An Unnecessary Burden

You'd think, on a day that saw the Minnesota Vikings earn a playoff berth on a 51 yard field goal as time expired, The Common Man would be more gleeful. However, he just finished a long trek back across the United States, starting in the American desert and finishing in the deep freeze. He is tired and cranky and ready for bed, but figured he owed a quick post to the lot of you after snapping out of his post-Christmas fugue. The travel itself was not terrible. Both flights were on time, The Boy behaved beautifully on both, and The Common Man even got time to read a little (an atrocious book about Babe Ruth).

The Common Man always gears up for travel days. Like most of you out there, The Common Man takes packing and carrying his luggage very seriously, wanting to get most of it done at least 24 hours in advance and to efficiently use the space and the 50 lbs. limit judiciously for his two free pieces of luggage. He was largely successful this time around, as he got both cases up to 49.5 lbs of clothes and presents, before backing off, and added just a large bag to his family's pile of carry-ons (which included a stroller, a carseat, a diaper bag, a briefcase, a backpack, and two jackets) to get presents back home.

The Uncommon Wife, however, hates travel days. And she hates them mostly because The Common Man gears up for them. He gets anxious and paces. He reminds her that he needs her makeup bag before he can pack any more. He packs things that she wants to wear. It's not that The Common Man is stressed, per se, he just wants everything to go perfectly in the traveling. For it is during the journey that men like The Common Man see an opportunity to prove themselves. To show how manly and awesome and completely necessary they are to the family unit. If they pack just right, if they manage to not forget a single thing, if they carry three bags and a carseat through the airport, their wives will see just how indispensible they are and will be reminded of the manly virility that made them so attractive in the first place. And so The Common Man straps on the backpack, carries the carseat in the crook of his elbow, and balances a briefcase in one hand and a shopping bag in the other as he races between terminals to go from one plane to the next. He enjoys playing the pack mule, enjoys showing off like an ape wooing a mate, and likes demonstrating he's an absolutely crucial cog in the family machine in this way that his completely transparent obviously.

The Uncommon Wife, God bless her, plays along. Even though it drives her nuts and she rightly argues that she can carry a backpack and push the stroller at the same time, she lets The Common Man have his day, knowing how important for her man to get the day just right, even when getting it right means that she's more than a little frazzled by her husband's neuroses. So men, if you strain under the weight of those bags, the ones you don't have to carry but feel that honor demands you carry, think of the significant other who makes that possible. Who wants to help, but won't because they realize taking a single pound off your back will bruise your ego. And give thanks for the woman who lets you act like a man. Even when you're being an idiot about it.

Travel Travails

After getting up at 3:30 to get to the airport at 6:00 for a flight that left at 7:00, The Common Man did not have the energy to blog yesterday. He hopes you all understand and can forgive him for not being quite as dedicated as Mike Wilson, who live-blogged his own plane crash using Twitter (The Common Man's favorite line: "You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can't even get a vodka-tonic.")

And frankly, the day didn't lend itself to putting The Common Man in the best blogging mood anyway. There was the lack of sleep the night before, which weighed heavily on his overall mood. Then, on the first flight, The Boy was acting more rambunctious than usual. Eventually, he peed through his diaper and into The Common Man's lap, meaning that your friendly, neighborhood The Common Man was soaked in urine for the rest of the day. At the second airport of the trip, things went from bad to worse. The plane was delayed for an hour because one of the flight attendants wasn't there yet (she was coming in on another flight, which was itself running late), and FAA regulations state that there must be 6 men and women on board to serve The Common Man drinks and sell him a $4 bag of mini-oreos, not 5.


Then, as the crowd grew ever more impatient and the moment of boarding came ever closer, the gate agent began playing a fun game. "When we begin boarding the plane," she said, "we will begin with passengers traveling in first class, then elite members, then we will be boarding from the back of the plane." Like any impatient mob, the fliers began pushing forward, sure that the boarding process was about to begin. "Thank you for being patient, ladies and gentlemen. What I said was, 'when we begin boarding the plane...'. We are not ready to board yet, and will not be for another 15 minutes. Please step back from the gate area."

Oh, Siren, you had tricked The Common Man and his fellow travelers, luring them in with your sweet promises of boarding and safe passage, only to rebuff them at the last moment and take from them their hope (The Common Man just finished listening to an audiobook of The Odyssey.), but he will not be fooled again. Twenty minutes later, the temptress and gatekeeper returned to the PA system and announced that first class passengers could begin boarding, rows 1-3. After giving them sufficient time to take their golden chariots and slave-driven litters down the gateway, she announced, "Thank you for your patience, ladies and gentlemen, we will now be boarding all rows (long, heavy pause, in which the crowd surges forward once more like a tsunami upon the beach) in first class, rows 1-6." And the crowd receded from her, angry and resentful, muttering and threatening to surge forward again like so many waves upon the shore. Oh, how she had tricked The Common Man again, for he did not know that first class was 6 rows deep!

