LAX FUN

What was supposed to be an hour layover turned into a five hour “where the hell is the plane” countdown fest. United Airlines was claiming “aircraft unavailability” as the reason for the delay of my flight to Honolulu. If you’re ever delayed at LAX for five hours, here are some things you can do to keep busy (yes, I did it all):

1. Walk up and down a few of the terminals. I got off of Terminal 8 and my connecting flight was in Terminal 6. So when I learned of the five hour delay, I took a stroll up and down each terminal. There’s lots of food shops and knick knack stores to look at in Terminal 7; there was a Ruby Tuesdays and Cinnabon in Terminal six, and also a Starbucks; Terminal 8 was pretty boring because there’s really nothing there.

2. Take out a book that you packed and read it. My book this evening was “Ray in Reverse.” Approximately 250 pages and took me an hour to complete. Okay, so I had read the first 50 pages at SJC, but still 200 pages in an hour is pretty fast.

3. Go to Starbucks and buy a peppermint hot chocolate to try to warm yourself, especially your frozen fingers from keeping the book open while you’re reading.

4. Listen to the whole soundtrack to of “The Last Samurai” on your iPod Nano or similar device. In fact, listen to it twice.

5. Walk around looking for a working outlet to charge your laptop.

6. Walk around and count every Dell laptop that you see (14!)

7. Observe the family of 10 adults running after their 10 children trying to prevent the boys from poking the girls’ eyes out with the toy swords (plastic toy swords are allowed on airplanes?).

8. Observe fellow passengers look at the United departure screen, search for Honolulu flight #935, then exclaim “FUCK! A FIVE HOUR DELAY?” or “YOU GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!” This is still quite amusing even after you have seen it for the tenth time.

9. Go to a different restroom every time you have to answer to the call of nature.

10. Observe fellow passengers line up at the ticket counter four hours before the new departure time, hoping that a United agent will come and tell them this delay is all a dream.

11. Go search terminal after terminal to find an actual living, breathing, United Airlines agent. Good luck with that!

12. Go into the candy store and pick out all the red Sour Patch Kids. This task is much easier to do when they have tongs for you to use.

13. Observe plane after plane pulling into your designated gate, watch people get off the plane and then watch the plane pull away. “That plane is available! Why can’t it take us to Hawaii?”

14. Slowly eat your red Sour Patch Kids. First biting off the head, and then the legs, finishing off with the bodies. To make it more gruesome, say “No, no, please don’t eat me” out loud before taking a bit of the head and responding to yourself “Yummy.” People will start to stare, but hey, you’re contributing to the people watching industry.

15. Pull out another book and attempt to finish reading before the supposed boarding time in an hour.

16. Scream “Hallelujah” when the United agent finally announces that it’s time for boarding.

How to pass the time on a six hour flight:

-- Sleep.
-- Sleep.
-- Sleep.
-- Sleep.
-- Drink water.
-- Sleep.

My airplane travel started at 3:00pm at SJC. It ended at my final destination at 1:45am Honolulu time.

Thank goodness my return flight is a direct flight to SFO.