A Day In The Life
Posted: October 19th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball, Media | 62 Comments »
It has been a while since I wrote a bizarrely personal and meandering blog post about nothing at all. This is nebulously about my crazy Sunday. Read it at your own peril.
Tweet: How does night w/out sleep, 3 planes, sick child, looming deadline and talk in Topeka lead to putting $1.15 gas in tank? Long story, bub.
One of the key questions in life, or at least in the life of those who travel a lot, is this: How much sleep makes it worth sleeping? In other words, if you have three hours to sleep at night, is it worth sleeping or would you be better off just staying awake and catching up later. I’ve always said two hours is the cutoff. But I’m not sure if that’s right.
The day began at New Yankee Stadium, in extra innings of the ALCS game between the Yankees and Angels. In some ways it was a good game, maybe even a classic. Sports are funny that way. The game was sloppily played, and the weather was crummy, and the whole night had that long movie syndrome*, you know, lots of false endings and that “OK, will this thing EVER end” feel. And yet, it was tense throughout, there were heroes and near-heroes, goats and almost-goats. There was a memorable home run — hit by A-Rod of course, when Brian Fuentes inexplicably threw an 0-2 fastball right down Broadway. There was a memorable error by Maicer Izturis — who made a nice play on a ball hit to his left and then, for reasons that can only be explained by the cold and a plenty rain and it being 1 a.m., turned hard and tried make an almost impossible throw to get a force play at second base. It made almost no sense at all. He was clearly trying to keep the force play in order — “Aggressive,” he called it — but the only thing that mattered there was getting an out. Of course, he threw the ball away, and Jerry Hairston Jr. ran home from third base, and that was the ballgame.
*I’ve mentioned this before, but without a doubt the longest movie I ever saw was A.I. I would need to go to imdb to look at it for sure, but unless I’m mistaken, the official A.I. run-time was 483 hours, 27 minutes, 49 seconds. Not to brag, but I feel pretty certain I could have WRITTEN A.I. in the time it took to watch it. That movie was so long, I had to change shaving blades three times. Two kids in the theater graduated from high school and college while that movie was playing. It was really long.
Anyway, that happened a bit after 1 a.m. So that is how I started my day. Of course, there was still work to be done, so I would say I got back to the hotel shortly before 3 a.m. I had a 4 a.m. wakeup call, and a 6 a.m. flight out of LaGuardia. One hour. And thus … the decision. To sleep or not to sleep, that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to wake up groggy and suffer the slings and arrows of an upset stomach, or to take arms against the night and stay awake knowing full well that your mind will be a sea of mush by mid-afternoon. I chose to stay awake. I cannot tell you that this was the wise decision.
I stayed awake and worked on my Sports Illustrated baseball story, knowing full well that there would be a time later in the day when I would not have any idea what the words I was typing meant. I remember once at an Olympics, I believe it was Sydney, when I was so tired that I actually woke up with my head on my keyboard and saw that I had written 10 paragraphs that must have made sense to me at some point. I then wrote 10 new paragraphs that, I’m quite certain, were even less comprehensible.
The wake-up call came at 4 a.m., right on time, and scared the living hell out of me (and the dead hell too). I would guess I was not sleeping because I was sitting upright and I was typing, but I’m quite certain that was not entirely awake either. I managed to get ready and make it down to the taxi. I vaguely recall the ride to LaGuardia. I remember car horns.
LaGuardia, especially early on a Sunday morning, is actually a pretty easy airport to get around. I made it thorough security despite being behind a woman who, bless her soul, was doing this for the first time. I don’t mean she was flying for the first time, no, I’m pretty sure it was the first time she had ever been out of the house. She had questions. She had thoughts. Why do you need to see my ID? Is a driver’s license good enough because I don’t have a passport. Maybe I should get a passport. Can you get a passport at the airport? Do I have to everything out of my purse? Can I wear my shoes through here? I was going to wear different shoes, like sandals, but it’s just so cold out there. I have my sandals in my suitcase. I guess I could have switched when I got to the airport. And so on.
I don’t know if sleep on the plane counts as real sleep. I want to believe it does count because I do have the ability to sleep on planes, a rare ability based on my conversations with pretty much everyone else. I can’t tell you how many times through the years someone has told me: “Oh, I just can’t sleep on a plane. I wish I could, but I just can’t.” Well, I can sleep, but I have no idea if it matters because I never wake up rested in the slightest. I’m always roughly 1.7 times more tired when I wake up on a plane than I was when I went to sleep in the first place. To do the math on this:
My TIRED+ when I got on the plane in LaGuardia: 123.
