Your flotation device may also be used as a seat cushion

Although I'll probably be damned for even complaining, my sit bones are sore. I'm somewhere over the mid-Atlantic on my way from a short layover in Charlotte, NC to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Hardly something to take issue with. But, over the last 10 days, I've spent 24 hours on my bike in an effort to build by base. Due to the lovely weather of last weekend and mid last week, 9 hours of that time has been on a trainer. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday with 4 hours, 4 hours and 3:30 hours. I was getting sore anyway.

But, I thought, what better way to spend a rest day, and a rest week than on at a tropical resort, begun of course, with the obligatory relaxation of 6 hours or so of airline travel. Normally, this would have bothered me, but I was actually looking forward to getting a chance to be off of my legs. At the end of the ride on Sunday, I could barely get off the bike. Great plan, right?

Well, US Airways had other plans for me, at least for the first 2 hours. My flight left MSP at 7:05 Monday morning, which is only about 30 minutes later than I usually get out of bed. So I was happy to get on the plane 20 minutes prior to departure and take my seat, hoping to sneak in a nap prior to take off, maybe even sleep through the sometimes-anxiety-causing process of getting up to altitude. We were on a CR9 or some such thing: a small regional jet to fly from MSP to Charlotte. I had an aisle seat (my preference, usually) so I was all ready to plunk down. When I sat, however, I was unpleasantly surprised. My seat was somewhere between a seat cushion life preserver that's been left on a boat in the sun for too many years and a phone book. Some padding existed, or had at one time or another, but not much any more. It was a challenging 1 hour and 45 minutes.

All was far from lost. My Charlotte to San Juan fight (where I'm writing this, off line of course) is on a 767. Much more comfortable. And after being assigned to a window seat, the ticket agent in MSP managed to get me an exit row aisle seat. MUCH BETTER.

I thought there was some big deal about how airlines had to carefully vet movies they showed on planes to make sure the content was universally acceptable, etc. Either US Airways has a different view of what's universally acceptable or I do. They're showing some fairly recent film with Cameron Diaz and Jude Law and Jack Black and some British actress about where the women switch houses and end up switching boyfriends or some such thing. There are quite a number of kids on this flight under 12, and I'm confident that everyone of the boys between 9 – 12 has enjoyed the scene, head phones or no, with Cameron Diaz in bed wearing a bra. Plus the scene where Cameron punches out her cheating husband was real family content. Of course, I'm getting the benefit of watching this without the sound. I plugged my headphones into the plane sounds system and finally got some sleep by turning on the classical channel, even though there were 2 volume settings: inaudibly soft and nearly unbearably loud. Ever notice that if you're listening to anything else and watching a movie and there's no dialog that you can see, what ever you're listening to becomes a plausible sound track to the movie?