Americans as travellers

Well, I do have to say that Americans make very interesting travellers on planes. My most recent observations that come to mind are:
* loads of hand baggage - as US airlines seem to lose baggage more than any other jurisidiction (apart from Ryanair which is a law unto itself), and also take AGES to bring the baggage through to be picked up, everybody takes the maximum hand luggage on with them
* boarding order - for some reason US airlines assign an order of boarding as follows:
1 - frequent flyers and first class and business
2 - second most frequent flyers
3 - people seated in economy in window and centre seats
4 - people seated on the aisles
Such a stupid concept - I prefer to travel on the aisle usually, so this means I am always getting on last to a heaving plane, with all baggage areas stuffed to the gills. I may have to consider window seats, as I have no standing with US airlines at all
* very demanding on "beverages" - I have actually embraced this concept. First noticed this when sitting next to an American woman on a transatlantic flight. When asked what she wanted to drink, she asked for a "full can of pepsi and also a glass of water". I loved this - she just got what she asked for. So from now on (particularly long haul flights), I always ask for two drinks - usually a tomato juice (spicy if possible), but also a water. Works a treat, and helps with the constant dehydration and wondering when you are next going to get watered.
* strange demands - on one of my recent flights there was the usual problem with storage space with the gigantic amounts of carry on luggage. One guy had put his rather nasty puffy jacket in the overhead bins. So the flight attendant asked "whose jacket is this?" he replied it was his. She handed it to him, and said "we are out of space so I just need to re-arrange this bin to fit another bag in". he replied testily "Oh, so my jacket can't go up there now?" she said "Sir, I will try to fit it up here once the bags are in, but otherwise you will need to hold it on your lap". He replies "oh, because my jacket is really heavy so I don't want to hold it" ?????!!! By this time, she has managed to shove the last bag up, so takes the jacket and wrestles it into the space as well. He says "thank you so much" and she says "your welcome, my pleasure" all very politely. Meanwhile at least everyone sitting nearby was craning to see what sort of twit would make demands like that ....
* carry on baggage and toiletries - I notice that you can now carry some toiletries and liquids on to planes, but only if they are in less than 3oz containers (90ml for the non-imperially challenged of us), and separately kept in a plastic zip lock bag. Riiiiiight. That makes me feel safer in the skies.
So apart from travel observations, what is happening in NY? Well, lots of rain recently. Temperature is still holding up well on average - should hit 74 today (23C), and clear up hopefully. Work is rather busy as usual, and I have a lot of travel ahead of me. I have an official end-date for the NY secondment, being 30 November, so at that point the blog will end by definition. This week when there is a clear day I intend to do a "day in the life" photo montage trekking my day - I am sure that will put you all into a stupor, but may help to show my exciting life in more detail. Will have to see what happens - not sure I can deliver any more celebrity sightings unfortunately. I may also do a "re-integrating into London/how not to renovate a Georgian flat" blog, but we shall see if there is sufficient interest/content for that one!