Not Looking Forward to Today

This evening I'm heading back to Colorado.  This is a good thing.  The goal is to do the last few touch-ups to the house and get it on the market, then pack up the car and bring the wife and "kids" back to the boat.  I should be psyched, but I'm not.

Don't get me wrong, I am really happy about the goals for the trip and finally taking that next step to be full time cruisers, but the immediate day's events are not happy-making. I'll be leaving the somewhat warmer temperatures I finally found in Florida and flying to Denver, where the forecast is for temperatures in the 20's and snow.  While the temperatures are far from what I'm used to these days, I think flying is what I'm dreading the most.

Long gone are the glory days of flying, where it was a treat to take an airplane to a destination.  These days, flying seems to entail sub-human treatment.  Getting to the airport hours early for the government mandated colonoscopy, being packed into a metal tube with no amenities (I'm waiting for the day that they charge extra for seats, seatbelts, and make the toilets coin-operated), and taken to your destination by pilots (or at least the first officer) that probably makes about what that guy at McDonalds makes for asking if you want fries with that.  I wonder if I'll have more PIC (pilot in command) time than those up in the front of the plane.

MadTV was pretty close on the subject.

Just checking in online for Delta seemed foreboding of the experience I expect to have.  It first gives me the option to change my seating assignment.  On both segments of the flight I'm stuck in the middle seat so I take a look.  In the first hour-long segment, the only seats available are some sort of premium seat.  For a mere $19 I could get one more inch of legroom.  The second segment was even worse, there was only one other seat available, it was also a middle seat, and for that one inch of legroom they wanted $69.  This business model of "we will make you suffer until you pay us a lot more" really needs to stop.

Oh, and then after checking in they wanted to know how much they could pay me in flight vouchers if they needed to bump me from the flight.  Unfortunately there was no "screw you, I'm never planning to take your abusive airline again" option.  If they were willing to refund the ticket price in cash, I may just go rent a car and drive back to Colorado.

I really wish I still had my plane, it is the only way to fly these days.  Cruising along at the leisurely pace of 5 knots on the boat is far more appealing.

As for the snow...I guess I'm just not looking forward to it.  Snow is all pretty when you have nothing better to do except curl up next to a fire and sip cocoa. But anymore I feel about like the guy in The Diary of A Snow Shoveler toward the stuff.

In any case, stories of boat projects will probably be a bit sparse in the coming weeks, but I'll try to find some interesting stuff to post about.  Wish me luck.