Big & Tall Travel

One of the very first trips I took with my wife was to a wedding in Detroit. While the wedding was beautiful, and the post wedding festivities were memorable, the actual travel to and from Detroit was horrid. Of course I’d been on planes before then, but never for leisure. Every other trip I’ve ever taken has been for business. On business trips, it didn’t matter if I was cramped and uncomfortable. All that mattered was that I had enough room between the armrests to fit. (And business trips are so infrequent for me that it’s hard to write anything about them at all!) But on a leisure trip, I really don’t want to be so cramped that I’m extremely uncomfortable. I want to enjoy my time.

That first trip was on a Delta flight from and back to the Washington DC area onboard an Embraer 175. It was not a pleasant experience.

We were seated almost at the back of the plane, and I think I hit my head on each and every overhead bin and hit my hip on nearly every aisle seat! Once I found our seats, my wife had the (dis)pleasure of sharing her seat with my right arm…though she did get to sit at the window. I was relegated to trying to occupy as much of the aisle as I could reasonably get away with just to stretch out my left leg a bit without jabbing it into the back of the person in front of me.

The flight was only about an hour with another 30 minutes on the ground, but it seemed like an eternity. I was so relieved to get off that first flight to Detroit.

That weekend was very fun. Besides being able to celebrate the wedding of my good friend and his wonderful wife, I also was able to spend some quality time with my soon-to-be wife. We really enjoyed our time in Detroit.

One of our shared passions is discovering and imbibing great cocktails. The Motor City has more than a handful of great cocktail bars, and we decided to try as many as we could before our late afternoon departure from DTW.

The highlight was the Sugar House. If you ever find yourself in Detroit with a few hours to kill, I highly recommend stopping by and trying anything on or off their menu. (Their truffle popcorn made the visit extra memorable!)

I also learned during that visit my love will try to match my drinking pace, which is a mistake for most people. By the time we arrived back to the airport, she was more than a few sheets to the wind, making getting through security a bit interesting and memorable (at least for me).

The flight back was thankfully quick and uneventful, though just as cramped and uncomfortable.

Two lessons were learned that trip: make sure the plane has enough legroom, and maybe only visit one cocktail bar before a flight.