~Friday~ A couple of years back, I changed my airline seat preference from window to aisle. So, looking at my seat assignment for this morning’s flight from Raleigh to Cincinnati, I was a little nonplussed to see, “17A.” Well, as it turned out, 17A was both a window and an aisle seat. It was one of the small jets with one seat on one side of the aisle and two seats on the other side.
Rugby Boy sat in front of me. To his right, across the aisle, was Didn’t Know He Was a Hottie (with his stubbled face, and a goatee that appeared simply by longer, thicker stubble around the mouth), and his seat mate, Talking Man. In the two seats across the aisle from me sat Silver Fox (slim, with dark black, very hairy, forearms, but a head of gray hair and beard), and beside him, Becky (of the “Oh-my-God-Becky-look-at-her-butt” club).
When the lady directly behind me took her seat, she said, “I hope things don’t get too rough, or someone will have to hold me,” to which I responded, “Please have your airsick bag handy.” To her right, on the other side of the aisle, sat Excella (who worked on an Excel spreadsheet a good part of the flight). The flight was eventful.
My layover in Cincinnati was short, and on the Cincinnati to Seattle flight, I took my middle seat (18E) in an exit row, which though I wasn’t thrilled having, was at least between two normal-sized men, though neither were hot. Not that it’s all about having hot seat mates.
It was a 3.5-hour ride, and none of us spoke to each other the entire way. The man to my left and I both had in ear buds. The man to my right alternated between checking his e-mail in Outlook on his Dell laptop (not that I was looking, but they seemed to be all work e-mails) and reading a book.
Off and on, I checked out our flight route on the little monitor in the seat-back in front of me, as I watched us fly over Iowa, South Dakota, Montana, and then into Washington.
I listened to two one-hour podcasts during the flight. The first was the episode of This American Life called, “No Map,” which were “stories of people who find themselves in situations far from the beaten path, where there are no guidelines and no useful precedents”—one of which was a heart-wrenching story about a family who adopts a little girl from Somoa, only to find out after beginning to bond with her after a couple of weeks and when she begins to speak English, that they’d received her on what began to sound like alarmingly false pretenses.
The other podcast I listened to was an episode of Car Talk, which they’re now playing the entire one-hour show of instead of selecting one of their favorite calls like they used to. I’m always a little leery of listening to that show in public places, because the inevitable laugh-out-louds can make me appear a little unstable—not a state people go for on public transportation. This episode was no exception, and I muffled my laughs as much as I could.
As soon as we landed and the flight attendant said we could turn on cell phones, the girl behind me got on hers and I heard the kind of comment you like to overhear from someone sitting behind you on a plane, “Yes. I didn’t vomit this time!” she said proudly.
We pretty much just put my stuff down and walked a couple of blocks up the street to Noah’s Bagels, where we had brunch. I had their Egg-Spinach-Mushroom-Swiss Bagel and Kevin had their Bacon & Cheddar Bagel, both of us choosing a multi-grain bagel. Delish. Yummy coffee, too.
Oh, yeah, and then we had some killer, killer “Pumpkin Bagel Poppers,” which basically were to bagels what donut holes are to donuts. They had this most delicious glaze on them. Kevin and I ate the hell out of those things.
Later in the afternoon, we took a walk in the gayborhood, to a nearby park and up and down some of the streets, including passing the bar we were going to later this evening where they’d be having line-dancing and two-stepping from 7:00-10:00.
We walked up to Kevin’s boyfriend’s place to pick him up for dinner, and then walked over to Palermo Pizza & Pasta, where I had their most delicious Palermo Calzone, which consisted of Pepperoni, Canadian bacon, mushrooms, and black olives—and stuffed with mozzarella and ricotta cheeses of course. Yum!
Ricardo wasn’t feeling well, so we bid him adieu and Kevin and I walked over to Cuffs, where the country line-dancing and two-stepping was in full force. Nice crowd.
I didn’t do any two-stepping, but did watch for the difference in starting the two-step that they do here on the west coach, which I learned about during my time in Irvine, California when I stayed there several years ago for six weeks on an IBM business trip.
I did do three line dances: Bayou City Twister, Chill Factor, and the Tush Push. It’s always a bonus with out-of-town dancing when 1) they do some dances that you do back home, and more importantly 2) they do them the same way you do them back home!
On the way back to Kevin’s place, I stopped at the 24-hour QFC grocery store, where I bought a jar of Planters Honey Roasted Peanuts with which to absorb some alcohol. Wouldn’t want it to turn my gray hair yellow, now would I.
I like Seattle. I could live here. Well in the gayborhood, at least.