My airline-related fears have been confirmed. You may recall (or you may click here) that during my previous trip, I shared my experiences with Spirit airlines. During that trip, I also learned that Spirit will soon be merging with Frontier airlines. I used to love Frontier. Denver used to be their only hub, and I flew Frontier frequently when I lived in Colorado. But since I’ve lived in North Carolina for the last several years, I haven’t had much chance to fly Frontier…until now. For my flight to Texas (San Antonio, specifically) I managed to get a great price for a one-way ticket, with the caveat that there would be a 7.5-hour layover in Denver. So I decided to give Frontier another try. Today, I was disappointed to learn that they have already implemented several of the things that I didn’t like about Spirit: the uncomfortable seats, charges for both checked AND carry-on luggage, having to pay extra to choose your own seat, the tiny tray tables…the list possibly goes on.

As for the 7.5-hour layover, I still have family near Denver. They came to the Denver International Airport (DIA) to pick me up; we had lunch and generally roamed around the northern suburbs for a few hours, before they deposited me back at DIA. But wait, isn’t this a Parkinson’s blog? Why, yes. Yes it is.

Long-time readers of this blog (if such beasts actually exist) know that the single aspect of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) I’ve given the most attention, is insomnia. A few weeks ago, my PD Specialist prescribed me another sleep aid to try. There have been more than a few cases where I posted great news about a specific treatment, only to have it stop working within a few weeks. Therefore, I am waiting this one out. I will discuss this latest prescription once I am more certain as to its long-term efficacy. For the moment, I’ll just say that I woke up too early on Day 1 of my Texas trip, and that I think it was due to me actually being afraid of oversleeping since this was an early flight, rather than being due to any failure on the medication’s part. Regardless of the cause, the effect of this lack of sleep was that I did some pertty decent sleepin’ on both flights. But I also fuzzed out a couple of times – both of which were right when the flight attendants had the beverage cart next to me. “Fuzzed out” is the term I just now made up for this experience. The experience is like a kind of detachment…my senses are still functional, but I feel as if I’m observing (dimly) from a distance; like I’m not really there. Or maybe this would be more accurate: it feels like my conscious mind has unexpectedly stepped aside, forcing my subconscious mind to take over for it. Each time it happened today, it lasted only a few seconds. But it lasted a full morning once. In that instance, I was perfectly functional – drove my car, went for a hike, took photos – I just felt like I wasn’t consciously in control of my actions. Like I was being operated remotely.

Anyway…got my rental car, drove to my hotel, had an EXCELLENT dinner at a local restaurant called, I think, La Torta, ready for bed.