Another Crate of Those NASA Diapers, Stat!

On a trip to Asia once, my group boarded the plane in Chicago and settled in for the 14-hour flight to Tokyo. Several members took their Ambien and promptly dropped off into a deep sleep while the rest of us read, talked or otherwise killed time as the flight was delayed...

...and delayed...

...and delayed.

First it had something to do with a stray piece of luggage that seemed to belong to no one on board. Then it was a small maintenance issue, the pilot told us. They'd have us up in no time. A couple of hours later the issue had become union rules: the crew onboard now would exceed its maximum allowable shift if we were to take off.

And so on.

Four and a half hours later, one of the sleepers woke up refreshed, yawned, noticed that we were on the ground and said, "That wasn't so bad! I thought a flight to Japan would feel longer than that."

A full five hours after boarding, we took off on our fourteen hour flight. But the tough part, (I mean besides being crushed behind the reclining longshoreman,) was knowing that when we landed we had an hour to switch planes for our next eight-hour flight to Bangkok.