Air travel isn't as fun as it used to be

Oh, I know. I am just complaining. I was in Miami this week at a recruiting conference. I think that I mentioned that I am not big fan of flying (specifically: take-offs and turbulence) and given the fact that there were no direct flights to be found, I knew this was not going to be one of my favorite flying excursions.

I can get over the fact that I had to toss my favorite lip gloss because I forgot to put it in my checked luggage. In response to the desk agent's question of whether I'd taken all liquid and gel products and put them in my checked bag, I replied that there was nothing in my carry on that makes me pretty. No lotion, no lip gloss (hey, I'm a girly girl! What can I say). Only I missed one residing on the bottom of my bag. OK, that's not a big deal. Seventeen dollars later and I've replaced it.

The part that was bad though was the relative lack of beverages on the flights. I'm someone who always has a water or diet soda at hand. I'm perpetually thirsty. I'm thirstier just thinking about being thirsty. I have about 5 different kinds of water (some with bubbles, some without) in my home. Add to that the fact that I struggled with season allergies last week which got significantly worse when I got to Florida. On the flight back, I chugged 2 bottles of water at the gate (which made waiting for the captain to turn off the fasten seatbelt sign an interesting exercise in control, if you know what I mean) along with a Benadryl. Yet those measly little cups of water or soda weren't even close to enough to helping. All I could think about was water, iced tea, slurpees, ice cubes, Popsicles, diet coke, rain gutter run-off.  I would have paid $50 for one of those big liter bottles of water. Note to airline companies...there's a money-maker for you. Yeah, and also, if you could stock some Estee Lauder Lip gloss in Berry, that would be great.  I could actually tell that my tongue was swelling due to dehydration (I'm not joking...it's the allergies...I just drank 1 and a half 17 oz bottles of water since I started typing this....I'm turning into a raisin...albeit one with plenty of lip gloss now).

I get the security measures and of course, safety is the utmost concern (and I partially blame myself for the lip gloss thing). But I think that it's time that the airlines start to figure out how to make traveling more comfortable, given the restrictions. I'm not suggesting features that add great cost, but give people the option of buying water on-board. By the way, I think there's a huge opportunity here for hotels to differentiate themselves by allowing you to ship some of your personal items to them overnight (oh, you know, things like, say lip gloss...and other toiletries) . I also think that some of the consumer goods/ health and beauty companies have an opportunity to allow people to buy small sizes of things at their destination...maybe even pre-order them for pick up. Maybe even in a shop outside the terminals at the airport or delivered to your hotel at an enormous charge. It's OK, I'll pay.

I think that now that air travel is becoming less pleasant, someone can make money by providing some simple conveniences that don't breach security. Because there are people like me that would pay the extra price of maintaining a positive attitude if they could just buy a way-over priced bottle of tap water or fore go checking their luggage for a two day trip that requires 12 travel hours each way. I'm just saying.