These days, about the best an airline passenger can hope for out of a domestic flight is to be treated like self-loading cargo.

A couple flights ago I happened to be seated next to a lovely young girl, perhaps six years old, who was here with her grandmother from Jamaca. Between the two of them, they spoke a few words of English, and understood little more. All would have been well, except that this lovely little wretch sat sideways on her seat and spent most of the flight kicking me. You win some, you lose some. I made out better then the lady seat in front of this little angel, as a couple hours into the flight, she discovered the always fun game of “letting the tray table drop”, and she played this game with vigor.

Today was a change — The flight was almost empty. In the 15 seats nearest me, there is exactly one person: Me. Plus, neither of the flight attendants are overly chatty, another perk in my books.

In general, I love flying. You get somewhere interesting quickly, flying itself isn’t all that bad, and you’re even still allowed to take pictures while on the plane (which might not sound like too much of a perk, but taking pictures from an Amtrak train is not quite as much fun.

Airport security was as meaningless as usual, naturally. They not only missed my bottle of lotion, but I got into a moderately heated debate with one security screener, English not being her first language, she was attempting to explain to me that I needed to remove my shoes. She was, unfortunately, not making any effort to listen to me explain that I already removed my shoes.

Ahh well, I’ll call today a win.