Recorded in the beautiful home office, Chateau/ Relaxo, FL.
If you’re a first-time listener, welcome. If you're a returning listener, welcome back.
Tonight I am drinking local with a Castillo Coconut Porter from Ancient City Brewing of
St. Augustine, FL. This comes in at 6.8% ABV It’s a porter mixed with dark chocolate and black malts. It's brewed with raw organic coconut and finished with Northern Brewer hops. St. Augustine is less than two hours up the road, and if you’ve never heard of St Augustine it’s Founded in 1565, St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European and African-American origin in the United States. It has sort of a pirate theme mixed with ghost tours and some great seafood.
We skipped the May crazy travel roundup, just too much going on trying to keep that home life work-life balanced to get an episode recorded. We’ve had to relocate a relative to a new residence, experienced a bathroom renovation and we’re in the middle of another renovation, a facelift for the Chateau’ Relaxo home office.
If you traveled over the July 4th holiday hopefully your blood pressure is back in the normal range. The news outlets as well as the travel blogs were predicting travel delays and cancelations days before we logged off our final Teams meeting last Friday.
Over the four-day weekend, I did a bit of reflection as one tends to do while enjoying a few beers and it led me down the road of holiday travel. It’s been months since I’ve been on a plane, be it for business or for pleasure. Buy the third beer it dawned on me that I miss the travel grind at least a little bit.
There are always going to be travel delays, there’s the human factor, the weather factor as well as a mechanical factor…. The proverbial three-legged stool. If something goes wrong with one of those legs the stool topples just like what happens to flight schedules. Just remember to try to make the best of the situation, no need to yell or try to make next month's crazy travel roundup. Most airports have a decent food selection, enjoy a nice meal and you the airline's app to keep you updated on your flight schedule
In case you didn’t know when it comes to travel, no good deeds go unpunished, if you get an upgrade to first-class more than likely one of your next flights will be delayed. If the hotel bumps you up to an executive suite, chances are there will be an issue with your next rental car. Travel is all about perspective.
Onto tonight's show, we have:
A bit of crotch grabbing
An exciting twist on the emergency slide deployment
The artistic kid
Yet another flight delay
An exciting way to call in sick to work
And the Spirit Airlines roundup
Let’s open with this - dateline somewhere between Atlanta, GA and Portland, Maine. From Live and Let’s Fly.
Dr. Jake Namjik Cho, referred to now as Dr. Creepy McCreeperton, was on a Delta flight seated in 17B. No judgment but a doctor that can’t afford first class, seriously? During the flight, a young woman claimed that Dr. Creepy McCreeperton spent much of the flight leaning into her seat area while appearing to be asleep.
Here are a few of the highlights from her criminal complaint -
Dr. Creepy made contact with her thigh and buttocks.
At some point the aircraft encountered turbulence, and Dr. Creepy appeared to have spasmed and reached over her leg and down into her crotch. A total 9th-grade movie theater move.
Dr. Creepy then touched the outside of her genitals from the outside of her pants. What a creep.
When she cried out, Dr. Creepy “woke up” and removed his hand. For the rest of the flight, he did not touch her.
When Dr. Creepy returned to Atlanta he was questioned by the FBI as well as Portland Police and a Federal Air Marshal when he checked in for his return to Atlanta.
What Dr. Creepy did was disgusting, wrong, and inappropriate pick your favorite adjective, but it gets more creepy.
At first, Dr. Creepy denied touching the woman next to him at all with his hands, let alone inappropriately, and claimed he had traveled to Maine to propose to his girlfriend. What…. propose to his girlfriend?
Eventually, Dr. Creepy confessed and his excuse for grabbing her crotch? His glasses were off, the cabin was dark, and his hand slipped. This guy must think he’s Trump.
In the end, Dr. Creepy was arrested and now faces up to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine. My guess is that he’ll also lose his medical license.
Here’s my PSA for all the dudes… no matter what you’ve watched on PornHub or read at ReddIt women don’t like this, they don’t welcome or want this, and everything that you’ve watched and read is total BS. If a woman wanted you to act like that that they would ask.
This month’s second entry is also from Live and Let’s Fly and it involves one of my favorite airline-related things….. The emergency slide.
A mechanical issue forced a Delta Boeing 767 to divert to Salt Lake City, as if that wasn’t heart-stopping enough the emergency exit slide was then inadvertently deployed inside the cabin, smashing a flight attendant just like an airbag.
