"Are We Doing Doughnuts?"

Another long weekend, another trip to the Big Apple. I'm developing an alarming number of travel habits, first the annual jaunts to Whistler, and now an apparently annual shopping expedition to New York City during the Canada Day/Independence Day long weekend. This time the expenditure was fairly epic (my friend bought a fantastic pair of Valentino shoes, while I opted for Jimmy Choos, as an example). We were also able to do a couple of things that we didn't do last time, like walk along the Brooklyn Bridge and go up to the observation deck at Rockefeller Center. But the most interesting part of going to New York was just trying to get there.

I had once again misjudged my timing in going home first after work to pick up my bags before going to my parents' house where someone (my father) would drive me to the airport. Once there, I somehow managed to go the wrong way twice and fumbled slightly at Customs. This lead me to thinking that, at best, I would be arriving at the gate just as the boarding was starting. I breathlessly stumbled to the gate in front of my travelling companion, who had started to worry about me. But as it so happened, there was some kind of necessity to switch the aircraft, so we would be delayed by about half an hour. That gave me time to catch my breath and buy an overpriced lemonade. They eventually started the boarding process and we went onto the plane.

The plane had already been quite full when we made the reservation, so I was seated next to a stranger but across the aisle from my friend. The captain came on the PA and announced that unfortunately we had "too much fuel" on board, and so we would have to wait while the ground crew came over to remove some of it. The folks around me started to grumble, with some individuals muttering that they had never heard of this situation before. Meanwhile, they had turned on the entertainment system, so I just started a movie and ignored the rest. About an hour later, the captain returned to say that we had finished the fuel removal and would be on our way. We taxied out to the runway, and then stopped. The captain said that he wished he had better news for us, but he didn't. We had missed our window and the heavy traffic in Newark meant that we would need to wait another half hour before we could leave. Now the people around me were starting to get irate. I wasn't in any hurry, so I continued to watch the movie. I wasn't paying any attention to what was happening on the plane, until my seat neighbour asked the man behind me, "Are we doing doughnuts?" I paused the movie and looked around. Sure enough, we were turning around in a circle on the tarmac. The captain then informed us that since they had removed the fuel from one wing only, it was necessary to balance out the plane by moving the fuel from one wing to the other. Instead of going back to the terminal and have the ground crew do it manually, which would delay us even further, we were making "shallow turns" in order to move the fuel by centrifugal force. This made everyone on the plane laugh in disbelief. I can only imagine what the people in the tower were thinking, watching us turning around and around. After a minute I had to look away from the window, as I was actually starting to get dizzy.

I was able to finish watching an entire movie by the time we started moving into position to take off. I didn't watch anything else for the duration of the flight. I did appreciate the drink and standard issue pretzels at the halfway point, as I hadn't eaten since lunch. By the time we landed and got to our hotel in Manhattan, it was nearly midnight. I was not interested in eating or doing anything at that point, so we just went to bed. We only missed one meal and a few hours out in NYC. I figured that if this was the worst thing that happened during the trip, that was fine with me. And it was.

"The lights are much brighter there, you can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares"