Under Construction
I am 6 days into the second leg of my winter riding. As with the other 2, this is my 5th year in Claremont CA in February. The weather had been fine. A little chilly in the morning when I start out at 6:45 or 7:30, but so far I have not been cold at all on the road, other than a slight thought of such when speeding down hill for long periods. I wear the skull cap under my helmet, long pants and 4 layers on top, two of which are long sleeve. I have not been tempted to take off or even unzip the outer layer but it is possible that warmer weather is coming.
I arrived very late Monday Feb 10. Direct Jet Blue from Logan to Burback. Out at 6pm and in at 10pm? Very strange flight. I try to save money by not paying for seat selection or baggage check. My thinking is that since I can now survive 14 hours trips to Shanghai, I sould be able to survive a 6 hour flight even in the dreaded middle seat. I always try to check in online right at the 24 hour opening window but this time got a window seat with no isle available. As son as I got to the counter, I asked if I could trade for an isle seat, non-emergency, but they had none. I really lucked out coming back from Cancun as I was assigned a window and then I asked to change to a isle, they first put me in the last row and then decided they wanted that for crew and put me an isle in row 12 that turned out to be special class with free drinks etc!
They made the strangest announcement about soliciting volunteers that I have ever heard. They said they needed 3 people to give up their seats in exchange for money and next flight out because of WEIGHT! The idea was that the head winds were so strong they need to reduce weight. They did not ask for larger people to come forward?
Later I approached them with my normal “Don’t you want to gate check my bag?” Again the answer was that we need a certain weight distribution so we do not want to put more in the belly of the plane? Very strange. But it even gets stranger. Once we have loaded the plane it is obvious that it is just 3/4 full. What would they have done if the plane was full? Offer money to 30 people? This is a 3×3 with 30+ rows so like 200 total. There even was an isle seat free very near me but I had not grokked that the plan was so empty so I was stuck with a mother and 17? year old daughter and me with the window.
The pilot warned us that the flight would be bumpy, especially at the end. It really was not the death defying, the plane is about to tear itself apart, that I imagine all of us have experienced at least once, but there were a couple of mean jults. The pilot also had a line about incase you have not flown into Burbank before, be aware that because the runway is short, we land at a slower speed and break hard. I am sure I was not the only passenger who was aware that due to the high winds in the last 24 hours a Boston London flight had set a world record for a non-supersonic plane. I think it had averaged over 850 MPH.