A Bad Flight

Flying home with Kate from Houston was an adventure.  We were flying on Southwest Airlines and I logged onto the in-flight wifi to send Alison the following email:

Hey Al.

So we're somewhere over Arizona (I paid for the wifi) and let me tell you a story...

Kate was complaining the whole time that her tummy hurt. I looked in the seatbacks of the "brand new plane" for a barf bag but there weren't any. She kept complaining so I decided to take the crayons out of the ziplock and have that ready just in case. Every once in a while she would complain, but she really just seemed miserable the whole time. She hasn't colored, played games or anything. Just restless and whiny. It looks like she might be dozing now. I'll make sure that we are the last off the plane...

Somewhere over the western half of New Mexico, just after the captain instructed the flight attendants to buckle into their jump seats because of some imminent turbulence, Kate, out of nowhere starts barfing all over my legs, my shorts and her. I grab the ziplock and catch a lot of it (the bag ends up about 70% full) and the rest is on me and here, all down the front of her shirt.

I push the call attendant button and the guy sitting next to us (who honestly was rather patient with Kate continually kicking him), stands up trying to get away from the little girl vomiting a deep brown substance from the bowels of her tummy. Now the flight attendants start to get mad and keep coming on the intercom to remind him to sit down and for me to turn off my call light. He eventually sits in a seat far away ( there are a handful of empty seats) and after another request from the flight attendants to turn off my call light unless it is an emergency, I comply and turn it off. We don't really hit any turbulence, but for the next twenty minutes we are flying through clouds, and Kate and I are sitting in puke.

I remember some Kleenexes in the front of my bag and soak up much of the vomit with them and then we sit and wait for the attendant to be allowed to come and assist. The attendant is a guy who earlier was a jerk to a lady that was trying to change her baby's diaper, and he kind of looked at me with disgust, then went and got a stack of napkins and a bag for me to throw Kate's puke bag in. I mentioned that the barf bags were missing and he apologized but no other offer if assistance and no new puke bags were offered.

Anyways. I think we'll be landing in another half hour or so. I'll buy Kate a new shirt in Vegas and we'll wait for our next flight which was delayed 45 minutes - putting us into SLC after midnight.

Once we landed in Las Vegas, we grabbed some dinner at Popeyes Chicken.  Kate wasn't hungry but was begging for some milk, so against my better judgement I finally relented and bought her some milk (I was thinking that her puking earlier was a fluke).  We then went and waited for our plane at the gate.

After a little while Kate was dozing on my lap, when out of nowhere she started puking all over me, all over our bags and her carseat that were sitting on the floor and then all over the chair and floor.  I had a puke bag with me, but no warning to get it out and ready.  There was a skanky-looking girl talking foul-mouthed on her cell phone sitting next to us when this all went down and she started freaking out cursing and yelling. 

It was super disgusting because of the milk that Kate had earlier.  We were covered in white chunks.  Some good Samaritans came over and offered help, I just asked them to alert the staff of the mess and to watch my stuff while we ran to a restroom in an attempt to clean up before boarding the flight.

I did my best to wipe us down, but man did we stink.  When we finally boarded the plane, I could overhear people around us complaining about the smell while I just cowered in my seat praying that the puking was over with.  Bless her heart, we made it home without any further incidents.