And the inadvertent deployment happened due to a careless caterer that was servicing the plane after the mechanical issue was resolved and the plane was restocking in order to take off.
There was a picture posted on Twitter from @danmorenooo and after countless news outlets asking @danmorenooo to check his DM’s requesting permission to repost his picture, we finally stuck comedy gold with a couple of comments.
@madewithjello - That’s just the plane holding its fart. 💨
@mfg - First time seeing an emergency slide deployed and can’t even use it. Brutal
@omalley_ian - Flight attendants cross-check?
Of course, there were plenty of amateur aeronautical engineers adding their comments about grit bars and velcro. I had no idea what any of that meant.
In case you’re wondering or haven’t listened to previous episodes, it’s about $10k to repack the emergency and then tack on any repair costs to the plane during deployment.
After all that, I doubt I would’ve boarded the second flight and in turn, I would’ve just made my way to the rental car lot.
If you’ve ever been the parent of or spent much time around cute little curtain climbers you will discover that they are creative. Some of the creativity can be easily appreciated like tracing their hand with a crayon and then coloring it to make it look like a turkey. Others' creativity takes a bit to appreciate. Case and point I had a friend whose car interior resembled a pinata because his kids had stuck stickers on the car's windows and seats in a very half-assed fashion.
For better or worse there is no parenting manual most parenting styles are influenced by how you were raised, mixed with not trying to crush their young spirits while trying to keep your little crotch gobblings from disturbing others.
Parenting is a balancing act, however, what took place on a recent Delta flight is not alright….. From JetMarvel.net. - A mother let her child draw all over the seat and windows on Delta Flight. Yes, you heard that right - A mother let her child draw all over the seat and windows on Delta Flight.
From the mother’s now-deleted Instagram account
“I’m not running an advertisement here. providing practical advice. Thank me later, parents of infants and toddlers! When the iPad has served its purpose, you can use it effectively. When I want my toddler to fall asleep, I prefer to let him use these instead of the iPad because the iPad excites him and makes it more difficult for me to put him to sleep. A sleeping child on a lengthy flight is also a MAJOR WIN, as is common knowledge.
This video is from a domestic flight of Delta. I informed the flight attendant that they wipe off on purpose. She exhaled in relief and I did too.“
This kid tried his best Bob Ross on the plane's interior. No “Happy little accidents” no “having a tree as a friend” Just big stupid circles and this mallet-head of a mother's assurance that it will wipe off on purpose….. Which is a stupid statement and makes no sense.
All joking aside I believe in giving grace, especially to parents with young children on a flight. However, this woman didn’t even try….Hey kid, tired of the iPad? here‘s an 8-pack of Crayolas have at it.
Flight delays happen, they happen every day. If you're lucky they happen while you are still at the gate area and not while you’re stuck out on the tarmac. If you’re lucky the delay is only an hour or two, but oftentimes they’re much longer….. And if you’re Ticky Tocker and AI Efficiency Coach Phil Stringer your flight delay was 18 hours…. Yes, 18 hours. Phil’s flight was from Oklahoma to North Carolina and Phil is apparently a very patient man because after 18 hours every other passenger had given up or was lucky enough to catch another flight, which meant Phil was the designated survivor and he was rewarded with a fully staffed Airbus A321 plane all to himself. Phil posted his single-passenger journey on the Ticky Tock with the opening caption “When you buy every single ticket on the plane so you don’t half to deal with people”.
The video shows Phil and the flight crew having a blast complete with Phil getting his own one-on-one safety briefing.
That being said they still managed to lose Phil’s luggage…… just kidding.
In case you were wondering 18 hours is approximately the same amount of time it would take to just drive from Oklahoma to North Carolina. I would’ve waited 18 hours.
My closest encounter with being the only passenger on a flight was in 2001 on an Atlanta to Jacksonville Thank You Florida flight where I was one of five passengers, and I still didn’t get the upgrade.
At some point, most of us have had a job that we didn’t enjoy. It could be a quote-unquote toxic work environment. An ill-balanced pay scale or not liking your fellow coworkers, especially if one of those coworkers is an ex. Very early on in my corporate career, I heard the phrase “Don’t fish off the company dock” In other words do not get romantically involved with a coworker. And it makes total sense.
This brings us to our next story.
