At Zurich airport, I wondered about a sign on the shuttle train track pointing to “Heidi.” Was there a stop called “Heidi”? The door closed and I heard, moos, cowbells, yodeling, then Heidi, in her milkmaid outfit, flickering on the tunnel wall like a schnapps-induced dream or a lead up to a porn flick. Passengers rolled their eyes.
Heidi at Zurich Airport

Airfare aggregator Kayak has put up an interactive chart predicting airfares from where you are to anywhere in the world.  It is rough, of course, and doesn’t take into account last minute sales, but it should give you a good idea of what it costs to fly…anywhere.

Maybe it reveals me as the pious food snob that I am, but today, in a Continental jet wafting over Winnemucca I stare at a sealed, steamed-up baggie labeled “Pierre Creations: Charbroiled Beef With American Cheese” wondering just what it would taste like. First, I was stunned to get a meal on a plane, the first one on a domestic flight in more than a year. Then, my only choice was a cheeseburger. Glad I am not a vegan or a Hindu or a cardio case. What surprised me is that everyone around me gleefully accepted this artery-buster. But, why not? It is small (everything in moderation is my mantra), nobody’s watching, nobody will tattle.

American Cheese: I can’t remember when I last sunk my jowls into a hot glob of American Cheese (I don’t eat Nachos). When I was a kid I had a choice of American or Swiss. One was orangish, the other was more whitish and had holes. I grew up In the Midwestern US, an American/Swiss, Chop Suey/Chow Mien sort of place. Pizza was exotic: Eye-talian. American Cheese, in one form, still comes in true American-style “don’t mess with me” individually wrapped slices. Not wrapped, actually, but a mixture of substances (51% real cheese by law) poured onto each plastic wrapper and chemically induced to emulsify and congeal.

So, struggling with the plastic, I unwrap this “handmade” delicacy, which looks something like a prop from CSI. I take a bite: not a savoring, slow, tooth-sinker as when I first sampled Kobe beef, but a more businesslike, matter-of-fact chomp. It is…edible, a blunt cheddar that neither amuses or offends. Scientist say smells can provoke powerful memories, and this flashes me back to the White Castles (aka gut bombs or sliders) I snarfed by the half dozen while cramming for college exams, memories of slob roommates and barely making the rent. It certainly does not have the pure, lovingly assembled by mom ‘n’ pop elan of an In-And-Out Burger (but then I have never ordered one with cheese).

But, who am I to criticize? I, who am corrupted by rock star chefs who swing their cleavers as cheekily as Eric Clapton swings his axe, by a misapprehension that radicchio is superior to iceberg lettuce, that slabs of cold, fat tuna served with horseradish rate higher than tunafish with Mac ‘n’ Cheese.

I have forgotten what Kobe beef tastes like and I will forget this one too but, that aside, I am curious as to whether American Cheese may have lost respect in the rest of the world. And I do wonder what it would taste like on French Fries.

Cats, as you are well aware, know more than we do. I asked both of our cats, Max and Moritz, about that and they responded with their inscrutable “I don’t suffer fools” look. Every time I travel, Max plants himself inside of my open suitcase marking my black sweaters with tufts of fuzz while Moritz frequently deposits a turd at the front door. I know they know I will be flying and I know they know that that will, in most cases, be an unsatisfying experience. Max crawled between me and my newspaper, the other day, as I read the University of Michigan’s Consumer Satisfaction ratings which placed US airlines far lower that cat food, even lower that the IRS.

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It is one of the best uses of music in a movie ever. In Stanley Kubrik’s classic “2001: A Space Odyssey, a bunch of crunky old rocket ships drift around space waltzing to the Blue Danube. Why does that make me think of airline baggage: “Look, there’s a flaming chunk of Samsonite reentering the atmosphere… and, over there, a big Tumi sailing past Saturn.” In fact, there’s an old joke that the rings of Saturn are made up of lost baggage. By some estimates, airlines lose 10 thousand bags a day.

Well the US Department of Transportation, steel jawed watchdogs that they are, want to do something about that. While you and me and the bag on the moon are crying for a passengers “bill of rights,” they are bravely raising the passenger baggage damage limit from $2,800 to $3,000 a bag. $200 bucks! How many people you know have actually managed to squeeze anywhere near that out of any airline?

But leave it to British Airways. If it you make it so damn expensive that you won’t check a second bag, then you won’t lose as many bags. Right? Brilliant! “The World’s Favorite Airline” (which has the ring of “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince” about it) will, starting February 13, charge up to £240 (US$470) for a round trip for that bag. Of course, that only applies to those who can least afford it, economy passengers. This was announced at the beginning of the year, and we are only hearing about it now. Next week passengers will show up at the airport and surprise!, if they are paying a deep-discount fare, that could just…double. British Airways calls it its “simpler baggage policy.” This means that you will probably not be doing much shopping in UK unless you can squeeze your new found treasures into one bag with all of the woollies you will need for London in February.

Baggage, by the way, is a major cost and this may be a sign of things to come. Spirit Airlines in the US is starting to charge $10 per checked bag. But $470?. With British Airways passengers, again, are caught holding the bag.