flashback friday vii – drink up chuck & di!

so this one time, at band camp (or the office…sometimes i get confused), i got told i was gonna FLY to tulsa, oklafuckinhoma on less than 24 hours notice. we booked the flight on line. now, a standard austin to tulsa ticket on southwest (the airline of the working man) isn’t too expensive, but there also are not a lot of flights. seems not too many people have the inclination to jet off to oklafuckinhoma on the weekend. i took the second flight of the day (10:30 am) there, and the last flight (4:55 pm) back to here. since both flights do not fall in the “red-eye” section of flight scheduling, and we were doing it on less than 24 hours notice, i think the price came up to about $3,475.50….or something along those lines. and as an added bonus, each flight came with a two-and-a-half hour layover in dallas-lovefield airport. you can almost here this as a price is right prize, can’t you?

so, i arrive for my 10:30 flight at 9:45 (this was in the pre-sep 11 days when you could do that) and it’s been delayed. then we finally get to dallas, and my wait gets longer because somehow even though we were delayed in austin we arrived in dallas on time (odd how they can do that, isn’t it? if they CAN fly faster, why don’t they? does the faa have radar guns in the sky? but i digress..) and the flight out of DALLAS is now delayed. one other patron senses my distress over this situation (it wasn’t kramer or some other phyco (i mean psychic) – the signs were easy to spot…i was taking a fire extinguisher to the boarding pass guy at the time…for future reference, they don’t find it NEARLY as funny as i do), and offers to help me out. she asked me how many flights i was on that day, and i said, “four” (which was technically true). she then handed me an entire BOOK of free drink coupons that all expired that day. but with one flight down, and three to go, she KNEW i would get some use out of them.

we go through about an hour of pure TURBULENCE from dallas, to tulsa, and i arrive to find out that, SUPRISE, my birthday was the week before (i knew that…promise….four planets in gemini…yadda-yadda-yadda), and my licence had expired (i did NOT know that part), so no rental car for sean….and i ended up having ot drop over $75 on cab fees around tulsa, oklafuckinhoma. i only actually “worked” for a total of twenty-seven minutes, hit the rib crib, and then headed off to the airport again.

but much like charlie in willie wonka and the chocolate factory, i had the golden ticket. actually, a whole book of them. being a true professional, i wouldn’t drink on the job. but the job is done. i’m on the way home. i may still be on the clock, but god damn it, it’s miller time (or in my case, jack daniels time).

board the flight, hand her the WHOLE BOOK, and ask how much booze i can get in one sitting. she says, “two”. i reply, “cool…gimme two DOUBLE jack and cokes”. she pointed out that that was technically FOUR drinks, and that wasn’t cool. we also hadn’t finished BOARDING yet, so she told me i had to wait till we were in the air…damn plane nazis. NO BOOZE FOR YOU!!! so, i made some deals. i gave EVERYBODY on my row enough coupons for a free beer…and jack shot, which they would then hand to me. when they came around, the other two guys (marines) ordered their beer and “their” jack daniels. i ordered a double jack and coke. when all arived, i would take a sip, and replace that with straight jack out of “smuggled” bottle number one till the first bottle was empty, then it was on to bottle numero 2. pretty crafty, huh? add some elevation to that amount of liquor, and…well….

on a cold, december’s night in downtown manhattan, the rockafeller center christmas tree is not as lit as i was when i got off that flight.

then it was off to the airport chili’s for dinner (suprisingly they have the lowest percentage mark-up of any eatery at lovefield) and then back on the plane. i was starting to sober up, and we can’t have that (after dealing with that much airport bullshit AND oklafuckinhoma), so i got on the next flight (dallas-austin) and did the same thing; but this time it didn’t really hit me (fucking tolerance)…and when shane picked me up from the airport, where did he insist we head? a fucking bar….sunday early afternoon (note: NOT morning) really sucked. but at least it numbed my flight hassle pain….