A few years ago, flying from AVL (Asheville, N.C.) to BOS, my cousin and I were waiting to get on the puddle-jump from AVL-CLT stand-by. When a party of seven didn’t show for the flight, we were ushered on to the plane and told to “take the first seats we could find” as we would leave immediately.
My folks were sitting further back in the plane, but we found two seats in the second row and sat down. In AVL the planes don’t even pull in to Jetways, they sort of parallel park, so as soon as we clicked out seatbelts the jet rolled towards the taxiway. All of the sudden it became very apparent why these two seats weren’t taken. In front of us was a bloke with huge dreadlocks which probably hadn’t been washed in a year.
My cousin and I started a muffled conversation where every third or fourth word was mimed in order to not offend the offender. Something like, “Do you [sniff sniff] that?” “Oh, god, yes, it’s [holds nose] awful!” We discussed walking back to seats aft, but the flight attendant was standing next to us, giving the safety lecture, so there’d be none of that, thank you.
We hit the runway, and as we spun up the FA sat down. We began to roll–V1, V2–and I looked at my cousin, he nodded and looked at me. We left the ground, and the flight attendant got up and turned around–our cue to sprint up the aisle. We flopped in to seats in row 13 or 14, buckled up, and got to explain to my parents why we were shooting down the plane ten seconds after take off. But at least we could breathe.
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Well my friend, you met a typical Asheville native. Dreadlocks is the norm around here, and the smells accompany it. But after living here most of my life, it is safe to say that you do get used to some of the smells, however I think it's due to the smell sensory shutting down from shock. So sorry that the one person made you have to rush to another seat. At least the puddle jump to Charlotte is not far at all.
Funny how dreadlocks and terrible body odor go together, proving that dread wearers are as filthy as they look.