My TIRED+ when I got off the plane in Chicago: 209.
Scheduling a flight through O’Hare is a really the airport version of gambling in Vegas — except you can’t really win. First off, there’s a 67% chance your flight will be delayed. And the great thing about O’Hare is that you never really know WHEN it will be delayed. It’s like Delay Surprise! The plane might be delayed at your home airport. It might be delayed while the plane is in the air. But it also might be delayed after you land … I’ve spent two-plus hours on a plane on the tarmac at O’Hare. In Chicago, you ain’t off the plane until you’re off the plane.
But the second gamble is how far away your connecting gate will be. In Chicago, at O’Hare, your gate could be 2 miles away. But you’re rarely that lucky. Usually it’s a much, much longer walk. I would swear that once I was connecting from Chicago to Boston … I landed in Chicago and my connecting gate was just West of Milwaukee, close to Wauwatosa. This time, I got lucky and only had about a 25-minute walk. Of course, to be fair, I was staggering — it might have taken five minutes for a reasonably alert person. I got to the gate and popped open the computer and read what I had written for Sports Illustrated. As expected, it was gibberish. I wrote a few more words, knowing full well that those wouldn’t make any sense either.
The flight to Kansas City got in early. The pilot spent a great deal of time bragging about this, which I can understand. After taking all the abuse for late flights, pilots should enjoy their good moments. Still: You know how pilots will say, “Just remember this the next time you get in late somewhere.” I don’t think it works that way. Sure, it would be great if everything in life worked that way — if you could take the few good moments you have in life and apply them the bad moments. It would be great if you could beat a team 11-0, and apply four or five of those excess runs for a bad game at a later time. Trouble is, no. That extra 20 minutes I got in Kansas City won’t help me much the next time I’m stuck in the boarding area in Atlanta.
But I did get home … and our 4-year-old Katie was sick as a dog. It’s a rotten thing to see your kids sick. It’s such a helpless feeling, and at that age they really can’t help but blame you for being helpless. I could see it in Katie’s eyes, it was like: “I feel terrible, and you are not making this any better. You are supposed to make this better. That’s YOUR JOB. My job is to be a kid and say cute things and change clothes like 12 times a day and constantly be hungry for junk food. Your job is to make sure that I don’t feel like this. You’re not holding up your end here, Dad.”
So … I had to hold her for a while and tell her things would be OK and, mostly, stay awake which was probably the most difficult thing. Of course, I still had to write the Sports Illustrated story, and — yeah, I failed to mention this — I also had to be in Topeka, Kansas at 3 p.m. for a speaking engagement about The Machine that had been scheduled months and months earlier, long before I could imagine Brian Fuentes giving up game tying home runs. I did as much comforting as I could do, I went to the computer to write the SI story (I was right — the stuff I wrote in Chicago was blather). I had about two hours to work on the story which is usually plenty for me — it wasn’t even close to enough time. You never consider how much a sleepless night will dull the senses.*
*Not to get into too many kid stories — but when our oldest daughter Elizabeth was born, well, she was not a great sleeper. And so, Margo and I got piecemeal sleep. It was an hour here, two hours there, 45 minutes there … a four-hour chunk of sleep was like a Hawaiian vacation. But the thing is, when you’re living it, you’re living it, and so you don’t fully appreciate what is happening to you. I thought I was doing fine. For me, the moment of truth came when Elizabeth was about a month old and Chardon Jimmy called to talk, and he swears to this day that basically I spent minutes mumbling “Hungry diaper, sleepy diaper, hungry diaper, sleepy diaper,” like some sort of madman.
The two hours went by in roughly 47 seconds — sort of the opposite of the long-movie syndrome.*
*I guess that would be the “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” syndrome — I remember when we went to Disney World a few years ago and the line for the ride was forever, and then you got on the ride, and then it was over like instantly. I believe every single person who ever went on Mr. Toad’s uttered precisely the same two words when walking out: “That’s it?”
