I was with American for about 13 years and Delta for nearly 15. Four million miles with American and nearly two with Delta. (I used to travel mostly international while in Dallas and mostly domestic after moving to Atlanta).

In just about every aspect, I have liked Delta always better. However, there are a few things American scores better than Delta to me. First, the passengers are far more orderly while boarding in American flights. Also true for United. Somehow boarding in Delta flights reminds me of the queue discipline that I used to experience in India.

But my biggest complaint with Delta passengers in first class is that they always keep the windows closed. It is like we are always in the dark. I can’t understand why would we sit 35000 feet up in the air and not look outside and marvel at the beauty below and also what we have created. Plus, I am claustrophobic and it creates anxiety.

American haas no TV for every chair. So at least that partially explains why they do not care about it being bright inside. But they also work on laptops and watch videos on phones and iPads. But somehow the American windows are always open. Delta’s are closed.

Never quite figured out why.

Statue of Liberty

Yesterday, while flying into Salt Lake City, I got a notification on my news feed that the mask mandate in planes had been struck down by a Federal judge in Florida. In the evening, I got a note from Delta that masks are optional in their flights. But they also warned that not all TSA agents and airline employees might receive the memos in time. So, we ought not to push the case for a day or two.

And I got on my return flight today – the first day of mask mandate not being there. 25 months after my last maskless flight! Be it the airport, security gates, Delta sky club or the plane – most folks had their masks off! Nobody bothered anybody. Even the Uber driver told me I did not need to put a mask on!!

Now I have to pay attention to shaving carefully 🙂

Never ceases to take my breath away.
Multnomah Falls near Portland, OR.

This is a tree in the vast Stoller Winery property. Now Google the winery up. Check out the logo. It is this tree!!

We had not cleared 10,000 feet yet as we climbed up from Orlando airport runway. I could see from my vantage point of a window seat some large sprayers spraying something on the fields way below. It was not the long water distributors. I figured it must be fertilizers. But the mist of spray from the nozzle on top stirred some really old memory cells deep in my neocortex.

I was in third grade then. Dad had brought home a weird looking contraption. And then he proceeded to set it to work. My sister and I sat around him to see what magic was going to take place. My brother was too young.

Exasperated by the onslaught of all the bugs, pests and mosquitoes that monsoon season, dad had taken it upon himself to institute some proactive measures. There is only so much of slapping and missing mosquitoes that he could take.

He carefully opened the small, circular tin can and poured a fluid from another bigger tin can. The smell of the fluid oddly was very attractive to me and my sister. We were not too sure why the mosquitoes would flee from such a nice aroma.

Then dad went on to the screw the top of the cylindrical can with the long handle and then proceeded to show us how the contraption worked. He would pull the piston and push it. The whole thing would make a sucking noise during the pull and spit out a whole mist of the insecticide during the push.

He then took us around the house spraying all the corners of the house and everywhere he suspected bugs might be lurking. (Incidentally, in our house, that would mean pretty much the whole house).

That suction and spraying function caught the curiosity and imagination of two young kids that day. Whenever dad was not around, we would go around massacring the bugs with what that time we would have considered a weapon of mass destruction!

I am not sure whatever happened to that bug sprayer.

But after a lot of search on the internet, I found some vintage pictures of the exact Flit Bug Sprayer we had back in early 1970s.

Did any one of you grow up with this too?

It has total medicinal value!

This is in San Francisco airport. Purportedly an apothecary, it has all sorts of skincare, hydration and medicinal stuff. And a motorcycle!!! There was nobody in the shop. I was so going to ask him/her why they have a motorcycle in an apothecary.

This is not something I see very often. There was a UPS van sitting right next to our plane between two Delta gates. Wonder what it was up to. Anybody knows?