, not the baby, just its cries.
I should apologize to the aforementioned three or four of you reading this for the excessive blather. Truth is, they’ve turned out the lights at this point and normal people are settling in for some sleep. Since I’m planning on staying awake, I’ve got nuttin’ to do. So I might as well blather to you.
We’ve done dozens of long, overnight flights, and tried every conceivable way to deal with jet lag. Preadjust to the new time zone. Drugs to stay awake. Drugs to sleep. But nothing has worked. The best that works for us is to just gut it out and stay awake the entire flight. Granted, we’re zombies on arrival, but when we finally do hit a bed we have little trouble sleeping.
I turned around and got a pic of Jeri before dinner. She’s in her preferred habitat with an entertainment system with hundreds of channels. Enjoy it before she makes me take it down with the “But I look terrible” argument. Yeah, we’re traveling 10 hours in a steel tube. We both look terrible. But I won’t take a pic of moi. Use your imagination.
I’ve been monitoring the protests and demonstrations planned for Saturday, or arrival. It ain’t looking good. While the published, planned locations shouldn’t intersect with ours, traffic will likely be snarled. So much for my bright idea to arrive on a Saturday when things would be “quiet”.
Only 6 ½ hours to go. Sigh. Shitposting from 39,000 feet.