From PaddleYourOwn Kanoo I give you this.
An Aerolineas Argentinian flight attendant, Daniela Carbone, was recently assigned to work a Buenos Aires to Miami, Thank You Florida, flight and on that flight, was to be her ex-boyfriend, also Aerolineas Argentinian flight attendant and he was traveling with his new girlfriend, who is also an Aerolineas Argentinian flight attendant. This sounds like it could be a poorly written pron movie.
Instead of letting the anxiety build Daniela decided to call out of work by phoning in a bomb threat. It is alleged that Carbone used her daughter’s cellphone with a disposable sim card to call in the bomb threat with a distorted voice:
“Tell the little captain that we put three bombs in the Miami,” “Tell him to stop f**king around with politics and check the plane because they are going to be blown to smithereens”.
With such a well-thought-out plan how did Daniela get caught? Glad you asked.
Someone had ratted her out. They seized her iPhone and undercovered her search history which included,
“Can you analyze an audio to find out whose voice it is”
“How to investigate audio”
In the end, Daniela did get the day off, as well as the remainder of the year because she got fired and now faces up to six years in prison.
Remember don’t fish off the company dock!
Wrapping up the episode with three Spirit Airlines stories and all three involve passengers losing their “S”.
Spirit Airlines is often known by a few of these nicknames -
Break your Spirit Airlines
Waffle House with wings
Dollar Store of the Sky
If you’ve never flown Spirit put a Google on Spirit Airlines bad reviews and if after going down that rabbit hole you still feel that flying Spirit is a good idea here are my three words of advice - God Bless You.
Let’s open with a late June flight from Atlanta to Detroit. To start this flight was delayed five hours. Finally, passengers “were told they could board around 10:15 p.m.” and around 15 did indeed board the flight.
But wait there’s more, there’s always more because “rowdy travelers caused yet another delay” At that point, the Spirit gate agents decided it was best to shut the boarding doors so that “nobody else could board.” Hindsight being 20/20 this probably wasn’t the greatest strategy because you now have 15 passengers on board a delayed flight that are now going to experience more delays plus the remaining passengers in the gate area that can’t get on the plane.
It was at that point a passenger grabbed the mic of the gate’s public address system to call for a supervisor to which the remaining passenger in the gate area began cheering. Not sure if a supervisor ever showed up, but I know if I had the unfortunate job of being a Spirit supervisor it would be right around that time that I’d be taking my dinner break. After dropping $125.00 on a Spirit flight you not only get onboard entertainment you also get pre-flight entertainment.
Spirit round two - It’s Atlanta again. Atlanta you’re on notice don’t try to take Thank You Florida’s Spirit Fight Club status.
With Spirit being the Waffle House with wings it’s surprising that they would deny anyone boarding a flight. They need that $125.00 plus fees and taxes. Well, it happened last month in Atlanta when a gate agent was assaulted by a passenger they’d just denied boarding to out of a belief that the customer was intoxicated. The passenger tried to force her way onto the jet bridge and punched the gate agent in the face when that didn’t work.
Fortunately, the agent was fairly unscathed. The passenger was arrested and charged with assault.
Again some pre-flight entertainment for only $125.00.
Finishing the Sirit roundup with this from Orlando, Thank You Florida story. From Fox35, a Spirit Airlines customer put an Orlando police officer in a chokehold.
Edward Hariston, 41, of Ohio, is facing one count of attempted first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence, battery on a law enforcement officer, and disorderly conduct.
What could possibly cause all this? Glad you asked. Investigators said Hariston was reportedly arguing with an employee when he reached behind the ticket counter, grabbed the computer keyboard, and began hitting buttons. That’s when a police officer tried to stop him and the fight started.
In my opinion, Hariston should plead insanity because anyone that flies Spirit has to be insane.
What do we always say - Florida come on vacation, leave on probation.
And that ends this month’s Spirit Airlines travel tips.
There you have it episode 189, the June crazy travel roundup is in the books. I’ll try to do better and get another show out in the next few weeks.
If you want detailed show notes, links, and pictures head over to podpage.com/travel-stories/
Or visit Substack at travelstories.substack.com/
You can also leave me a message on Anchor, or shoot me an email at TravelFrick@gmail.com.
As I always say, travel safe, stay safe, and thanks for listening.
The June Crazy Travel Roundup - Travel Stories, Episode 189