Mar 2012 - Flight to Tel Aviv - Part 2

Flight #3 - United 84 
Newark (EWR) – Tel Aviv (TLV) 
Friday, March 2, 2012
Depart: 3:52PM / Arrive: 9:20AM (+1 Day) 
Duration: 10hr 28min 
Aircraft: Boeing 777 
Seat: 16E and 16F (Economy Plus)
Miles Earned:  5,692 miles
Lifetime Miles:  7,158

As I explained in an earlier post, my parents made damn sure to get the bassinet seats in coach behind the bulkhead: Seats 16E and 16F. There was another set of bassinet seats at 31DEF, but have you ever sat by a bathroom on a plane full of people with excessive body hair?

FYI, bulkhead seats are in the Economy Plus section (more leg room, closer to the front of the plane) which is usually only available to United elite status members (free) or flyers willing to pay an extra $49/seat. However, they're also available for free to anyone traveling with an infant in need of a bassinet.

In addition to having access to a bassinet, many parents say the seats by the bulkhead are great for children because (a) there's extra legroom for the child to roam around and (b) there's no seat in front for us kids to kick.  However, my father generally dislikes bulkhead seats because (c) there's no storage space for bags on the floor and (d) the tray tables and entertainment systems are in the armrests so they're not as big and limit the seat width.  To that, I simply reply to my dear father, "Hey dad, stop being a little bitch."

My mother and father have taken this flight multiple times before I was born so they had a basic game plan.

• Step 1:  Switch all watches/clocks to the destination time and act accordingly.  So 4PM New York time was now 11PM Israel time.  So acting as if it were 11PM meant my parents should be eating their post-dinner snacks, watching a movie and starting to get kinky before bed.

• Step 2:  Devour their in-flight meal while finishing their movie, then slowly pass out at around 1AM.

• Step 3:  Struggle to stay asleep around 3AM when the Israelis get out of their seats and just gather around the bulkhead area to like hipsters outside an Apple Store. (see poster from the blog VeryGoodPoints) 

• Step 4:  Wake up finally at 8AM when they turn on the cabin lights and serve breakfast. Remove hand from your wife's boob and sit up straight like you're not a pervert.

• Step 5:  Pack up and get ready to beat the mad rush off the plane and get racially profiled interrogated by Israeli Immigration/Customs.

However, this time around, they had a 4 month old Lap Child.  So as long as I was awake, one of them had to be awake too.  And news flash:  I don't give a crap what time a clock says it is.

Per my dad's written instructions, when we started to taxi to the runway, my mother prepared my bottle.  By the time we acclerated down the runway, I was already pounding my 2nd ounce.  When we reached cruising altitude, the flight attendants came around and installed the coveted baby bassinet.

As it turned out, the flight was pretty uneventful.  Given my day to day activities include sleeping, eating and repeating steps 1 & 2 on continuous loop, I slept most of the 10 hours with a few times where I'd get woken up to feed or get changed.  This also allowed my parents to try to sleep on the flight.  Since my mother was so giddy with excitment about seeing her parents and grandmother, she told my father to just sleep all the way through.  He argued vehemently that men and women should share the responsibility of childraising equally, but finally reluctantly accepted and passed out like drunk girl on roofies.

When it was time for me to eat, I got a botttle thrown into the bassinet like a lion being fed at the zoo.   Since I don't care for the food they serve on US based airlines, I made sure my parents brought the good formula from home.  Ahh, Enfamil...

But the worst part was after pissing/pooing myself. At first, my parents would take me out and into the restroom like a proper human being.  But after a few times of unbuckling his seat, finding his shoes, unzipping my protective cover, getting me out of the bassinet, waiting in line for the bathroom, then struggling to change me in a tiny cramped bathroom while battling wet surfaces and odd stains from the passenger before, and then getting me and himself back securely into the seat, my parents opted to go ghetto style and just change me in the bassinet, right in front of all these other Israeli lap child babies.  SOOOOO embarassing.  And I was supposed to simply accept it and fall back asleep where I just defecated? Gross...

Here's a photo of me below trying to give my parents the middle finger, but since I was only 4 months old at the time, my fine motor skills failed me.  FML.