the albuquerque airport

a friend of mine suggested recently that when i'm traveling, i should make notes about any particularly interesting or weird or good or bad things i encounter. that way, it'll be recorded for posterity and she can look it up here someday if she should travel to one of these locations. so here are my notes on the interesting features of the albuquerque airport:

the bathrooms there were built fairly close in time to the development of the efficient self-flushing toilets. in fact, they were probably built after the first generation of self-flushing toilets (which worked very poorly) and before the current generation. as a result, the toilets have all their plumbing tucked into the wall as self-flushers do, but you still have to flush them yourself. for this purpose, there is a large black button on the wall right where the sensor would be, if these things had been installed a year later. no problem, right? wrong.

it seems that user humans have so adapted to the self-flushing toilets that at some point, they stopped noticing that these toilets had buttons and no infrared sensors to go with them. to fix the problem of people walking away from their bowls with the job undone, the management of the albuquerque airport undoubtedly had many choices. they went with the simple and cheapest one. they installed stickers above the buttons on the wall that read, quite simply "Please Flush". and to make sure you didn't miss the message (i think this is the smartest part of the arrangement) they added an extra sticker on the door of the stall, right at sitting-eye-level, that says the same thing.

it worked. i flushed.

and in other news, i still hate southwest airlines' cattle call boarding. i like that i can check in online 24 hours in advance and ensure my status as a member of Group A, but i still hate the process. i want a guaranteed seat assignment, damnit! they're considering letting people pay a little extra for a guaranteed seat, and if they do, i'll be the first to sign up for the service. giant amazons need aisle seating. somewhere near the front. with a little bin space. it's not too much to ask, don't ya think? far better would be riding out to gigs on my valk, but that takes more than twice as much travel time, and i don't always have it. wish i did, though. the weather in gallup was gorgeous. of course, the sinus infection would've made riding much less fun than the usual. i can't imagine the how heinous it would feel to sneeze inside my helmet at 70 miles an hour. ugh.