After getting dressed again I took the underground train to the concourse, where I got a sandwich and a bag of Doritos to eat on the flight, and hurried to my gate. I met a couple of work associates there, and we chatted for 15 minutes until the boarding announcement came.

There are some passenger aircraft that are fine for traveling in - comfortable seats, fairly wide aisles, room to stretch your legs. This wasn't one of them. I don't believe that a tiny Olympic gymnast would have been comfortable on this airplane, much less 6'3", 240 lb. me. So I shoehorned myself into seat 14D, and settled in for the four hour flight. It turned out that I was the only person in row 14 who wasn't a nun. Combine a too-small seat and too little legroom with five people in blue and white vestments and funny head coverings who somehow make me feel vaguely guilty just by looking at them, and I was quickly wishing I was elsewhere.

Then an announcement came over the airplane intercom. "We regret to inform you that takeoff will be delayed at least sixty minutes, as all aircraft must be deiced prior to takeoff, and there is a long line in front of us." With a sigh, I got up and grabbed my loaner laptop, portable CD player, and CD case, and sat back down to listen to tunes. I always try to travel with CDs that I don't listen to frequently, to remind myself what I liked about them that propelled me to buy them in the first place. So I took Romantic Warrior by Return to Forever out of the case, put on my headphones, and opened up the laptop cover. I pressed the power button on the laptop - nothing. No beep, no lights, no Windows welcome screen, nothing. Then my CD started to skip. It skipped so often that it was unlistenable, so I grabbed John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers' Blues from the Lost Days. Same result. Unlistenable. Had I not been surrounded by five nuns, I would have sworn under my breath and felt slightly better, but I couldn't even do that.

It turned out to be kind of fun watching the nuns eat the snack served on the plane, however. It was a pretty fancy snack for airplane food. A pack of tortilla chips with La Victoria salsa, two rosemary crackers with some pasteurized processed cheese food that tasted like elementary school paste, two sugar cookies, and some dried fruit and nuts, all in separate packages inside a cellophane wrapper. The nun they all called "Mother", who was sitting in seat 14F, opened her tortilla chips and salsa first, so the other four watched her like hawks and did so as well. Mother then put her dried fruit packet in the seat pocket in front of her, and the others all followed suit. She then leaned back and sipped her cranberry juice, and the others leaned back and placidly sipped their drinks as well. When Mother opened her rosemary crackers and cheese paste, so did the other women of God. I would have laughed out loud had I been watching it on a sitcom, but it was otherworldly weird sitting in the midst of them. I guess Mother really does know best!