Dave Barry: Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need

y a des RELIGIEUSES regardant nous. (“There are NUNS watching us.”)

Dites, cette religieuse est hot. (“Say, that nun is fairly attractive.”)

Peut-etre j’ai been en France trop longue. (“Perhaps I have been in France too long.”)

In the Restaurant:

Camarero, hay una mosca en mi sopa. (“Waiter, there is a fly in my soup.”)

Pero esa mosca es atarado al pantalones. (“But this fly is attached to a pair of pants.”)

Jey, no es anybody pilotando ese autobus? (“Hey, isn’t anybody driving this bus?”)

ESE es el piloto? (“THAT’S the driver?”)

El hombre que dormir en el charco de saliva? (“The man sleeping in the Puddle of saliva?.”)

Quiza deberias empujar los frenos. (“Maybe we should apply the brakes.”)

Que the hell usted decir, una cabra ha comido los frenos? (“What do you mean, a goat ate the brakes?”)

Porque estan mi frente marcas de preguntas al reves? (“Why are my front question marks upside down?”)

Mi (esposo, esposa) es been tramplado por toros. (“My [husband, wife] has been trampled by bulls.”)

No, no estoy quejarsando. (“No, I’m not complaining.”)

Muchacho, es mi booty dolorido desde ese caso de los trots! (“Boy, is my butt sore from this diarrhea!”)

El hace yo pasar como el tarde Campos de Totie! (“It’s making me walk like the late Totie Fields!”)

Non desear chiunque ferire or nothing. (“We don’t want anybody should get hurt.”)

Tuo fratello Raoul dormi con los pesces. (“Your brother Raoul sleeps with the fishes.”)

Achtung! (“Gesundheit!”)

Enschreitenblatten Schalteniedlich Verkehrsge sellschaft! (“Ha ha!”)

Ich veranlassenarbeitenworken mein Mojo. (“I have got my mojo working.”)

You’re probably not going to believe this, but there are still some people, in this modern day and age, who are afraid of air travel. Ha ha! Are they a bunch of Nervous Nellies, or what?

Oh, sure, air travel seems dangerous to the ignorant layperson, inasmuch as it involves hurtling through the air seven miles straight up trapped inside an object the size of a suburban ranch home in total defiance of all known laws of physics. But statistics show that, when you’re in an airplane, you’re actually four times as safe as when you’re driving your car on an interstate highway (Provided that you are driving drunk and blindfolded)!

Nevertheless, many of us, even veteran fliers, tend to be a little edgy about air travel these days, because it seems as if hardly a day goes by that we don’t pick up a newspaper and see headlines like:

ENGINE FALLS OFF PLANE

WING FALLS OFF PLANE

PILOT SUCKED OUT OF PLANE

PLANE POSSESSED BY DEMONS

FAA Orders Exorcism of Entire L-1011 Fleet

But the truth is that, thanks to improvements in technology, air travel today is safer than it has been at any time for the past three weeks. Yes, we’ve come a long way since the Age of Aviation began back in the historic year of 19-something in Kitty Hawk, North or South Carolina, when two young mechanics named Wilbur and Orville Wright, using some canvas and old bicycle parts, constructed the very first airline omelet. There have been many important commercial-aviation innovations since then, including:

Airline magazines featuring articles with titles like “Akron: Meeting Yesterday’s Challenges Tomorrow.” “Turbulence.” This is what pilots announce that you have encountered when your plane strikes an object in midair. You’ll be flying along, and there will be an enormous, shuddering WHUMP, and clearly the plane has rammed into an airborne object at least the size of a water buffalo, and the pilot will say, “Folks, we’re encountering a little turbulence.” Meanwhile they are up there in the cockpit trying desperately to clean waterbuffalo organs off the windshield. Frequent-flier programs, wherein each time you take a commercial flight, you earn a certain number of miles, plus bonus miles if you actually reach your intended destination within your lifetime. After you’ve accumulated enough miles, you can redeem them for another flight, unless you have the intelligence of a turnip, in which case you’ll remain in your recreation room, where it’s safe. The Baggage Carousel, where passengers traditionally gather at the end of a flight to spend several relaxing hours watching the arrival of luggage from some other flight, which comes randomly spurting out of a mysterious troll-infested tunnel that is apparently connected to another airport, possibly in a different dimension. The baby in the seat behind you whose parents are obviously poking it with hat pins because there is no other way that a child could shriek that loudly all the way from New York to Los Angeles. The 475-pound man in the adjacent seat who smells like a municipal landfill and whose forearm (which by itself is the size of Roseanne Barr) spends the entire flight oozing, like the Blob, over the armrest until it occupies virtually your entire seat and starts absorbing your in-flight meal through some of its larger pores. This in itself is not a bad thing, because airline food is not intended for human consumption. It’s intended as a form of in-flight entertainment, wherein the object is to guess what it is, starting with broad categories such as “mineral” and

“linoleum.” When the flight attendants ask, “Do you want roast beef or lasagna?” they don’t mean, “Do you want roast beef, or do you want lasagna?” They mean: “Do you want this dinner substance, which could be roast beef, or it could be lasagna? Or possibly peat moss?”

And speaking of airline food, another important aviation development has been: The barf bag. Early barf bags were large canvas sacks; a severely airsick passenger would be placed inside, and the bag would then be sealed up and, in an act of aviation mercy, shoved out the cargo door at 12,000 feet. Today’s passenger doesn’t get that kind of personalized service, and must place a small bag over his nose and mouth in hopes of cutting off his oxygen supply.

Despite these strides forward, there have been a few problems caused by the belt-tightening in the airline industry that has resulted from “deregulation,” a new government policy under which the only requirement to purchase an airline is that you have to produce two forms of identification. Even Donald Trump was allowed to purchase an airline, which he immediately named after himself (“Air Jerk”). This led to some dramatic aviation moments when Trump got into financial difficulty and had to sell some of his aircraft while they were still in the air. (“This is your captain speaking. We’ve just been advised that instead of Boston, we will be landing in Iran. We regret any incon ...”)

Of course, this kind of adventure only adds to the fun of flying. My family has had many fun flights, including an extremely exciting one in which we went from Miami to Honolulu via the following itinerary, which I am not making up:

1. We flew from Miami to Denver on a plane that seemed to be working fine, so naturally they made us get off of it and get on another plane that was supposed to fly the rest of the way to Honolulu. This happened to be on Halloween. “Never Fly on Halloween,” that is our new aviation motto.

2. They put a bunch of fuel on our new plane, and we got on it. One of the flight attendants was wearing devil ears, which struck us as hilarious at the time but which we later on realized was an omen. “Never Get on a Flight Where a Crew Member Is Wearing Devil Ears” is another one of our aviation mottoes.