Murphy's Travel Laws

Mar 1st, 2002, 01:10 PM

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Murphy's Travel Laws

Murphy's Travel Laws Murphy Laws For Frequent Flyers No flight ever leaves on time unless you are running late and need the delay to make the flight. If you are running late for a flight, it will depart from the farthest gate within the terminal. If you arrive very early for a flight, it inevitably will be delayed. Flights never leave from Gate #1 at any terminal in the world. If you must work on your flight, you will experience turbulence as soon as you touch pen to paper. If you are assigned a middle seat, you can determine who has the seats on the aisle and the window while you are still in the boarding area. Just look for the two largest passengers. Only passengers seated in window seats ever have to get up to go to the lavatory. The crying baby on board your flight is always seated next to you. The best-looking woman on your flight is never seated next to you. The less carry-on luggage space available on an aircraft, the more

Mar 1st, 2002, 01:28 PM

elvira

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If you are an 18 year old party animal, your hotel will be hosting an AARP convention. If you need quiet to sleep, your hotel will be hosting the Yodelers Convention. If you are allergic to shellfish, shrimp scampi will be all that's left on the meal cart when it reaches you. If you are first off the plane, your luggage is last off the plane. The shops near your delayed-two-hours-don't-leave-the-gate-area-plane gate sell only ant farms, magic leashes, and technical manuals in Latvian. The only restaurant is a takeaway place that sells only full racks of ribs and guava juice. The woman who smashed into you with her luggage trolley will get the last window seat just before you check-in. The only working audio on the plane is Chinese News Radio.

Mar 1st, 2002, 02:12 PM

Judy

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While waiting at the bus stop, those buses keep coming are not the route you need;when you decide to take a cab instead,there will be 3 or 4 of them arriving at the same time. The more anxious of you to catch a flight, the worse of the traffic will be,or the easier the tub/train breaks down,on strikes,or flooded. The more of your looking forward to walking some route,the worse the weather will be.

Mar 1st, 2002, 02:18 PM

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The one time that your bag shows up at the luggage carousel before you do, it will be taken home by some nitwit who mistakes it for his/her bag and is too dumb to check the nametag. (I can provide details on request.)

Mar 1st, 2002, 02:25 PM

ouch

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ar, you got one thing wrong: The best-looking woman on the flight never sits next to you---unless you're a plain-looking woman having a bad hair day and an outbreak of hives, who just got dumped for one who looks more like her.

Mar 1st, 2002, 02:26 PM

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No sooner do you get into your window seat than you wish you had taken Imodium. Lots of it. Your luggage arrives on the carousel...and its handle arrives five minutes later...if ever. Your passport photo looks like you...when you arrive after 40 hours in the air from Ankara. The French woman sitting next to you has forgotten to bathe...for weeks. The Pakistani man sitting on the other side cannot speak English but insists on doing so...for hours and hours and hours and hours. The men's room has one of those "Wet Floor" yellow signs posted at the entrance...and you suspect you know why.

Mar 2nd, 2002, 03:55 AM

elaine

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If you bring your own shampoo, the hotel provides it. If not, not. If you bring your silk ski underwear, the February temperatures will be 55 degrees. When my flight DOES leave from Gate 1, Gate 1 is at the opposite end of the terminal. If you are sitting up front and board later, those around you will have used up all of their and your overhead storage space. If you're sitting on the aisle, the flight attendants will clip your elbows with the cart every time. elvira, I'm very offended. What's wrong with guava juice?!

Mar 2nd, 2002, 06:34 AM

just

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I once--when I was single--had a nice looking man sit next to me on a coast to coast US flight. He did seem a little nervous (I thought it was from a fear of flying), but we talked almost the entire time and I enjoyed his company. As we were getting off the plane, I notice two undercover policemen come up to him and escort him away.

Mar 2nd, 2002, 06:52 AM

Actual Murphy

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If you have a balance problem that makes having a window seat essential so you can orient with the horizon... and you have negotiated for hours on the phone and at the gate to explain why -- even though you aren't a Platinum Frequent Flyer -- you need to have that seat in FRONT of the wing, not on the wing, because if you're on the wing all you can see is wing.... and you finally find a kindly, compassionate gate agent who puts you in seat 9A, which is a window seat in front of the wing... then you will be on a 737, which has one row -- row 9 -- that has a wall instead of a window.

