When I was young, I used to do a lot of what might best be called adventure travel. I spent two years youth hostelling around Europe, carrying everything I needed in a backpack. These days, I need a bag that size just to carry my meds.
A lot of my adventures required camping for weeks at a time, often with few modern conveniences. Everything from a photo safari in Kenya to a project radio-tracking kangaroos in the Australian outback. One especially memorable adventure was a three-week bird banding project in the jungles of Panama. There we didn’t even have ancient conveniences. In fact, I was one of two guys assigned to dig the pit toilet.
If you are ever offered the opportunity to dig a pit toilet in the Panamanian jungle, respectfully decline. Instead, volunteer to pitch all the tents, peel potatoes for 3 weeks, and clear the campsite of all the tarantulas, scorpions and poisonous snakes. It’s not so much a matter of digging a hole. You first have to hack through two feet of tangled tree roots before you can even start digging through dirt. Once you’ve finished digging, you then have to chop down a couple of saplings and lash them to trees on each side of the hole to serve as the toilet seat. And just to make sure you didn’t skimp on the thickness of the saplings, or the strength of your lashings, you will be required to be the test pilot to make sure your jury-rigged toilet seat doesn’t dump anybody into the Black Hole of Calcutta. I survived the test. In fact, the latrine worked quite well, except that leaf cutter ants kept carrying off our toilet paper.
For all my years of adventure travel, I always bought the cheapest air tickets available and flew with my long legs crammed into uncomfortable coach seats. But recently, my granddaughter was getting married in California. So, for the three-hour flight to Los Angeles, I decided what the heck. I’m 79 years old and have osteoporosis. Why not splurge and fly First Class? Turns out, at my age, even flying First Class can be a bit of an adventure.
For example, when I got to the airport, I found out my flight would be on a Boeing 737-800. I couldn’t remember if that was the Boeing 737 model that had taken a nosedive in Africa, or the one that blew out a door over Oregon. Even as I write this story, there are a couple of astronauts stranded on the International Space Station because the Boeing spacecraft that was supposed to bring them home had broken down. Under the circumstances, I would have preferred a plane built by Airbus. But then I saw a Catholic nun boarding my flight. I figured that was a good omen. Surely the Big Guy upstairs wouldn’t let a stupid accident befall one of his own team.
My first-class seat was wonderful. There were only two seats on each side of the aisle rather than the three back in Coach. And I had almost a foot of extra space for my knees. But after takeoff, I started encountering problems. I could see the flight attendant was beginning to serve complimentary beverages, so I tried to set up my tray table. I figured it was hidden in the center armrest. I managed to open the lid but couldn’t figure out how to pull out the table. Fortunately, the young man next to me had done this before. He pushed a hidden button, and a complex metal structure emerged. Much like a child’s Transformer toy, it required some elaborate manipulation to complete the task. Fortunately, my young seatmate had grown up playing with Transformers. But it wasn’t until he’d finished that I realized this wasn’t my tray table. It was the video screen.
Instead of being built into the back of the seat in front of me, this screen was mounted on a 2-inch diameter metal bar which looked like it could support a freeway overpass. And the screen, when fully deployed, wound up about 6 inches from my nose. It was way too close for even my myopic eyeballs to read, and I can’t imagine that Ralph Nader would have approved of having a rigid metal structure within inches of my face.
At any rate, the flight attendant was rapidly approaching, and I still hadn’t found my tray table. She quickly showed me it was in the other armrest, and I managed to pull it out myself. But when I tried to unfold it, my newly erected home entertainment center was in the way. Again, my seatmate came to the rescue and rapidly deconstructed the Transformer. I told him to just leave it stashed. It would be easier for me to watch the movie on the screens of the people in front of me.
By now, I realized I should be documenting this experience for a possible future article. But my notebook was in my daypack that was squished under the seat in front of me. Reaching it would be a major project. I had a complimentary pillow and blanket in my lap, and a tray table, complete with tablecloth and brimful cup of coffee, in the way. I figured I could just scribble some notes on a napkin. But this was first class – the napkins are cloth. So, I was reduced to scribbling notes for this article on the palm of my hand. I was halfway up my forearm by the time lunch was served.
Apparently, I’d missed the golden age of first-class airplane meals. No more four- course dinners served on china plates with actual silverware. Today’s box lunch was a ham and cheese sandwich on soggy white bread. Not exactly Michelin- rated cuisine, but a far cry better than the mini-pack of pretzels being served back in coach.
When I’d finished my lunch and the tray table was cleared away, I figured it was a good opportunity for me to use the restroom. One of the benefits of first class is that there are only 16 passengers competing for the restroom. Back in coach, there are over a hundred passengers competing for two restrooms. Although the odds were in my favor, there was a wild card I hadn’t counted on.
First, a bit of advice – do not take two Metamucil gummy bears the night before getting on an airplane. Just about the time they were kicking in, the pilot announced we were experiencing severe air turbulence and told us to stay in our seats with the seatbelts securely fastened. Suddenly, my first-class airplane adventure was getting very exciting.
Unfortunately, Ralph Nader had never pushed to require seat belts on airplane toilets. And there had been nothing pertaining to this particular emergency included on the safety instruction video. I knew where to find the exits, the oxygen mask, and the personal flotation device but there was no mention of where the astronaut diapers might be stowed.
I was on my own. Surely the turbulence wouldn’t last too long. But that was the problem. I didn’t know how long was too long. I tried to get my mind off my dilemma. Just don’t think about it. Think happy thoughts. Remember all the wonderful adventures I’d had. Safaris in Africa, kangaroos in Australia, bird banding in Panama. Oops, don’t go there!
After a ten-minute roller coaster ride, the turbulence outside gradually decreased. But the gummy bears in my tummy were ready to emerge from hibernation. Finally, the seat belt light turned off, and I managed to outrun the stampede headed for the restroom. The rest of the flight was relatively uneventful, which was good because I had pretty much run out of room to write notes on my forearm.
Oh, that reminds me. One of the last notes I’d scribbled said “How deep?” It referred to important advice in case you are ever tasked with digging a pit toilet. At some point, you are going to get tired and wonder if you have dug the hole deep enough. Here is the sage advice we got from our expedition leader. “It’s a whole lot easier to dig it too deep now than to have to come back and dig it deeper later.”
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