In Orlando, just about everyone in IT had some non-IT talent. (For some strange reason, there were a lot of bass players…) John was an artist, who was famous for his whiteboard drawings that would appear in people’s offices. He once drew on my whiteboard and logo that he claimed was for Bacchus Air, a booze cruise type airline of his own invention that would fly outside of US airspace and let you drink and smoke all you wanted. It was a nice drawing, so (somehow) I managed to get a Xerox of the whiteboard. (and yes, it was as difficult as it sounds.)
Anyway, onto the story. We had a small warehouse staff in Troy MO, and I had occasion to visit them a couple of times. My first time was fairly uneventful, except for my first experience at the dive hotel I got stuck with.
I’d checked in and gone to my room, unpacked my things, and having already eaten dinner, got into the bed. No sooner had I pull the covers over me when a cockroach went speeding across my chest.
!
I never got out of bed so fast in my life.
The better experience was my next visit out there. We had to do some training or something, and I went up with my DBA Michael. We’d scheduled two days to get everything in, but had finished up a bit early so we dashed off to the airport hoping to catch the earlier flight.
We missed it by THAT much…
So we resigned ourselves to having to wait the three hours for our regularly scheduled flight, and found a decent restaurant in the airport. We killed time for a while, and finally made our way to our gate.
We walked onto the plane and saw one guy sitting in first class with two stewardesses hovering over him. He looked up at us and says, “Hey, you’re ruining my fantasy!”
It turns out the flight was a bit underbooked. Criminally. There was the pilot, copilot, two stews, and the three of us (soon to be four, as another startled passenger found us.) It turned into quite an interesting flight.
First of all, the stews insisted that we all sit in First Class. (Yeah, like we’re going to argue.) Which meant First Class champagne and First Class meals. Then, they asked us to do the pre-flight announcements. Michael was entertaining as he warned us about flying into mountains and such.
The pilot joined in with some jokes over the PA. (Michael kept asking him for a barrel role, but I don’t think he heard.)
Remembering John’s logo, which I had in my laptop bag for some reason, I took it out and proudly displayed it above our seats. Bacchus Air indeed!
When they announced we were on approach to DFW, we were all genuinely disappointed. It was the most fun I ever had on a plane, and the only time I ever wished a flight had lasted longer.