Whew!

It's been a busy couple of months, but it looks like now I can focus on my usual last minute shopping and baking that I seem to do this time of the year. My travel for the year is finished and I have delivered all but one of my glass orders --Julie, I promise to work on it next week.

I spend a lot of time sitting on airplanes, so much so that the airline sends me cookies every year at this time, lovely shortbread dipped in chocolate. In celebration of the fact that I have two full weeks ahead when I won't be airborn I want to reflect on a few of my recent observations about flying:

- Bigger is NOT better

- He really didn't know how...?p>

- Jobs for jokers or not

Bigger...Most of my flights are a one hour trip from Portland to Medford. It is a trip I do so often it has become just a commute, something I've been doing off and on for a dozen years, and regularly for the past seven or eight years. When I first started making this trip the Medford airport had two airlines, with a handful of flights, zealous security even before 9/11 but otherwise pretty low-keyed.

Now there must be six or seven airlines serving Medford with flights to quite a variety of destinations with a now standing room only terminal.

My airline of choice has responded to the increase in traffic to Medford by using bigger planes for a couple of flights daily and decreasing the number of flights. The first time I was on a jet rather than my accustomed Bombari Q 200 I thought I had "arrived". It was fast, smooth and quiet, what more could I ask for? Well, as I have had more experience with the big planes I now know that indeed, bigger is not better. The airline has systems that work extremely well for small planes, you carry (or in my case drag) your suitcase out to the plane and put it on a cart just before you climb the stairs to board. At the other end it is waiting on a cart just outside the door as you get off, simple, easy and efficient. With the bigger planes, guess what? There are way more bags on the cart for them to load and unload so there goes the efficient thing. The bigger planes also can use the jetways, those tubes that serve as ramps from the terminal to the plane...think 70 tired cranky people standing in the tube while their suitcases are unloaded and hoisted up to a platform and then placed in the tube where a scramble ensues for who can grap their bag and get out fastest...

Big planes bring more people to get ahead of me in the rental car lines when I arrive and again in the security line on my way home. All in all, despite the 30% reduction in flight time the trip takes me about 40 minutes longer than it used to. So much for progress.

"He didn't know" and "Jokers" will follow...