standing by
Mar. 30th, 2007 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baratronAfter moaning about flying standby, I should point out the rather nice sense of camcaderie that prevails among some of the standby passengers. I'm sure there are people who resent everyone else in case they "do" them out of a seat, but after a few hours of hanging round the terminal you do recognise each other. And a lot of the standby passengers have interesting reasons for their flexible or disorganised travel arrangements.
I got chatting to one guy who's a member of flight crew for American Airlines, and his 75 year old mother. They were returning from taking his father's ashes back to the UK for burial. Another guy was returning home after 7 months working for the US Government in Afghanistan. He had been travelling for almost 24 hours already, and needed to get another connection at Chicago. But he was very much looking forward to getting back to his wife and 2 year old daughter and 9 day old son. We talked about how wonderful the internet is - apparently every day before work he talks to his family via webcam.
He thought I had a lovely accent. But after a mere - er, I'm so confused by all the time zone changes that I have no idea how long I've been - ok, after lesss than a day talking to Americans, I can feel my vowel sounds slipping. I'm going to be completely mid-Atlantic by Saturday, I know!
I got chatting to one guy who's a member of flight crew for American Airlines, and his 75 year old mother. They were returning from taking his father's ashes back to the UK for burial. Another guy was returning home after 7 months working for the US Government in Afghanistan. He had been travelling for almost 24 hours already, and needed to get another connection at Chicago. But he was very much looking forward to getting back to his wife and 2 year old daughter and 9 day old son. We talked about how wonderful the internet is - apparently every day before work he talks to his family via webcam.
He thought I had a lovely accent. But after a mere - er, I'm so confused by all the time zone changes that I have no idea how long I've been - ok, after lesss than a day talking to Americans, I can feel my vowel sounds slipping. I'm going to be completely mid-Atlantic by Saturday, I know!