Author: Bob Benz

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Travel Bob

Suffering the Benz at 30,000 feet

So I’m heading to Naples on a business trip and get the first class upgrade. Very cool. Even if it is a bulkhead seat. The flight attendant comes up to me after the plane is in the air, and motions to the guy nodding off next to me.

“Are you traveling together,” she asks.

No. Though I think the question a bit odd.

“His name is Benz and your name is Benz. I thought maybe you were together.”

She doesn’t believe me when I inisist I’m not kidding and I’ve never met the guy next to me.

He wakes to confirm this.

Turns out I’m sitting next to Stephen Benz from Cincinnati. Small world. No relation.

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Dog Bob Transcendental Bob

A day at church

Xena, Ozzy and I headed to the park extra early on Sunday. It was still dark, but as soon as we drove into the park I knew something was up.

It was infested with boy scouts from Oak Ridge.

But they were all still sleeping soundly. Xena and Ozzy ran up to sniff a bundle of blankets and a sleeping bag, but it didn’t even stir.

We set off on a path that was thick with honeysuckle and the occasional stumbumbling bees lumbering to life in the first light of day, trying to shake off a treacly hangover. It made me think of Yeats’ incredible lines in The Lake Isle of Innisfree:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

I remember once trying to explain this walk that is my church. The two youngsters who were dogging my steps as surely as Xena and Ozzy that day looked perplexed. Church to them involved walls and a roof, preachers and a congregation. But after a moment, they smiled and understood.

Thoreau would be proud.

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Travel Bob

Flying the friendly skies

I fly. A lot. Almost 300,000 miles on Delta alone. But yesterday was a first. I was trying to fly from Knoxville to Memphis for a friend’s funeral, and my flight was delayed. For a long time. Nothing unusual there. I’ve probably spent as many hours waiting in airports as I’ve spent in the air.

After a 3 1/2 hour wait, the fine folks at Northwest Airlines called all Memphis passengers. The plane was repaired and ready to go.

I was the only person who stepped forward.

Everyone else had gotten out through Detroit, Northwestern’s other hub

So I got to fly alone on a Canadair 50-seat jet with “Princess,” the flight attendant. Very cool. Better than first class, really. Princess and I talked and drank coffee all the way to Memphis and we had the entire plane to ourselves. Though it was a little odd when she had to go through her “safety/here’s how to buckle a seatbelt” thing for only one passenger.

Just to show that karma kicks and caresses you, the flight home was a nightmare with a screaming kid in the row behind me and a Buffy in the seat next to me. Thank god for my iPod.