Preparation and Training…and Ralph
I know it’s been a long time since I updated, but my boyfriend left the country after his two week vacation here, and I’ve been insanely busy with schoolwork. It’s been a while since I’ve had a blog, and I need to get back in the swing of updating often, rather than updating once and then leaving it idle for months.
Anyway, something that has been all over the news in Australia-although perhaps not quite as much as crazy astronauts and Anna Nicole Smith are here–is the saga of Ralph Fiennes and the stewardess. Apparently, on a flight from Australia to Mumbai, where Ralph was going to speak about HIV awareness, he had crazy, unprotected sex in a lavatory with a stewardess, who later denied everything, claiming he followed her into the toilet and forced himself on her. She has now said that, in fact, she did have sex with him, and did so four times more in his hotel suite in Mumbai. Unsurprisingly, she has lost her job with Qantas, who don’t particularly enjoy being associated with the image of flight attendants who never wear underwear to work. I thought the funniest part of this whole thing was this article, published in the Sydney Morning Herald. This was my favorite part:
The Mail then followed up with a story about the “debauched business” of flight attendantry, commissioning a piece from Imogen Edwards-Jones, author of Air Babylon, a novel about the seedy side of the flight industry.
She describes a boozy, drug-fuelled environment, with flight attendants ripping us off during the Duty Free trolley runs, stashing alcohol around the plane as well as drugs under toilets in frequently visited hotels and stashing the corpses of passengers who died onboard in toilets.
“So next time you’re onboard and that ‘toilet engaged’ sign appears to be permanently on, there’s probably a good reason. There could be a dead body inside,” Edwards-Jones writes.
Ok, I can understand flight attendants having sex in the bathrooms–there is something called the Mile High Club and they have plenty of time in which to join it on those 14-hour Sydney-LA flights. I’m sure that it happens more often than it ends up in the newspapers–only the flight attendants that have sex with celebrities and then lie about it get that honor. But dead bodies? How many “corpses of passengers who died onboard” could there possibly be on an average airplane? I would certainly think I would notice if someone died on the plane, especially since there would probably be an uproar around said person and a call for a doctor. And really, who wants to think that when the door is permanently locked that there is a dead body waiting inside? I can certainly think of much nicer thoughts to have whilst locked inside a giant metal cylinder at 35,000 feet.
Speaking of giant metal tubes–I’ve bought my ticket to England for this summer, so I am definitely going! I can’t wait to see my grandparents–although I’ll be getting to see them a lot sooner when they land in Houston in three weeks. I also can’t wait for the Three Peaks Challenge, although I’m glad there’s quite a bit of time between now and then to train! I’ve decided somewhat on a training regimen, although I haven’t gotten the official packet yet with training recommendations. I think that I will be running 3 miles outside every other day, and then doing the elliptical and stair stepper on the days I don’t run, with one day off per week. We’ll see how long that lasts. I ran most of three miles yesterday, although it got rather dark so I cut off the end of the trail, since I’ve heard of entirely too many robbings/flashings/other bad behavior after dark there.
My running was very much helped by my new Camelbak, which I slung over my back before I took off. It’s an amazing thing, and a very good investment. No more having to stop to drink water for fear of sloshing it everywhere! It wasn’t a bad deal either, since I used gift certificates, earned on IgoUgo to buy it. I also bought a decent pair of hiking boots to break in–Vasque Breeze GTX XCRs. I tried them on at REI and they feel great on my feet. Plus, they are partially made from Gore-Tex, so they are waterproof but breathable–very important for hiking in Britain during the summer! I got lucky on those, too, since I found them for $100 online when they cost $145 at REI. Now I feel like I can honestly be a member of Bootsnall, because I own a real pair of hiking boots!
Tags: Australia, boots, hiking, Three Peaks Challenge, Tag Index