I had to go to Minneapolis on January 9th for some training on an add-on for Microsoft CRM called PowerTrak.  When I got to the airport, I found that the reservations I had made through Expedia evidentally didn't have the seat assigned.  I found that to be a bit strange since I am sure that I selected a seat when I purchased the ticket.

I usually use the automated checkin kiosk since I only had a single carry-on bag. It offered me an upgrade to 1st class for a mere $100. A bit much I thought, since my ticket was only $157, so I decined.

About 10 minutes after boarding the plane, I began to think that maybe my decision-tree wasn't useful as I first though it was, since the plane was absolutely packed.

So I'm on row 25, on the aisle, stuck in the middle of the herd with the other cattle when I realized that AA had stopped advertising their extended leg room on their flights because there wasn't any.  I'm 6'1" and sitting straight in my seat, my knees touched the seat in front of me.  I was thinking this would present me with issues on several different levels - and it did.

After gently asking the passenger seated in front of me to give me a warning before she reclined her seat, I decided to take a short nap.  It was only 2 hours from D/FW to MSP so I figured I would attempt to make the most of my time.

Now I knew that my right knee was poking out a bit from the edge of the seat in front of me but I didn't think it was enough to make a difference.  Yet another assumption that would lead to no good ( damned decision-tree again ).  About 10 minutes into my nap, the flight attendents came rolling by with the drink cart.  SURELY they would see my knee sticking out there and navigate around it.  Surely.

Nope.

I awakened to a bone-jarring ( literally ) crunch ( actually, it was more like a thunk, I guess ) and more than a little pain in my right knee.  Since your nerves transmit signals using tiny electrical pulses, and since my brain is at the top of my body, it was the last part of to get notified of said thunk. The order, as it happened, was as follows:

  1. My knee goes thunk.
  2. My legs compress and jolt me back into my seat thereby removing my knee from danger ( and making me flail around in my seat ).
  3. My lungs also compress which:
  4. Made my mouth emit a grunting sound.
  5. Which made my head bounce forward and:
  6. My brain awoke to conscienceness.

To find that either this whole thing was in my mind or no that one noticed - because no one was looking at me when I glanced around.  Or maybe they were just used to seeing a man the size of a small mountain grunt and flop around in his seat.  Beats the heck out of me.

The remainder of the flight continued on uneventfully with me thinking the whole time that $100 is really not a whole lot of money…

On the way back to Dallas, I wasn't very happy and in no mood to repeat my outbound trip.  So, when the automated check-in machine again asked me if I would like to upgrade to first class ( for $100 ), I hit the Yes button so fast and hard I think I permanently aligned the LCD crystals of the touch-screen.