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Daily Planet
A coffin rides the bus
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[04/18/00]

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By Burt Wolf
[04/14/00]

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As with most forms of public transportation, your travel experience is affected as much by the staff as by the passengers sitting next to you. At times, your seatmates can have an even greater impact. We've all sat next to someone who talked until our eardrums bled, who laughed obnoxiously while watching the in-flight movie, who yammered endlessly on the in-flight telephone. We've endured the frequent-flying moron who sucks his teeth, clips his dirty toenails (there's nothing worse than being hit by toenail shrapnel), picks his nose unmercifully or falls asleep and either drools from the corner of his mouth or snores with the vigor of a drunken wildebeest.

The more unfortunate among us have suffered even worse. On one crowded flight or another, I've been victimized by soundless flatulence, the stealthy, gaseous, repeated break of wind from an overweight businessman who should never have eaten that burrito. An SBD (Silent But Deadly) can be a pungent emission, but it's far more civilized than the eye-opening trumpet blast from less-conscientious cheeks.

Flatulence, be it an SBD or a blaring tribute to Herb Alpert, is as short-lived as the crossing of a garbage truck at a busy intersection. You can wait for the pungency to pass. You can breathe through your mouth for a little while. Or you can live in denial, like many passengers, and pretend you can't smell a thing. But if your seatmate is suffering from debilitating body odor, if the stench of dirty dish rags and rotten eggs seeps from his arm pits like a noxious gas, then you might find yourself praying for a depressurization just so the oxygen masks will drop.

Not long ago, just as our Boeing 767 was ready to depart JFK for Paris, a couple of angry passengers confronted members of my crew. "We refuse to fly under these conditions," said a man who approached with his wife. Like a growing number of middle-aged American travelers, they were dressed in brightly colored sweat suits, brand new Nike athletic shoes and fanny packs that hung from their waists like a decorative sash. I wasn't sure if they were preparing to fly on a trans-Atlantic flight or run the New York Marathon.

The purser turned to address them. "What conditions?" she asked.

"It's that group of rowdy Frenchmen," he replied. "They ... they ..." the man couldn't seem to find the right words so his wife interjected. "They stink!" she said, with a sneer.

The purser and I exchanged a glance and went back to investigate. Sure enough, as soon as we approached the middle of the main cabin, we stopped dead in our tracks and gagged. The funk was alive. It came at us like a mugger in broad daylight. Bold. Brutal. Uncompromising. The stench of old gym shoes and exotic cheese. The reek of bottled sweat.

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