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I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone laugh out loud like this on an airplane before. The usual assortment of reruns of Frasier is playing on the little monitors in this 737-800, and I’d say maybe a third of the passengers on the full flight have willingly become a captive audience. My row on the left side of the airplane consists of me at the window, enjoying the bright sunny day, marveling at how it can be -40 degrees outside the window, and the sun coming through makes it feel so hot I have to keep lowering the shade, the pilot sitting in the middle working on some kind of aviation homework and drinking a steady stream of soda and virgin bloody mary mix, and the woman on the aisle, whom I will now refer to as the Cackler.

The Cackler’s start to the flight was inauspicious. Our row is near the back of the plane, so we boarded early, and I got to listen to a 10-minute technical support conversation she had with her husband, as she tried to make a DVD play in the external DVD drive of her Dell laptop. The conversation was not productive, so she started rooting through her bag for something else to occupy her attention. Her first accident of the flight happened before the doors shut; in the process of pulling some papers from her bag, she spilled an entire bag of Combos amongst the papers. After take-off, she opened gusher of carbonated water all over herself, her bag, and the pilot next to me. Now she’s watching Frasier and having a loud laugh at it every couple minutes. At least she’s not trying to open any more food or beverage items!

The pilot was interested in good ole’ Pismo when I brought it out of its protective case, popped the lid open, and immediately began to type. Windows users the world over are jealous of the near-instant wake from sleep! I then got to brag about Pismo some more, which doesn’t happen very often, but it is so old, slow, and reliable that the battery will last for FOUR HOURS if I don’t use the DVD drive and turn the screen brightness down a bit. Try that on a 1.67 Ghz aluminum powerbook!

The seat rows are much farther apart on this flight than I’m used to. The pilot tells me that there is a limit of 150 passengers on this plane, otherwise they have to add a flight attendant, and there’s no first class section on this one, so we all benefit with a lot more leg room. This is actually a reasonably-sized working environment! I would take a picture but the 50mm lens is much too narrow a field of view on the D70 to allow it.