After dispatching the opulant first class passengers, she called forth the elite fliers and allowed them to board. Then she began the process of boarding the rest of the embittered crowd from the back of the plane. "Rows 36-41," she announced, again thanking the crowd for its patience, as though there were some other choice. After 4-5 minutes to allow the first group of plebs a headstart down the jetbridge, she came back to her podium, protected from the sweaty, grumbling, growingly hostile mass of (by now) semi-humanity in front of her. She spoke, "Now boarding all rows and all passengers on this flight."

The crowd sat stunned, as did The Common Man. He looked at The Uncommon Wife for confirmation. Had she abandoned the plan after 3 minutes? And what was to happen next? "Hold on!" yelled The Common Man, as 300 weary and desperate travelers rushed forward. Swept up in the momentum, The Common Man and The Uncommon Wife held tight to The Boy's stroller and were lifted to the top of this throng, riding it like a boogie-board on top of the wave, praying that it would deliver them safely down the jetbridge, and not send them spiralling off toward the rocks (glass windows) on either side of the door. And so it did.

And 3 hours later, The Common Man and his family made it safely to the American desert, where it was warm and sunny and gate agents are never useless teases whose only desire is to dash whatever slim hopes of happy travels that people have onto sharp rocks of despair. And so, The Common Man is in a much better mood today, eating his grandmother's chocolate chip cookies (mmm...the perfect food), drinking beer, and typing unmolested while The Boy's grandparents take him to Cosco. The next few days should be good and The Common Man looks foward to sharing them with you. In the meantime, just to irk Bikemonkey, here are The Muppets singing "Silent Night" with John Denver:

8 Simple Rules

The Common Man is safe in rural America this evening, tucked into the home of The Deacon, The Common Man's private brewmaster. The trip was a good one. Here is what The Common Man learned over the course of the day:

1) No matter how early you get up, you will still be rushing to catch a 7:05 flight. The Common Man woke up at 4:30 today, jumped in the shower, and packed the car in record time. He threw The Boy in his carseat and told him to "work it out" and graciously acquiesced to his wife's request to add a suitcase to the luggage (The Common Man was hoping to make it with just one bag). Then, despite his excellent planning, he inexplicably took the absolute longest plausible route to the airport. After traversing the heart of downtown and narrowly avoiding a pedestrian (a black overcoat at six in the morning in the middle of a poorly-lit intersection is awfully hard to see after all). Finally, after getting The Uncommon Wife, The Boy, two suitcases, a diaper bag, and two briefcases up to the counter, The Common Man realized he had forgotten the carseat back in the parking lot. The moral of the story, The Common Man realized as he walked onto his 7:05 flight at 7:03, is that no one makes good decisions before seven.

2) Being alone in coach. > Sitting in first class with a two-year old.



3) The future will look like the Detroit airport. There will be people-moving trams, calming blue-green lights that dance along the walls, and eerie synth music coming from unseen speakers. Also, it will smell like pollution, desperation, and failure.

4) Until the Cone of Silence technology is perfected, The Common Man decrees that all advances in headphone technology need to cease. When The Common Man, from across the aisle, can make out the words to every crappy Nickelback song blasting through your headphones as you appear to be sleeping, headphones have progressed as far (indeed further) than is either necessary or practical. As amused and befuddled as The Common Man was at this passenger's lack of consideration for other passengers, he felt horrified for the man's seatmate, who seemed relatively annoyed that he couldn't hear his own music over the other guy's music.

5) The Nissan Versa is an exceptionally small car. Exceptionally, exceptionally small. Like, it could fit in your walk-in closet small. Despite its size (or lack thereof), the car looks nice. But it lacks any and all of the muscle that a real man requires from his transportation. Indeed, The Common Man gets up to 60 before the Versa, and he's got a bad wheel. Eventually, humiliated by the car's lack of oompf, The Common Man encouraged The Uncommon Wife to take the wheel while he slept. Thus, The Common Man was spared the embarrassment of pulling up to The Deacon's house driving an enclosed golf cart.

6) The beer has been flowing like wine at The Deacon's house, and The Common Man has many excellent options for his beer review this week. If you are in need of good beer, it's good to have a private brewmaster on hand to produce some variety and to provide new and exotic beers. The Common Man suggests making nice with your local home-brewer, perhaps the most manly of hobbyists.

7) When your wife asks you if you want a milkshake, and you respond that she should "look in her heart," be prepared for her answer to be, "I saw heart disease and clogged arteries."

8) With Thanksgiving just two short days away, The Common Man thinks it is important to be eating less rather than eating more. Indeed, if his stomach is full of sauerkraut, ham-and-cheese on a pretzel roll, milkshake, jalapeno-stuffed big pretzel, steak sandwich, and copious amounts of beer. Tomorrow, as he learned from competitive eating sensation Takeru Kobayashi, The Common Man will feast on only grapes to stretch out the walls of his stomach and increase his eating capacity.