This morning I left home at the usual time - 7.25 - for Chicago. The trip took me to the Marco Polo Airport, then a flight to Munich, and now I am sitting in the just remodeled business class of a Lufthansa A340 en route to Chicago!
It is the first time that I use the internet on a flight, and it's pretty exciting. Sure, it costs money, as most pleasurable things on earth. To be precise, 30$ for the entire 9 hour flight. I am usually cheap with these kinds of things, but I figured I had to try it... So here I am, blogging from an unspecified place 7 miles above the Atlantic, off the coast of Scotland. I never had sex miles high, but I guess that should not be too different from having sex at sea level, apart from the obvious shortcomings of two bodies moving together inside a toilet cabin. As for surfing the internet, being on a plane definitely adds something to it! I just sent a few emails, and a couple SMS (text messages on cell phones). I love it! After this blog, I will be spending my time playing chess on the internet chess club, or bridge on www.pogo.com, or the like. Life is GOOD!
And I must say a word or three about these new business class seats they got on the intercontinental flights. Gordon, you definitely have to give Lufthansa another try, upon my word! The seats are a concentrated of technology. Not only will they take on any conceivable position you want them to (with a remote operating them!), from seat to bed (total flatness is achievable), and not only will they prevent you from bothering the person seating behind you (every seat has a shell of its own to prevent that), but they will give a massage to your back if you want to! Unbelievable. When the flight attendant at the boarding gate slid my boarding pass through the machine and the latter started to beep, I knew instantly I had hit on a free upgrade this morning. And there I am, being treated to a red Ribera wine, two kinds of smoked salmon, and the first course is coming pronto.
I am going to be at Fermilab for just two days this time. Short commute. A meeting or two, and then back. I can do that only because I am doing more of these in a row, otherwise flying without a weekend away would be too expensive. I have criss-crossed tickets for the next three trips, and so I can spend weekends with my family...
The down side of all this is the sleep deprivation that comes with frequent switches of the day time. We'll see how I score. Being away from Ilaria, however, is already beneficial...