Do you ever do this at airports?

I've had the worst luck on planes. A couple of examples:

-- Flying to London on Virgin, the five year old girl in front of me leaned her seat so far back that I could not open my tray table to eat dinner. When I complained, neither the flight attendant or her mother would wake her up. So I stood up and moved her seat forward. Won no friends on that flight.

-- Flying to P.R. the guy next to me had stuff growing on his face that looked like Ken "The Animal" Bannister on roids.

-- Coming back on a morning flight from Vegas on no sleep and having to attend a black tie wedding as soon as I got back to NYC, the guy in the middle seat was at least 450 pounds.

-- When I was going to the World Cup, I was sitting on the aisle. The guy next to me -- a 300 pound Orthodox Jew -- got up every 30 minutes to pray. He kept on apologizing and saying that he was a nervous flier, but that didn't help me sleep at all.

-- When I was coming back from Venice on my honeymoon, we had two kids behind us who were about 6 and 8. They kept on kicking the seats, especially the one behind my wife. I asked them and then their parents to have them stop and they didn't do anything. After the next kick, I told the father that if either of his kids kicked me again, I'd first beat the crap out of him, then his wife, then they two kids. And I was serious.

I'm a big guy -- 6'4", 225. So, I've learned to placing my knee in the chair in front to prevent reclining. I also don't talk to anyone. And I tend to drink a lot on flights.

Now that I've got a kid, I sympathize with all of those parents. But when we've flown with my daughter, my wife actually has brought candy for people around us as an apology in advance.

 

All I can say is don't pray at the airport. Someone might think you're a terrorist sending praise to Allah before boarding.

 

The only thing I pray is that my flight lands safely. I really don't care who I sit next to nowadays, as long as it doesn't end up being a terrorist. My only flying recently have been relatively short flights (60 to 90 minutes) so I can deal with it for a short period of time.

 

Aisle seat gives the best room.. .and quickest escape (to the bathroom... or off the plane)

 

While we've all had our fair share of bad seatmates, probably based on the fact that if you travel a lot, the odds go up in general, but i've been lucky a few times with interesting or nice seatmates. a couple that come to mind are: a nice (and hot) girl next to me who i conversed with for almost the entire 90 minute flight. we hit it off so well that she even had her sister give me a ride to my hotel so i wouldn't have to take a cab. (sadly, the girl was engaged and the sister was married -- otherwise, it would've been sweet, sweet double-team time at the Hyatt.) the other was shortly after Katrina, and i sat next to a guy who was a long-time FEMA employee who had some good stories to share and was a generally nice guy.

figured i'd share those in lieu of telling the dozens of stories i have about fat guys reclining their chairs into my leg as if trying to break it Theisman-style, kids screaming, old people getting up to pee every ten minutes, etc....

 

I always check out the people walking down the aisle and secretly pray that certain ones don't sit next to me.

I'm absolutely sure other people do the same and I could be the one they're praying doesn't sit next to them, even tho I'm small, don't speak unless spoken to and generally act fairly nice.

 

A friend once sat next to Halle Berry (before she hit it big).

I have had pretty bad luck over the years, except for one exceptional period during which I had the best looking girl on the plane sit next to me for about 10 flights in a row. Now, I am back to getting the mother with an infant.

 

The earbuds for my iPod are noise-cancelling, so I generally just put them on adn ignore everyone else.

This is also my defense on my daily bus ride to campus.

 

It's hard to believe that some people believe sportswriters are just a bunch of pampered whiners.

 

Just finished a 90-minute flight beside the most disgusting person I ever sat beside in 25 years of flying. I was in the aisle seat of a small plane and this sack of shit sat in the other aisle seat, so he was about 16 inches from me. I first noticed him when this sound of someone blowing his nose would not go away. I looked up from my paper to see him blowing his nose in his hand and wiping it on the side of the seat. Then he shoved his index finger up his nose to the second knuckle and started exploring. I kid you not, for the entire flight he alternated between these two activities. I hid behind my paper, refused to look at him and tried not to gag. The most amazing thing was he was wearing a wedding ring.
In general terms, the worst trips are flights to Florida - the gimp and geezer runs. I often tell Mrs. Crank that if I ever become one of those annoying geezers who stand in the aisle wondering where they sit, or muttering they don't like their seat, or get up every 10 minutes to poke around the luggage bin, she should just shoot me.

 

My preferred method of discouraging reclining is to root around in the seat pocket and shove my magazines or book in there a lot. Nothing says "move your seat forward, moron" like the spine of a thick magazine shoved into the small of the back a few times. ;D