HELLFLIGHT

Waking up t 3:15am to get to the airport for a 6:30am flight to L.A. is bad enough but what about when the flight itself is a good old fashioned HELLFLIGHT... well that's what happened to me. Not because of the flight, plane, staff or turbulence but thanks to the sick lady beside me.

I got to the airport around 4:30am, whipped through the ticket counter, waited til 4:45 for Customs to open, got through there and was the first person at my gate (weird being the only person in an area of a major airport). Anyway, Timmy Ho's was still closed and thanks to the lack of sleep and no caffeine, I was quickly becomming a Grumpasaurus Rex. Finally, Tim's opened, more people arrived, we were let on the plane and by 6:40am we were taking off as scheduled. I was in Row 8 next to a married couple, we exchanged hellos and I fell asleep, hopefully I could sleep for the entire flight. I was wrong...

I woke to the sound of wretching and the smell of good ol' crapola. It seems that the lady next to me was airsick or something as she was throwing up in the bag and expelling gas. As snoozing was no longer an option, my minimal coffee fix long gone and the smell of body functions gone awry knocking me for a loop, I plugged in my iTouch and tried to escape with the comedy of Anchorman. She got worse, she seemed to go into some kind of diabetic seizure, the flight crew called for a doctor and she had an oxygen mask placed on her face just as she passed out.

As you can imagine, 3 flight attendants, a doctor, a worried husband and a sick wife were all crammed into Row 8 next to the large, bald dry heaving, sleepless Italian trying to ignore it all, it was quite the sight. Could I move? No, the flight was full. Could I get out of the row? No, mine was now the busiest on the plane. All I could do was make myself as small as possible and concentrate and not throwing up on myself thanks to the smell.

This lasted for about 45 minutes until we landed at LAX. I was so sick by the end of it from the sights and smells that it threw me off for the day, add a delay of over an hour for the flight home and I was a Category 1 zombie by 10pm when I crashed. Nothing like a good old fashioned Hell Flight to start the day.