His life is rough.
We talk to each other several times a day. You have to love that I can dial his cell phone number, and not even need the area code or those weird country codes, and I can reach him just about anywhere in the world. Except Japan. Salo Finland and Shenzhen China....yes. But the technology/most cell phones owned per capita capital of the world, Japan? No.
Go figure.
Our conversations are generally me listening to his planes, trains and automobile adventures and exotic things he ate which more often than not, gave him some kind of intestinal "issues" as I eat left over macaroni and cheese or cold pizza and tell him how the highlight of my day was that after three weeks, Erik finally pooped in the potty. So, I suppose in an odd way, we both have our own intestinal "issues" we deal with.
Tonight, the conversation was about planes. I guess he took the airplane version of a clown car from Prague to Barcelona yesterday. His body didn't even fit in the seat and had to sit sideways on the flight.
Which then had us talking about "those airlines". You know, the ones crying over the price of oil rather than poor management so they need to cut corners any way they can. First, it was the $10.00 fuel surcharge they tacked on to each plane ticket several years ago back when we thought $1.25/gallon was ridiculous and people were lined up down the street the night before the new gas hike would take effect to fill their tanks. Then there was the $3.00 segment fees for each leg. Now it's more fuel surcharges. Then last week, American announced they were going to start charging $15.00 for each checked bag.
Are you kidding me?
That's another $30 roundtrip! And if I'm just going to Disneyland with a couple of kids and had to check a couple bags, it would end up costing me as much as the plane ticket!
So, what is that going to persuade travelers to do?
As I see it, people are going to be forced to start WEARING every possible article of clothing they would normally have packed in their checked luggage ON the PLANE.
For men, they will start with wearing a weeks worth of underwear under their swimming suit, a couple of pairs of shorts followed by jeans and khakis for those dressier days. On top, the layers will be three t-shirts under two layers of button-up shirts, a flannel jacket and a winter coat. If it's not winter, the outer most layer can be substituted with pajamas. Or really, you could forgo the pjs altogether and just wear your birthday suit to bed. That would save even more space.
Women's layering technique is the same as the men only add a skirt over the jeans. I heard that the pants under a skirt thing from the '80's is back in style again. Convenient.
Yeah....laugh now but I swear, the next flight you take where you have to fork over 15 big ones just to check your bag, you'll see that guy or girl doing just as I suggested and you'll think to yourself, "DANG! That's brilliant! I wish I had thought of that!"
Then, all you would need to bring is one carry on with your essentials like the quart size Ziploc baggie with the three ounce bottles of liquids and/or gels which may or may not be confiscated because if you packed, I don't know..... say a 5 oz. tube of children's toothpaste that had less than an ounce of content left because you managed to get it TO your destination when it contained roughly 2 ounces but because the container read "5 ounces" despite the actual content left, it would be deemed unacceptable and put in the hazardous materials bin by the 18 year old why-be-consistant-security girl who obviously doesn't have kids of her own because if she did, she would know that they don't make children's toothpaste in 3 ounce travel sizes.
I think I'll rent out some space at the airport for a disposable clothing line.
I'll call it "Disposable Digs" and include a suitcase for people to put the clothes in and they can return it when they fly home. I could charge $14.00 for three days worth of disposable clothes which I think would be totally worth it. People spend that much on a slice of pizza there at the airport. You laugh........but if all of the airlines follow American's lead, you'll be thinking, "Why didn't I think of that?"
Gotta love a free market economy!
