Travelin' Mark

Every comedian has a rant about airport travel... here's mine.
  My company sends me all over the country on restoration jobs. They're usually last minute decisions, so I often find myself on the fly and less than prepared. There are a few constants with air travel that I have come to expect, and more than a few questions I have always had about the process. First of all, my company, in setting up these trips, seems to think I want to be in the air as soon as humanly possible. My flight out of Buffalo is usually at, like, 7:00am, which means I need to be at the airport by 6 at the latest, which means I need to be up at 4:30. WTF?! I do not want to start my day scraping ice off my truck in the damn 8 degree dark! The whole time I'm scraping away, I'm thinking about how tired I am, and how tired the pilots must be... nothing of import should be done before 10 in the morning, because I don't care what you say... you're not awake yet. Standing in the line at security, I will invariably detect the smell of breath so foul it can cause an athiest to believe in hell. I don't even have to look around and identify this person, because it is my fate that this passenger, who obviosly took extra time this morning to eat a breakfast of raw crayfish and a side of garden slugs, will be sitting next to me on my flight. It never fails. I manage to choose the security line that ends up stopped dead because someone who has never done this before didn't understand the procedure. They're standing on one leg like a stork as they take off forty pounds of bling, and unlace knee high fashion boots, and get stopped again when their belt buckle sets off the metal detector. Then it's the cellphone in their pocket. Then it's the loose change they're carrying. Then they didn't put their pastes and lotions into a Ziploc. Now this is one of my questions; What's the big deal with the Ziploc baggies? As I understand it, the Dept. of Homeland Security is concerned that explosives can be hidden in toothpaste, or lotions. What properties of the Ziploc baggie render these dangerous substances innert? I can carry a cellphone, a device with any number of mechanical mysteries. A device that, the pilots will tell you, can affect the GPS of the plane and cause it to veer off course. I can have the cellphone with me on board if I adhere to the honor system and keep it off during flight, but I can't have loose toothpaste?
  Then it's the boarding procedure. I have never had a ticket that had anything but 'Zone 4' printed on it. The planes load by Zones, as any reasonably intelligent person would guess, and of course, the cool kids get to go on first; First class passengers who spent extra money to disdain others, and people with crippling afflictions (Which is God's way of saying stay the hell home, in my opinion) who need assistance, then Zone 1, and so on... but the Zone 3 and 4 people crowd the entrance ramp door like they'll miss the whole trip if they don't storm the damn plane. I'm in no hurry to jam my ass into a tube full of strangers who's breath I'm about to spend the next three hours breathing at thirty thousand feet.
Of course, by the time my social caste has been chosen to take our seats, all of the overheads are filled. There's always some asshole who decided he didn't want to check any of his baggage, and is trying to cram a major appliance in the overhead compartment. It's for purses, not dishwashers you idiot. And there's my seat... between mr. Crayfish and some woman who brought 8 kids under 10 years old. They, of course, are scattered all over the back end of the plane, annoying their alloted group of passengers... none of them remembered their Ritalin this morning. No one should be allowed on any form of public transportation with children under eighteen. This is what station wagons are for. When John F. Kennedy invented the station wagon back in the 60's, and named them 'America's family vacation car', it wasn't just for shit's and giggles. If I ran the airline industry, a gas would be released on each flight that rendered anyone under 18 unconscious, and killed their legal guardian. Then we'd get some rest.
  Of coure, then it's time to hear the on flight instrucions. In the event of a water landing, the seat cushions can be used as a flotation device... sorry, but in the event of a water landing, I'll already be using my seat cushion as a diaper. Then the complexities of the seatbelt are addressed. Anyone who doesn't know how to use a seatbelt is not supposed to survive. it's called 'Natural Selection'. Stop trying to thwart Mother Nature! I was born into this world with the knowledge to work a damn seatbelt, therefore, nature will allow me to reproduce. That's how it works, people.
  Of course, by now my stress and anxiety has reached critical, as I sit, wedged between the breather, and the woman constantly twisting around to give her little hellspawn 'eye signals' to behave. We're, of course, over the wing, so I can't even look past mr. Crayfish and see the wonder of flight below me. All of my ailments (Heart problems, anxiety disorder, weak stomach, and the fact that it's friggin 7am and I'm exhausted) are threatening to overwhelm me, and I've already been 2 hours without a cigarette and the 3 hour flight is just beginning. Mr. Crayfish grips the seat armrest and accidentally pushes my recline button, startling me so badly that as I flip backwards I vomit on my own forehead and the lap of the woman behind me. I have my right elbow driven somewhere between 6 and 8 inches into his left nostril, shouting something unintelligable, when I'm foceably introduced to the Air Marshall.
  I travel to New York City next week... can't wait.