An excerpt from John\'s second book.

1. 1
Ask what the greatest point of need for improvement
is and start from there.
- Taiichi Ohno
The
woman seated across the aisle from
me works a crossword puzzle in the
Charlotte Observer. Oblivious to the
two dozen travelers seated around her, she mumbles
at a barely audible level – five letter word for red fruit
– looks absently toward the ceiling as if for divine
inspiration, gets that Eureka! look and begins filling
in the tiny squares with a black Waterman pen. The
smells of frying bacon, jet fuel and strong coffee hang
in the heavy, re-circulated air.
Gate A5 of the Charlotte Douglas International
Airport is situated directly across the corridor from a
restaurant that doesn’t open for business until 6:30
A.M., but begins cooking bacon around 5:30 A.M.
This is a trivial piece of information, unless you have
a 6:20 A.M. flight, as I do, and are tortured by the
alluring odor, knowing full-well that you will be
sitting on the runway when the OPEN light comes
on. I take another sip of my Starbucks coffee and
check my watch. Five forty-five. The twenty-
something MidAmerican Airlines gate agent will be
calling boarding soon – within the next five minutes
if form holds. It will be a light load heading to
Chicago this late October morning. The 737-800 in

2. 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Breakfast at Midway
one class configuration holds 189, and it is unlikely
that more than a third of those seats will be filled
this morning. Good for me, bad for the airline.
My name is Robert Adams, and I am sales and
marketing manager for Alliance Rubber, a small
manufacturer of molded rubber seals and
components, based near Charlotte, North Carolina.
In my two years with the company, I have logged
565,000 air miles, 210 overnight hotel stays and one
slightly wrecked rental car.
The agent, who I have come to recognize as Cheryl,
toggles the microphone switch and begins her rote
boarding procedure. After two years of taking this
flight at least three times each month, I could
probably make the announcement for her,
“MidAmerican Airlines flight 325 to Chicago… blah…
blah… blah. We will board starting from the back.
Passengers traveling with small children and
passengers needing extra assistance may board at
this time. We will be boarding rows 15-25 shortly.”
No takers on the small children or extra assistance;
not surprising, since no one in their right mind
would take children on a 6:20 flight. I am in seat 5A,
so I know I will be among the last to board and am in
no hurry to collect my carry-on bags and move
toward the line that has now formed out past the
check-in counter and out into the corridor.
Inside the plane, the smells shift subtly, the bacon
replaced with the organic, earthy smell of leather.
On the flip-down video monitors, Tony Bennett
croons “Steppin’ Out with My Baby,” as I stow my
bag in the overhead bin and settle myself into the
window seat. Since the plane is less than half full, I
am certain that no one will be seated right next to
me in seat 5B, but it is possible that someone will
take the aisle seat. The stream of travelers trickles
to a stop and I am delighted that I’ll be “flying solo”
today, no seatmate. The truth is, after dozens of

3. 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John B. Marek
MidAmerican flights I have developed my own little
rituals, and exchanging early morning pleasantries
with a stock broker from Springfield or a dentist from
Rockford isn't one of the more enjoyable ones. Tony
Bennett fades away and the monitors switch over to
the pre-flight video as we taxi out to the runway. It
is an overcast morning, cool by Carolina standards
for October. A couple of commuter planes take off
and a 757 – probably on the tail end of a red-eye
from Las Vegas or San Francisco – lands in front of
us. Then it is our turn. The dual turbofan engines
roar as the pilot releases the brakes and the Boeing
slings down the runway, lifting smoothly into the
misty dawn air.
Breaking through the cloud layer at 10,000 feet, we
emerge into a world of red, orange, pink and purple,
the newly risen sun to our right and the Windy
City 773 miles dead ahead. I plug my headphones
into the seat-arm jack and recline my seat a few
inches. The music on the in-flight entertainment
system this morning is a selection of “scary
Halloween classics,” and within minutes I am asleep
to the haunting strains of “A Night on Bald
Mountain.”
Copyright John B. Marek 2009. All rights reserved.