Then I had to get in the car and make the hour drive to Topeka. Of course, it’s not EXACTLY an hour to Topeka. Here’s a new word to play around with: Cartimate. I see it as a verb, and it would mean: “Estimating how much longer or shorter a trip is than the suggested retail time.” For instance, in Kansas City it’s common to say that it’s a two hour drive to Columbia, Mo. (where the University of Missouri is) and it’s a two-hour drive to Manhattan, Kan. (home of Kansas State University). Only, it’s obviously not exactly two hours to either one of those places, and it’s certainly not exactly two hours from every single part of Kansas City. So in your mind, consciously or subconsciously, you cartimate how long the trip will actually take. Kansas City to Topeka is supposed to be an hour, but I cartimate that it is really about an hour and 12 minutes to Topeka from my house. I did not leave in those 12 minutes. So I was forced, you know, to push to get there on time. As I was driving, I noticed that I was a bit short on gas. I knew I had enough to get to Topeka, but I would have to fill up on the way home. We’re getting closer to the finish line, I promise.*
*This post feels like A.I.
Topeka was wonderful. They set me up in this room in the library, everyone was very friendly and fully accepting of the fact that, other than plane sleep, I had not slept in about 30 hours. I have absolutely no idea what I said. I’m pretty sure that at some point I said something about Pete Rose and something else about Royals general manager Dayton Moore, but I may have confused the two. We also talked about the Kansas CIty Chiefs who not only won for the third time in 31 games, but they put up my favorite 14 in football — four field goals and a safety.*
*My favorite 7: Two safeties and a field.
My favorite 10: Touchdown, two point conversion, safety.
My favorite 14: Four field goals and a safety.
My favorite 20: Four field goals, one touchdown, two point conversion.
My favorite 21: Five field goals, touchdown with missed extra point.
I had to rush back home because — I guess I should have mentioned this too — I had a flight out of Kansas City Sunday night for Dallas. I’m writing this from Dallas … I’m here for Sports Illustrated event with Tom Watson. My favorite moment so far was when Tom was talking about how money corrupts, and as he was saying that he was looking hard at me. I said, “Wait, don’t look at me..” And he said, “Oh yeah, I forgot, you’re a pissant sportswriter. You don’t make any money.” We get along great, Tom and me.
So, I got in the car to race back home to repack and finish my SI story and comfort my youngest daughter and catch a plane and maybe, somewhere along the way, get some sleep, and I looked at the gas gauge and saw that I needed to stop to get gas. I pulled into the gas station, and I reached back for my wallet and … yeah. Of course you saw that coming a million miles ago. No wallet. I had left it at home. I spent a few seconds trying to go back to that moment when I messed up, but the truth is this wasn’t a case where I could see my mistake. No, I don’t know that it would officially even be considered a “mistake.” In the haze of the day, I never even thought about bringing my wallet.
I just wrote a story on driver Jimmie Johnson that will appear in the magazine soon, and — this is absolutely true — I tried to think what Jimmie would do in this situation. And it became very clear to me in my exhausted and utterly defeated mind: I would have to conserve gas and try to make it home on fumes. And so I powered down everything that could be powered down like I was Kevin Bacon in Apollo 13, and I drove just slightly below the speed limit, and i watched the gas gauge closely. I could see it was going to be close. The warning light came on and said that my gas range was 30 miles. I looked at the GPS — I was 39 miles from home. I wasn’t going to make it.
And so … well, you know what I did. I pulled into a gas station, grabbed all the change I had in the ash tray, (three quarters, three times, two nickels — my wife had only recently emptied it out) and I bought $1.15 worth of gas.* It bought me .43 gallons. By my best estimate, it gave me 12-14 extra miles, depending on how seriously I could take that 30-miles to the highway claim I got when I bought the car. Before I did it, I had set up all sorts of elaborate excuses to give the kid behind the counter in the gas station, but he really wasn’t too interested. I guess I’m not the first person to buy $1.15 worth of gas. I was just the first person do to it who was not 17 years old.
*Even in my panic, I was too proud to pull out the pennies.
Well, you know the ending. I did make it home. I did write the SI story. I did see my youngest daughter perk up — kids are resilient. I did make it on the plane to Dallas. And tonight, I head to LA for the rest of the ALCS. It’s a good life, absolutely. I do wonder, though, if they would mind if I slept on that couch over there. I would only need four or five hours, and I’d be as good as new.
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Circle me server error!
Joe, I was there in Topeka. It was great, thanks for making it during this crazy day!
Joe, you’re the only writer I know of who could have written this and made it so enjoyable to read. And not nearly as long as AI, either…
I’m not sure when you planned your Topeka trip, but I make all arrangements based on the fact that Brian Fuentes can blow a save at any moment. That’s his job: blow saves.
