Kyle Hepp

September 17, 2010

I haven’t been writing much lately. I’ve been busy editing and posting photos like a crazy. As I posted on my Twitter the other day, “When I look at my to-do list I’m simultaneously overwhelmed w/ gratitude that I have this much business and overwhelmed with overwhelmedness.”

Even though I have more photos I need to post, I’m going to skip a day and write up a very exciting experience we had the other day instead.

We travel a lot. I just counted and we’ve taken 33 flights since last July. That’s a lot of time in the air. Since we’re used to the security lines and the like, we don’t stress out too much about getting checked in super early. For our last flight from Miami to NYC, we arrived about one hour ahead of time at the airport. We checked our bags, hassle free, got through the security line, shoes off, easy peasy and when we got to our gate, they had just started boarding. I realized that our boarding passes didn’t have seat numbers, so we went to stand in line at the counter. There were a couple of argumentative passengers ahead of us. When it was our turn I tried to be nice and explained to her that we didn’t have seat numbers, and that we would very much like to sit together, if possible. She started typing away in her computer and didn’t look up for several minutes. When she finally handed us our new boarding passes, she mumbled something that sounded like, “Here you go, you’re in burnt ass.”

I asked, “What?!?” as Seba grabbed my arm and started pulling me into the boarding line. I looked back saw the lady scowling over at me. She had just upgraded us into First Class and I hadn’t understood her. I’m pretty sure as we walked away, she was typing something into her notes along the lines of, “Kyle Hepp is an ungrateful biatch. Never upgrade her again.”

We finally made it to our seats and as soon as my butt hit the seat there was a flight attendant offering me a drink. Let me be more specific — it was 6am and her exact words were, “Would you like some champagne for breakfast?” OF COURSE I would love some champagne for breakfast! Who wouldn’t?!?

I tried to get out my camera to take pictures, but Seba called me a huasa and wouldn’t let me. A rough translation would be like a country bumpkin. Basically, the ten year old girl in the row over from us was acting way cooler than I was.

The plane took off and I think that flying is a little bumpier up front because I felt like we were moving around more than usual. As soon as the fasten seatbelt light was turned off, I was going to tell Seba how excited I was to take advantage of the seats that lay all the way down. I looked over and he was fast asleep. Sitting straight up.

They offered breakfast and we got it, but didn’t eat much of it, because it was pretty much just as blah as normal airline food, with the exception of at least getting the world’s tiniest plate of fresh fruit — three grapes and a strawberry.

I finally did recline my seat as far as it goes and I fell asleep right away. But then I woke up every half hour or so, just like I always do flying — confirming that my problem isn’t the small seats in the back, it’s that I am afraid the pilot is going to fall asleep and never wake up, and then I wake up scared because I think I need to go check on him or something. It’s stupid. If he did fall asleep, I wouldn’t know until the plane was already crashing. Even then I wouldn’t know we were crashing because he was asleep. And if I somehow knew that he was asleep, it’s not like I could get in the cockpit to wake him up. Then IF, and this is my final if — IF I knew the pilot was asleep and somehow found a way to get in the cockpit and he really wasn’t waking up — I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO FLY A PLANE.

Me being awake is completely useless and I am completely aware of that. So why the hell can’t I sleep, even when I’m in a comfy reclining sleep? I’m an idiot, let’s just leave it at that.

Flying in First Class was nice and who knows, maybe we’ll get upgraded again some day if that counter didn’t put me on the American Airlines hit list of passengers who SUCK. But I hope that if it does happen again, I’m still a huasa It was fun being that excited to get on a plane.