The Lonely Travelever
I only followed the typical Spring Break trend fifty percent. You know, go south to Florida. Usually Miami. Well, I went south, but not to Florida. I flew to Texas instead, to the residence of my beloved (and extremely feisty) sister, Jenna, and her ruggedly handsome husband, Joey. Oh, and Henry, their dog. He’s as much a part of the household as any human being.
It all started in the Columbus International Airport, a podunk airport that hardly lives up to its name as “International.” Columbus just wants to be bigger than it really is. Security was about the easiest I’ve ever been through in an International Airport. Sadly, my flight was delayed thirty minutes just after I got to the gate. Luckily, I had brought this month’s issue of Wired with me to keep me company.
I read an interesting article about delayed flights while waiting for my delayed flight. Here’s what I learned: 75% of all flight delays in America can be traced back to the skies over New York, specifically flights to and from the airports LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark. Which makes sense, if you think about it, considering there are some 2 million flights that fly over New York City each year. As a side note, LaGuardia is the single coolest airport name I’ve ever heard. But I digress.
Anyway, apparently the sky is mapped out like a bunch of highways with on and off ramps. Who knew? I didn’t. And each airplane is treated as though it’s 2,000 feet high and three miles wide. Well, apparently these highways are a little jammed over The City, so they’re working on “rebuilding” the skies, which is a pretty sweet concept. The ultimate plan costs $300,000 per cockpit (for new hardware/software) and requires building 800 or so buildings on the ground to map the locations of the airplanes, and is supposed to be implemented by 2025 or so. The redesigned cockpits would also change the FAA requirements that say a planes must be at least three miles apart when in flight, so there could be more flights taking off and landing per hour. The short term plan, set to launch in 2012, basically just remaps the on/off ramps and highways heading west out of the three airports.
All this large tangent just to say that my flight was delayed and it was probably JFK’s fault. I finally got on my flight from Columbus to Chicago. And can I just go on yet another tangent about Chicago O’Hare? I’ve never flown into that airport when there wasn’t plane parked at the gate my plane was assigned. How does that happen? You have hundreds of flights constantly going in and out of your airport; you assign each flight a gate. What kind of software does O’Hare use that it allows a gate to be double booked? The worst I ever had it was that we were reassigned to a new gate three times, each time when we got to the gate another plane was parked there. I was on that plane for over an hour.
Well, I didn’t have it so bad yesterday. In fact, we got to my gate and, to my complete surprise and joy, there was no other plane parked there! Unfortunately, they didn’t have anyone to operate the arm that lets us off the plane. I guess he went on lunch or something and forgot the giant metal thing in the sky was carrying a few hundred people that didn’t want to be cramped any longer. After remaining parked at the gate for some twenty minutes, someone must have looked out the window from the airport and said, “Oh, hey, guys, there’s a plane parked out there ... Do you suppose we should let the passengers off so they can get to their next flights?” Luckily, someone who knew how to operate the arm said “Yes.”
I got my next flight just in time board. My initial reaction was, “Aw, nuts, no time to write.” But my reaction after getting on the plane was, “Oh, crap, I was going to eat dinner at O’Hare ...” This was Bad News Bears because I didn’t get to Texas until 7:30 (which, to my tummy, felt like 8:30). Needless to say, I was very pleased when Jenna and Joey picked me up (holding a cardboard sign with “The Kid” written in sharpie on it), handed me a Cinnabon, and then took to me this delicious hot dog joint called Wild About Harry’s where I ate a Southwest Firedog, one of the most delectable brisket hot dogs I ever have eaten.
Upon arriving at their apartment, I was greeted by this sight.
And so here I remain for the next week. A week in
which, hopefully, I will be able to blog a little
more than usual. We’ll see what entertainment the
week brings.
Culture Week at Chuck's and the Zoo That is Cedarville
Every time I turn around, That Guy (you know who I'm talking about) is taking a picture of me, or videoing my friends and me having a conversation. If ever you look at him, he'll snap at you (he's not the best people person) and tell you, "Don't look at the camera. I'm not here!" Then he'll proceed to literally shove the camera into your face. Honestly, is a shot up my nose really necessary?
From the rumor weed I have attained that he's making a new "Come to Cedarville, We're Awesome Here" video. If that's true, props to him. Everyone should come to Cedarville, because we are awesome here. When compared to some 288 private and public universities all over the country, Cedarville ranked #1 in student satisfaction (and I know all three of those girls on that page)! I fully agree with that statistic because I'm fully satisfied here. Even still, the camera guy in my face is a bit excessive, and he's been filming this thing for over a semester now ... I've been on it countless times. Perhaps if he were a little more polite about it and not quite so creepy then nobody would mind, but he really was the talk of campus about a month back. It's sort of died down since then, but I still see him around.