Whoo whee Joe, get yourself some rest…. crazy times but a story you’ll be able to tell your grandkids…
This, right here, is why a writer like me could never do what you do — all the work around the writing. For instance, that nice, older lady in front of you at the airport? I’m afraid that I would have said terribly rude things.
I went to Disney World 20+ yrs ago as a kid and one of the only things I remember is exactly what you described–the longest line in the park was for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and it was the most disappointing (shortest as well) ride. I can hardly believe that it’s still around.
> Circle me server error!
Yeah, me too, but mine was just a few minutes ago.
The final installment of the “Lord of the Rings” cinema adaptation had perhaps a dozen endings. The only ending it did not cover — WHICH WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE HOBBITS GOING OUT ON THEIR JOURNEY — was the Scourge of the Shire. Damn it, I really wanted to see that. How dare you, Peter Jackson. I look forward to someone else remaking the trilogy in 20 years.
I’m glad you survived your Sunday, Joe.
…this is exactly my day, today. No sleep, early flight, non-functional brain..
It was insanely long, but what a lesson in A.I.! If you create a robot boy and stop loving him after a while, he’ll be really sad for centuries until aliens come and clone you so you can hug him for a few minutes.
So, uh… yeah. Good talk.
Good to hear you’re finally safe and sound, Joe. Keep up the great work!
hungrydiapersleepydiaperhungrydiapersleepydiaper…
Greg (#7): Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride is not there anymore. It’s been replaced, but I forget by what.
@12: I think it was replaced by the Winnie-the-Pooh ride? I was just there two weeks ago…it’s either Winnie-the-Pooh or Peter Pan. But since the Pooh ride is about A Very Blustery Day, I think it’s that.
It was a good ride, though.
Seriously, how much did you actually need to be in New York to write that story? The photographers need to be there, but why not just TiVO the dadgum thing like the rest of us, comfort your daughter, and then watch the whole thing in 45 minutes skipping over the unimportant bits. They even have the postgame conferences on ESPN News or somesuch for the player quotes.
You don’t think the Angels can win two of three in their ballpark?
We have a rule in our house … if you empty the change from the ashtray, that is fine, but you have to leave three bucks worth of quarters in there, just in case.
Everybody loves Mr. Toads wild ride
@9
That was not the whole point of them leaving the shire. I’m glad he changed that ending. It was unnecessarily depressing and negative. “no matter what we do, we lose” is just a bad way to live life.
And, yes, it had too many false endings. And, yes, I’ve watched it too many times already with my sons.
As for the post, very entertaining Joe. Keep them coming.
btw, my son and his friends are considering buying snuggies and wearing them for their Halloween costumes. I guess they are going as children of stupid people or something, not sure…
Thanks for the ‘Kevin Bacon in Apollo 13′ reference. That was exactly what I was thinking as you began to describe your effort to power down as much as possible.
Tired minds think alike.
I had a crappy weekend that began with a careless driver smashing into the back of our SUV as my wife and I were about to leave town for a short anniversary getaway.
I did have my wallet in my pocket so I did have that going for me….
What an exhausting adventure! I felt like I should take a nap after reading your post.
I’m 17, and I never got to pay $1.15 for gas before …
Instead of cartimate, I would go with
mapquestimate
This may be a different concept altogether, but a mapquestimate is the estimated duration of a trip you get on any directions query — a number which is always absurdly high because nobody actually goes the speed limit at every segment used to calucate the mapquestimate.
that’s it?
son-of-a-#$*&%!
One night I turned on my alarm without checking what time it was set for (I almost always check it). I did not realize that the power had gone out earlier and one of the kids had reset the time on the clock for me. Unfortunately the alarm went to the default time of midnight. So from 12am to 6am I slept in 8 minute increments until I finally figured out what was going on and then I had to get up anyway.
Another fun way to 21:
Safety, 2 FG, 1 TD with the 2-pt conversion missed, 1 TD with XP.
See also: Iowa vs Penn State, 2009.
A mapquestimate is used only in case you want to be left 12 miles short of your destination in a convenience store parking lot in a bad neighborhood.
I probably enjoyed this as much as if not more than many of the sports posts. I look forward to you writing about some non-sport topic in book form.