Mar 2nd, 2002, 09:19 AM

#10

John

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The smooth flight will become very turbulent while you are drinking your tomato juice or coffee. The only magazines left will be of interest only to groups who never fly. You will have seen the movie, or only liked the naughty bits, which have been edited out. Only the Japanese language channel is loud enough to hear the soundtrack. The aft lavvies will look like the ones at the county fairground by the time the no-longer-hot towels are being passed around. It will be clear over Greenland in the middle of the night, and pouring in London in the morning. Your connecting flight will be in Terminal One and your arrival gate in Terminal Seventeen. The moving sidewalk will be closed for maintenance. It has been closed for maintenance for four months. Your cab driver is still learning his way around the airport, never mind Lambeth. Your hotel room will not be ready. Check back at seven tonight. The police/refuse collectors/subway drivers/waiters/students/Social Democrats/nurses/MEPs/cooks/insurance brokers/dogs will be on strike, or planning one. All the ATMs will accept Cirrus cards but not Plus ones, or whichever yours isn’t. They will only dispense £50 or 100 Euro notes, with which all you want to buy is a tube of toothpaste. The books you brought will all be terrible, and the only English language ones available in the hotel shop will be Zane Grey westerns, costing $20 each. You will waken promptly at 3 PM, and be ready for supper at 2 AM. This will eventually moderate so that you will have no idea what the hell time it is. You will call home, waking the family at 3 AM.

Mar 2nd, 2002, 11:46 AM

#11

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Schlepp your umbrella with you for days and it will guarantee no rain. Wear a silk dress and better shoes with no umbrella and it will pour freezing rain in August.

Mar 2nd, 2002, 01:45 PM

#12

Patrick Wallace

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As you sit on an idyllic tropical beach or gaze at an awe-inspiring mountain panorama, someone appears whom you know at home and can't stand. With their children.

Mar 2nd, 2002, 02:05 PM

#13

Cass

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You have been looking forward to revisiting Ste. Chapelle for eons. You finally get back to Paris after 30 yrs. and notice that on the last afternoon you'll be in France, there will be a wonderful choral concert in Ste. Chapelle, so you decide to make that concert the "dessert" of your week in Paris. Finally, the day comes and you make your way early to Ile de la Cite and walk over to the entrance, only to see a sign that says, for today only, Ste. Chapelle will be closed and the concert postponed because there is a trial in the next building that requires extra security, apparently.

Mar 2nd, 2002, 04:50 PM

#14

will

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Who the heck was Murphy anyway?!?

Mar 2nd, 2002, 09:13 PM

#15

Bob Brown

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I definitely think that there is a Murphy's law that covers the amount of time available to make a connecting flight when you are headed home. Let's define real connect time, RCT, as the difference between the actual arrival time of your connecting flight and the time of departure for your flight home. RCT = DT - AT Where RCT is real connect time available, DT is the departure time of the flight home, and AT is the actual time at the connecting flight arrived at the gate. Murphy's Law of Going Home Connect Time goes like this: When going home, the length of time required to travel from the arrival gate to the departure gate varies in direct inverse proportion to the amount of RCT. In other words, the shorter the time you have to catch your flight home, the farther away the connecting gate will be.

Mar 2nd, 2002, 10:21 PM

#16

elvira

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elaine, there's nothing wrong with guava juice, except when it's the only thing to drink with ribs. I forgot to mention the takeaway place will be out of napkins. And, as John mentioned, everything will be on strike except the Cardboard Museum and the Barney Ice Show.

Mar 2nd, 2002, 10:42 PM

#17

M. Giggle

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Strikes and national emergencies will always leave you stranded in Detroit, never in Paris. The heaviest book you lug home from a London bookstore will be available at your home town bookstore for half the price. The one time you are lucky enough to be assigned a bulkhead seat with an empty seat next to you, the plane will have technical difficulties, and you will be deplaned and re-assigned to a middle seat in a smaller plane for your twelve-hour flight.

Mar 2nd, 2002, 11:12 PM

#18

Sue

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The handsome Italian couple sitting beside you in the middle seats of the plane protect their beautiful skin from drying out by slathering themselves repeatedly with loathesome-smelling lotion. The one time you don’t bring foreign money with you, the ATM at the airport is down. The lovely hotel you find overlooking the Rhine is across from a train tunnel through which a whoo-whooing train emerges every 3.2 minutes throughout the night. The Saturday the French ATM machine eats your card is on a 3-day weekend, and Tuesday you will be in Belgium. You discover that the radio in your rental car needs a code to operate it, but it is not in any of the papers, and a call from the road to the rental company reveals that they don't know it either. The time you book your hotel into the Latin Quarter so your taxi from the Gare de Lyon will be cheap, the Gay Pride parade is wending its way through--you guessed it--and not only does it take an hour to get anywhere near your hotel, the taxi fare is outrageous and the driver has to let you out two blocks away.