We're not just on display for That Guy, though. There's tours going through all the time. Last time a tour walked by, which was about the third of fourth one I had accidently found myself in the middle of that week, I mentioned to Kylee, "Do you ever just feel like you're constantly on display? Like we're animals in a zoo or something." For some reason this cause her to start doing model poses. I'm not sure I see the correlation, but she finally stopped and agreed with me. But students, seriously, we want you to Cedarville. When you're a student here someday, you'll understand why it's kind of awkward to see a group of twenty high school students gawking at you like you're some kind of freak. "Mom, is that a real college student?!"
Anyway, this week is Culture Week here at Cedarville. The week where we have speakers come in to chapel to discuss diversity and other such good things. On Monday, Dr. Brown made a joke about this.
Certainly a funny picture. Half of the chapel
laughed because they thought the humor was in the
fact that Chanukah was spelled wrong (it's not ...
Jewish people can't eat Ham ... That's the joke), but
I digress. Less than twelve hours later, I
walked into Chuck's to participate in the Monday
night cultural event. I heard some sort of
Middle-Eastern music and saw that it was Indian food
tonight (and by Indian I do mean the country
India, not the less than politically correct Native
Americans). Apparently the point of the week is
to have a different culture represented at Dinner so
we can enjoy a diverse experience in Chuck's.
Here's the problem: I've found that Chuck's
"enlightenment" of the cultures is more of a disgrace
to whatever culture he chooses. It's horribly
stereotypical. For instance, on Soul Food
night, we are served mashed potatoes and gravy,
buiscuits, corn bread, collard beans, and fried
chicken while Christian rap renditions of secular
songs play over the speakers (for instance, J-Kwon’s
“Tipsy”). (If we wanted a truly cultural experience,
shouldn’t you be playing “Can I Get A ...” by Jay-Z,
Chuck?)
But Monday night, the very same day that Dr. Brown
had made his pointed joke about whatever that grocery
store was advertising Ham as a delicious addition to
your Chanukah, Chuck's serves Indian Beef. So I
googled it. There are recipes for Indian Beef. I
have no idea what it is, but it seems ironic to me
that, on the night we're representing the nation that
is known for being the largest Hindu nation in the
world, we are served beef; a nation that is known for
having meatless hamburgers at their McDonalds; a
nation that sued a Japanese airline for serving beef
on a connecting flight.
Perhaps it's my own naivity, but why was beef served
on the night we were being enlightened on the Indian
culture?
Despite this week being lousy at Chuck's, we still
have the highest student satisfaction, not because of
our food during weeks such as these, but because of
the Cedarville environment. Just come visit and
you'll see that. We all love it here, and we're
willing to put up with silly little things like this
simply because the school itself is so
stellar.
Minier: Sorry for Breaking the Elevator ... Again
Still somewhat groggy, I left my room and decided against the stairs. This early in the morning I just might tumble down them after losing my footing, and I do live on the third floor of Brock ... I deserved an elevator ride, I thought.
I pushed the call button. Immedietly, the doors to the waiting elevator pulled open. I stepped inside and pushed the button for the first floor. Here's where things began to get hazy, because in my delusional state, I'm not entirely sure what happened. This is what I remember: directly after pressing the button for the first floor, the elevator tried to go down. This wasn't all that bad of a decision on the elevators part, considering they are made to go up and down, except that it had forgotten to close the door first. Luckily, our elevator, as any good elevator should be, is equipped with a safety that won't allow the elevator to leave the floor until the door is closed. This resulted in the elevator shaking violently up and down; trying to move, trying to close the door, and probably trying to stop, all at the same time, all as I was thrown against the walls, grabbing the hand rails for dear life.
Finally, the elevator realized it should close the doors before trying to head down. It abruptly stopped shaking up and down and tried to close the door. We must have been just a notch below the resting point for the third floor, because the door had a horrible time trying to close. While it was trying to close at very slow speeds, the sound it made resembled that of a car crash, or some equally painful sound where metal is grinding and bending against metal. I took this opportunity, as the door was closing at just under the speed of a snail, to dive out of the elevator.
As I stood just outside the elevator, panting and trying to regain breath and concienceness, the grinding stopped and the door glided to a close. Then the power turned off. Needless to say, I took the stairs.
The Brock elevator has yet to work since this happened. This my open apology letter to you all. I never should have hit the button for the first floor ...