I also think it’s funny when the pilot brags about getting you in, say 15m early … but the equal-intensity apology is typically for getting you in about 3 hours late. Someday, when we all use teleporters, we’ll tell our kids about current flying experiences, and they won’t be able to BELIEVE the BS we put up with.
My wife and I used to have a saying when our kids were young:
We only need five hours of sleep a day.
But we need them in a row.
Rest well. Great story.
Joe,
I don’t know if you do this intentionally, but your paragraph about the woman at LaGuardia made me briefly think that, when Kurt Vonnegut died (or perhaps this was a pre-death surgical procedure), he left a bit of his writing spirit in you.
I know you’ll always be self-deprecating, but entries like these and paragraphs like that make you the best sportswriter in America by a long-shot, and one of the better writers I’ve ever read, too.
Thanks a million, Joe.
Joe-
Thanks again for visiting us in Topeka. I wish we would have known you didn’t have your wallet before you left. I would have spotted you a twenty!
I hope you get some sleep soon!
“Seriously, how much did you actually need to be in New York to write that story?”
There’s an unbelievable, hilarious story about a guy who was an up-and-coming writer in Dallas about 20 (?) years ago who got fired because during Super Bowl week he went to another story, “covered” the whole thing via TV and spent the week in a hotel room getting wasted with a bunch of call girls.
Amazing, incredible story that should be made into an ESPN movie or something. He almost pulled it off too, which is kind of a sad statement on a lot of sportswriting.
Went to another CITY, that should say.
Bad typo by me. Then again, I’m posting this from a hotel room with three hookers and a bottle of bourbon so what do you want?
Mikey, I think you did very well considering the circumstances.
@ Mikey
Do you have a link for it? I would love to read that story.
Wawautosa woot!
“That was not the whole point of them leaving the shire. I’m glad he changed that ending. It was unnecessarily depressing and negative. “no matter what we do, we lose” is just a bad way to live life.”
Yes, it was the whole point. At least for all but Frodo. It was not depressing or negative. They kicked ass, re-claimed their land, and now can take responsibility for protecting the Shire. It was the best part of the sixth book.
When my eldest was born I was one of four new dads at my workplace, our offspring arriving in something like a three-month span.
Swapping war stories one day (“Two hours sleep last night”; “Wish I was so lucky”; “Is there ANY cure for colic?”), one guy’s contribution was that his boy had his feed in the evening and didn’t make a peep until well after sunup the next day.
Luckily the jury had some parents of young children on it and a not guilty verdict, based on justifiable homicide, was returned.
I will be mailing me a copy of the Machine for you to write your name in. Let me tell you, I’d give my left arm for a day like that, it has to beat 65 seventh graders. This is why you are the most brilliant writer in the country.
AI was shit.
Utterly fantastic. As I am, by comparison to you, an infant in this career, I’m grateful you exist. There, I said it. I’m sure plenty have told you they are glad you do what you do, but have you ever had someone tell you they’re glad God brought you into existence?
Well, I’m glad he did. And I’m glad you write stuff like this among all the other work you have to do. Although for you I’m sure it’s not work. The traveling to and fro? Sure, that’s work. But this, this writing of yours….it’s clear you love it. I’m glad you love the play of writing; I’m more glad you work as hard at writing good sentences.
So to sum up, thanks.
I was also at your talk in Topeka. Don’t worry, you did a great job. Glad everything worked out.
Have to give a tip o’ the cap to the Hamlet reference, especially as you’d come from . . .
. . . enterprises of great pitch and moment
. . . their Fuentes turned awry,
And lost the game of action.
I’m certain this has happened to most of us too….Your flight arrives at your destination a few minutes ahead of schedule and the pilot is quite proud of the fact. However, he speaks of this fact immediately after landing. Either it takes an additional 15-20 minutes to taxi to the jetway or sometimes there is no open jetway to proceed to so the plane sits and waits for an available gate. By the time you are off the plane you realize that you’d better hurry because you are now running late.
Joe – I appreciate all of your hard work, traveling etc. Just don’t get so wrapped up in to all of it that it weakens your life at home or your health. Margo must be a great spouse if she accepts all of this and understands what you need in your life for fulfillment.
Hungry diaper, sleepy diaper, cartimate diaper; hungry diaper, sleepy diaper, cartimate diaper…
love ya anyway, Joe…
@electric #32 -
Post another comment, link to your e-mail address in your name, and I’ll e-mail you.
At least in O’Hare they have those great chair massages with the strong eastern European women. It’s in the American terminal.
