flyingandtryingfinal

                  The rush culminates as you pull curbside, acknowledging that all appropriate baggage is accounted for, sparing no effort as your hand brushes against all pockets, for it will be your last time to inventory the proper credentials needed to relinquish physical ties to the place which you have just existed. Soaring booms permeate the air while people gather their belongings, their families in some sense of order, as to not draw attention to their inexperience. Lines of people, processed through gates and tunnels, escalators and elevators, made to expose extremities and valuables, hopefully confirming that those who make it to the end are trustworthy enough to ensure success in the game of the feathered.  Most of the world is wretched, despising every instance of what is described above. Downtrodden and miserable, these travelers do everything in their power to avoid others, praying that they can close their eyes and awake in the place they now seek to exist; the pursuit of the path of least resistance. However, there are some of us who take the aforementioned experience and realize that cordoning massive groups of people in a terminal, a structure bigger than one hundred breweries and bars accompanied with the failsafe of never seeing a mistake again, as a glorious opportunity.

            For those of you who see this glorious opportunity, the flight and the destination can offer the single and/or mischievous taken a playground of fun with the opposite sex. With so many strategic attributes in common and so many outs to, and excuse my pun here, avoid “crashing and burning,” an airport is a great place to meet someone with whom you wish to “test the runway.”  If the relationship plane doesn’t get off the ground, then plug your headphones in and pretend you are watching the featured Pixar film, which usually starts twenty minutes after takeoff. If the plane does “take off,” and you find yourself talking to this person through the engine noise, the babies crying, and occasional bumps from people shimmying down the aisle, then one thing is for certain; that you and this person have some sort of physical attraction for one another. If this wasn’t true, every measure would be taken, by either party, to avoid contact and the headphones would of been turned on while the plane was boarding. Despite FFA guidelines for turning all electronic devices off during takeoff, we all know if you are going to suffer an annoying person from the opposite sex, then let’s bring down the plane via ipod and make everyone else suffer too.

            When you make a connection with someone on a plane, chances are in your favor to pursue any type of relationship you wish; friendship, mistress, hookups, etc.  Since the physical attraction is already there, it is up to you to connect the dots on how to approach the landing strip. If he/she is flying to your hometown, then you can be the tour guide.  If you are flying to his/her hometown, ask to be toured around.  And if you both are flying to a foreign place, experience it together.  You will find that any relationship, consummated thirty thousand feet in the air, will have no strings attached, literally. Unfortunately, you are usually passing gates with attractive people from the opposite sex and by the time you get to your gate and scout the potentials, you find, unless you are traveling to Las Vegas during the club and bar convention, that everyone is not so attractive and the one or two people who are, will probably not sit by you.  This means it is imperative that you make the move prior to takeoff. If you both hit it off at the gate, and you somehow persuade the other person to want to sit by you on the plane, then you know you would have to be a bad pilot to miss that runway…

…and as always pack a parachute just in case.