The fun of travelling

Has the air travel experience really gone downhill in the last 10 years or is it just me? As many of you know, Cheryl and I got back from Erie on Monday Night and our entire travel experience was full of silly/pathetic/miserable people. Now, I have never had a problem with travelling. You get to the airport, spend a few hours on a plane, and you get somewhere halfway across the country. No problem. Sure the security checkpoints suck, people don't know how to use the automated check-in machines, and there are delays from time-to-time, but no big problem. As you can tell, this is my disclaimer that everything seems to require these days. Here are a few of our experiences from the trip...I hope everyone can empathize with me:

1) A guy at the Palm Beach airport who took off his shoes and was removing toejam in front of us while waiting to board the plane.

2) A fat middle-aged guy who told a teenage kid that he couldn't save seats for his mother while waiting to board the plane. I guess children saving seats for their parents is not allowed in the world of dickhead-ville.

3) The annoying couple with the small child who insisted on turning up the portable DVD player so that everyone on the plane could hear it. When the flight attendant asked where that loud noise was coming from, they turned it down until the attendant left...then turned it back up.

4) The rather cute girl who walked by my seat on her way to the lavatory. About five minutes later (with me now waiting to use the bathroom), she opened the door and I was hit in the face with the odor of a fresh dump. Girl was no longer cute.

5) The rude old couple on the flight from Buffalo to DC who didn't like their seats. The old guy told the lady sitting next to them that "they were going to have her sit in the middle". The lady told them to take a hike, which was really funny and was accompanied by a mini temper-tantrum from the old lady. The couple was (of course) on our connecting flight to Palm Beach.

6) The father behind us who repeatedly let his young child kick our seat for two straight hours from DC to Palm Beach. Actually, the kid didn't kick the whole time. When the kicking stopped, the yelling started. I hope that we have a much better behaved kid than this little mongrel.