It’s insane that you’ve spent that much time flying and writing articles and still write this massive post about it all. Incredible.
Safeties are mightily underrated. You get points, you get the ball in good field position. It’s huge. And, yet, in box scores it is usually listed thusly: “safety”.
Highlight reels never show the safety. They’ll show a sack at the 30, a tackle for a three yard loss on the 45 but don’t ever show the damned safety. Why is that? Why does no one ever consider the impact and importance of a safety?
> Safeties are mightily underrated.
Maybe it’s still the influence, after all these years, of the Football Glossary that Mad magazine did back in the late ’50s, maybe early ’60s.
Two of the entries read as follows:
Safety: See Touchback.
and
Touchback: See Safety.
Safeties should be worth seven points. Period. It’s as if the rules of the game don’t acknowledge the sequence of events that had to occur to make it happen.
“*I’ve mentioned this before, but without a doubt the longest movie I ever saw was A.I.”
I take it then, you never saw Barry Lyndon. Fairly confident you can watch A.I. three times over in the time it takes to watch Kubrick’s 1975 masterpiece once.
And the thing about Barry Lyndon, you cant just watch it once – you wont understand it. It must be watched many times over to really take it in. The more you watch it, the more you are able to grasp. Of course, watching it ten times probably eats six years of your life – but you might then begin to understand.
Darn it!! I can’t believe I missed your talk in Topeka. I had it on my calendar — a lot of good that did me.
Great post, as always. Your writing brings a human aspect that often is missing in others’ musings.
Thank you for what you do.
There was another case of a journalist blowing off a big assignment — and somehow surviving to talk about it.
When he was a news reporter, Denver Post columnist Woody Paige was assigned to cover one of the shuttle launches in Florida. He decided to do so from the hotel bar because, well, what could possibly go wrong with a shuttle launch? Then, lo and behold, some smoke started seeping from the rocket booster, followed by that rooster tail-like plume of smoke and debris. Oh yeah, he had just missed the Challenger disaster.
Somehow, the guy — half the writer that Poz is — still survives. To boot, he now gets to stumble through his assignments on TV, too.
Great story. Let it end, though. Buy more gas before you go to the airport.
Is it just me, or did you make a play on this company’s name?
Tires Plus, TIRED+
enjoyed the journey, Joe. great stuff.
Are Buck and McCarver engaging in even more jeteration (of Derek Jeter) than usual in this series? I’m not sure how much more I can take.
I go through something like this every fall and spring covering HS championships.
At the Metrodome from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., a long drive home, time to unwind…do I sleep for 3 hrs. or no? Usually, no.
The spring is worse with 5 straight Thurs-Sat of this, and that includes Class A girls basketball. Oh, the humanity.
Fun read, usually I only catch you in the Star, Joe.
I just had to add – I also have a mileage countdown that tells me how many miles I have left in gas. From my experience though, the device seems to underestimate to help driver’s not run out of gas.
I’ve driven at least 20 miles when my gas gauge said 0 miles left.
I usually love you, Joe, but your SI.com piece on CC Sabathia was way off base. You argued that CC has become a pitcher, an artist, but there’s nothing to back that up at all. This year he had his highest BB/9 total since 2005. He had his lowest K/9 total since 2005. His ERA, of course, was higher than it has been since 2005. He even threw more wild pitches this year than in any year since 2005.
Did CC become an artist just in time to throw that gem against the Angels? Or, more likely, has he been a brilliant PITCHER for about four years now?
“I don’t know if sleep on the plane counts as real sleep.”
No, it doesn’t. For the past decade, I made an average of 10 int’l flights per year. And I’ve nerve slept more than 2 hours on each flight–if I ever slept at all.
That wouldn’t meet Joe’s cutoff line, and way under mine. But maybe I ca ngo thru’ a sabermetric approach… hours per wake-up call by the FA, whether it’s food or turbulent, instead of per flight…
I would say that at O’Hare you can’t really be sure you’re off the plane until you leave the parking lot.
I once waited 4 hours for them to get the bags for our entire flight from the plane to the baggage claim carousel.
Hey, do any of you Deadspin fans still want to defend them now that they’re running anonymous rumors about ESPN employees having affairs?
http://deadspin.com/5386946/espn-horndog-dossier-katie-lacey?skyline=true&s=x
Not on-air talent; not people who have done anything illegal; just trashing obscure people based on anonymous, unconfirmable e-mails. Classy.
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